I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism.

Here's the final paragraph from Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy's dissent in Korematsu vs. United States in 1944. (The majority found Executive Order 9066, which called for the internment of Japanese Americans, constitutional.) It's one of the first uses of the word "racism" in a Supreme Court decision, and seems terribly applicable to the situation in Arizona today.


I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States. All residents of this nation are kin in some way by blood or culture to a foreign land. Yet they are primarily and necessarily a part of the new and distinct civilization of the United States. They must, accordingly, be treated at all times as the heirs of the American experiment, and as entitled to all the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.