  Discrimination is necessarily comparative, and the Brown case seems to suggest that what counts in the comparison is not how well or poorly a person (or group) is treated on some absolute scale, but rather how well she is treated relative to some other person.  But an important element of the court’s reasoning in Brown suggests that the disadvantage or wrong imposed by a discriminatory act can encompass more than the harmful downstream causal consequences of the act. Thus, the Court famously writes, “Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (1954: 495). The Court can be construed as saying that, apart from the harmful educational and psychological consequences for black children, the Jim Crow segregation of public schools stamps those children with a badge of inferiority and thereby treats them unfavorably in comparison to white children.