"In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we donât. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color âcriminalsâ and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once youâre labeled a felon, the old forms of discriminationâemployment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury serviceâare suddenly legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."
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Original Language: English
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Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), p. 2
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Color_blindness_(racial_classification)
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Color blindness (racial classification)
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