The Great Resegregation

Adam Serwer: “If the Great Resegregation proves successful, it will restore an America past where racial and ethnic minorities were the occasional token presence in an otherwise white-dominated landscape. It would repeal the gains of the civil-rights era in their entirety. What its advocates want is not a restoration of explicit Jim Crow segregation—that would shatter the illusion that their own achievements are based in a color-blind meritocracy. They want an arrangement that perpetuates racial inequality indefinitely while retaining some plausible deniability, a rigged system that maintains a mirage of equal opportunity while maintaining an unofficial racial hierarchy.”

“Like elections in authoritarian countries where the autocrat is always reelected in a landslide, they want a system in which they never risk losing but can still pretend they won fairly.”