It’s official! Jim Crow is back!
Don’t take my word for it! The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that it was permissible to target persons indiscriminately for immigration raids based on race, skin color, ethnicity, and/or the ability to speak Spanish.
The Trump regime has made no secret that it was using racism as the primary tool in its arsenal. As El País (Spain’s second-most popular newspaper) reported in August, in this case that was rushed to the Supreme Court:
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is requesting that ICE be able to use race or ethnicity; speaking Spanish or English with an accent; being present in certain locations (bus stops, car washes, parking lots, etc.), or performing certain jobs (day laborer, construction worker, gardener, street vendor, etc.) as factors to suspect a person is undocumented.
The full Court did not issue a rationale in its 6–3 decision, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh made the reasoning clear when he wrote that race and ethnicity “can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.” That’s Jim Crow in a nutshell, folks.
It’s not that there weren’t plenty of hints that Donald Trump wanted to return to Jim Crow:
- He’s been openly racist all of his adult life.
- The language Trump uses echoes racist parlance used for centuries.
- The Pentagon has scrubbed as many black, Hispanic, and Asian military personnel and women from its website as it could.
- And, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth has fired as many women and minorities as he can, replacing them with less-qualified (but white!) men.
- “Anti-DEI” has always been a euphemism for “pro-racism,” but any debate about instituting a meritocracy has been eclipsed by Hegseth’s SignalGate, the scandal-plagued and completely unqualified puppy killer “Cosplay Kristi” Noem, Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s rampant ignorance (what educator doesn’t know what AI or IDEA are?), the compromised train wreck that is Pam Bondi, insane HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Elon Musk’s DOGE fiasco. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg!
The plaintiffs in the case had argued that “[n]umerous U.S. citizens and others who are lawfully present in this country have been subjected to significant intrusions on their liberty.” But in Jim Crow, that doesn’t matter.
Millions of African Americans were first made slaves, and then, second-class citizens following the end of Reconstruction, while white men did not suffer such indignities. Indeed, the whole point of Jim Crow is to establish at least two standards: one for white men and another for people of color. (You could argue that there’s a third standard, placing white women between their male counterparts and the ruthlessly discriminated-against below them, but that’s for another day.)
Now, how long do you think it will be before Trump’s law-enforcement (probably should be in air quotes, huh?) take to using racial profiling in their dealings with the residents of the blue cities it has targeted, since now it’s all A-OK? Faster than Trump finishes off a Big Mac or cheats at golf, I’m guessing.
After all, there’s already one standard for 1/6 terrorists, crypto criminals, white-collar and white-skinned fraudsters, and accused sex traffickers (and not just Ghislaine Maxwell) — overwhelmingly white, of course — and another for hapless Maryland fathers like Kilmer Abrego García and the guy who threw a Subway sandwich. It’s not a stretch to imagine the Trump regime targeting not just brown-skinned residents, but also blacks, since the Court has now made racial profiling legal.
If you didn’t already realize it, the courts — thanks to the packed Roberts Court — will not save us, just as the Taney Court did not save us in the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision. What’s happening now calls for a second Civil Rights Movement. And, calling what’s going on by its rightful name: Jim Crow 2.0.
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