Physical barriers like Jim Crow laws and border walls are only the most obvious forms of segregation. Today, segregation is enforced invisibly through class division, property rights, and a graded caste system that prevents unified resistance.
Invisible Segregation: The modern division of society through economic and social means, where physical barbed wire is replaced by financial barriers, class division, and privatization.
Caste System: A graded slope of inequality ensuring that everyone feels they possess some power over someone else, preventing unified resistance among the oppressed.
Neocolonialism: The persistence of colonial ways of thinking—particularly the belief that property is sacrosanct and that certain populations are disposable—long after physical colonizers have departed.
Ta-Nehisi Coates noted that the transition from Barack Obama to Donald Trump did not signal the end of racism, but proved its exact mechanics. To reach the presidency, Obama was required to be flawless, culturally unthreatening, and avoid nihilism in the face of racism. His successor merely needed to be wealthy and white to achieve the exact same office, demonstrating how the paradigm’s rules are fiercely segregated by race.
Often referring to the suburban ideal or the “self-made man” mythos (e.g., tech billionaires), which requires the active exclusion and exploitation of an underclass to function.↩︎