far from undermining the current system of control, the new caste system depends, in no small part, on black exceptionalism. The colorblind public consensus that supports the new caste system insists that race no longer matters. Now that America has officially embraced Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream (by reducing it to the platitude “that we should be judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin”), the mass incarceration of people of color can be justified only to the extent that the plight of those locked up and locked out is understood to be their choice, not their
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