The institution of slavery did not require plantation owners or countless bystanders to be filled with racial hostility; so long as plantation owners and a critical mass of white Americans remained indifferent to the suffering inflicted on black slaves, the racial caste system could endure. Indeed, it lasted for centuries. Preoccupation with the role of racial hostility in earlier caste systems can blind us to the ways in which every caste system, including mass incarceration, has been supported by racial indifference—a lack of care and compassion for people of other races.
