America’s Two-Tier Racial System Is Making a Comeback

Decision by decision, the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority is hardening America’s division into a two-tier society. The result is that even as racial minorities are growing into a majority of the nation’s future students, workers, taxpayers and voters, the court’s new rules are entrenching the dominance of White people in the key leadership positions of American life.

That’s a formula for sustained tension between rising generations pressing for greater inclusion and a thicket of legal barriers protecting those already in power. The most immediate flashpoint will come in Congress and in several southern states, where lawmakers are poised to redraw their electoral maps to roll back non-White representation if the high court ultimately allows them to.