Studies of the collateral consequences of felony conviction have generally focused on single restrictions such as disenfranchisement or disqualification for welfare assistance. Although these studies have provided a wealth of valuable information, such an approach only provides a partial picture of the broader social context in which collateral sanctions operate and their implications for social stratification. Even after felons complete their sentences, they often find whole classes of key privileges revoked and opportunities blocked. Furthermore, because they are most likely to experience criminal justice sanctions, Black males are at far greater risk of also facing the social disadvantages that accompany criminal punishment. This article argues that collateral consequence provisions play a role in maintaining and exacerbating racial inequality.

Saying the US criminal system is racist may be politically controversial in some circles. But the facts are overwhelming. There's no real debate about that. Here's why....

This article examines how the conservative legal movement's successful countermobilization of the politics of rights enables U.S. Supreme Court outcomes that exacerbate racial and ethnic inequities while solidifying the privileged position of others in the name of equality. A comparison of two pivotal Supreme Court cases involving native entitlements-Morton v. Mancari (1974) and Rice v. Cayetano (2000)-illustrates how appeals to formal, as opposed to substantive, equality work in effect to support existing hierarchies. At the same time, the conservative legal movement's success provides progressive social actors with opportunities to reframe the discourse. We suggest that a critical questioning of strategies predicated on appeals for equal rights may be necessary to advance the interests of native populations in the current environment, and we identify an alternative way of working for native interests, one that escapes the constraints of equality doctrine by appealing to broader claims of social justice.

We argue that the motivations that underlie stereotype-based discrimination against racial minorities and other stigmatized groups often fail to meet standard criteria for rational judgments. Stereotyping of such groups is often driven by threats to one's self-esteem and a desire to rationalize inequality, and declines when the perceiver is motivated to be accurate. Also, Bayesian racism-the belief that it is rational to discriminate against individuals based on stereotypes about their racial group-correlates highly with negative feelings toward minorities and the desire to keep low-status groups in their place, and correlates negatively with indices of rational thinking. The motives that drive social judgments call into question whether people engage in stereotype-based discrimination for rational reasons.

Studies of the collateral consequences of felony conviction have generally focused on single restrictions such as disenfranchisement or disqualification for welfare assistance. Although these studies have provided a wealth of valuable information, such an approach only provides a partial picture of the broader social context in which collateral sanctions operate and their implications for social stratification. Even after felons complete their sentences, they often find whole classes of key privileges revoked and opportunities blocked. Furthermore, because they are most likely to experience criminal justice sanctions, Black males are at far greater risk of also facing the social disadvantages that accompany criminal punishment. This article argues that collateral consequence provisions play a role in maintaining and exacerbating racial inequality.

To understand the persistence of racial disparities across multiple domains (e.g., residential location, schooling, employment, health, housing, credit, and justice) and to develop effective remedies, we must recognize that these domains are reciprocally related and comprise an integrated system. The limited long-run success of government social policies to advance racial justice is due in part to the ad hoc nature of policy responses to various forms of racial discrimination. Drawing on a systems perspective, I show that race discrimination is a system whose emergent properties reinforce the effects of their components. The emergent property of a system of race-linked disparities is über discrimination-a meta-level phenomenon that shapes our culture, cognitions, and institutions, thereby distorting whether and how we perceive and make sense of racial disparities. Viewing within-domain disparities as part of a discrimination system requires better-specified analytic models. While the existence of an emergent system of über discrimination increases the difficulty of eliminating racial disparities, a systems perspective points to strategies to attack that system. These include identifying and intervening at leverage points, implementing interventions to operate simultaneously across subsystems, isolating subsystems from the larger discrimination system, and directly challenging the processes through which emergent discrimination strengthens within-subsystem disparities.