The Re-Segregation of America

Art by Dan Wasserman

You can dress it up, change the names, update the language, and slap a coat of think tank polish on it, but the game remains the same.

In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the white South didn’t quietly accept racial integration. No, they waged a campaign of what they proudly called “massive resistance.” Virginia chose to close public schools rather than integrate them. White families withdrew their children and sent them to hastily built “segregation academies,” which, despite the name, were never about education—they were about preserving white supremacy. And how did they do it? With state-funded vouchers that gave white students private school access while Black students were left with... nothing. No school. No resources. No future.

That wasn’t just racism—it was systemic disenfranchisement weaponized through public policy.

Fast forward to 2025, and you’ll notice the script hasn’t changed much. It’s just wearing a new suit. Project 2025, the far-right’s extremist playbook, offers a chilling echo of those segregationist tactics.

• Public education? Gutted. Replaced by a national voucher system that redirects taxpayer money into private (often religious, often segregated) schools.

• Immigrants? Demonized en masse. Due process stripped, people detained or deported under manufactured “emergencies,” with ICE now functioning more like a paramilitary force than a civil agency.

• Civil rights? Reframed as “woke overreach.” Voting rights? Gutted. The DOJ? Politicized.

• States' rights? Once the rallying cry of Jim Crow governors, now rebranded to justify everything from anti-trans legislation to book bans.

And just like in the ‘60s, it’s all done under the whitewashed banners of “law and order” and “protecting children”. Only now, instead of Bull Connor with a firehose, it’s Fox News with a chyron. Instead of George Wallace in the schoolhouse door, it’s Florida Man banning AP Black History.

These are not isolated acts of policy; they are ideological warfare. The goal is the same as it was in 1957: to maintain the power structure that benefits a select few at the expense of everyone else. Only now, they’ve added immigrants, LGBTQ+ Americans, and reproductive autonomy to the list of targets. Equality is treated as a threat. Diversity is painted as decay. And authoritarian control is sold as “freedom.”

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We should find it laughably ironic that the same people who scream about this being a “Christian Nation” (it’s not) are the least Christ-like voices in the room. Turning away the stranger, punishing the poor, hoarding wealth, and wielding state power to crush dissent? That’s not faith—that’s fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross.

And here’s the real kicker: we’ve seen this before.

For all the progress made—civil rights, voting rights, education, protections for marginalized people—none of it is guaranteed. History doesn’t move in a straight line. It loops. It backslides. It repeats when we’re not paying attention. And in 2025, racism doesn’t wear a hood—it wears a long, red tie and sits in the West Wing.

Let’s not be naïve. Massive resistance is back—only now it has a orange masia, a legal team, and a Super PAC. If we don’t fight back, the progress of the last 60 years could be erased in a single administration.

Because racism didn’t die. It just got better PR.

So What Do We Do?

We don’t give up.

We name it. We expose it. We fight it.

Not just at the ballot box—but at the school board meeting, the city council, the local paper, the dinner table.

We organize. We educate. We show up.

Because progress is not permanent. Justice is not automatic. And democracy doesn’t defend itself.

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Only if we keep pushing.

• PLEASE Support progressive candidates who actually believe in liberty and justice for all.

This isn’t just history. It’s happening now.