[dannypgh]

> Post US Civil war, we encoded a set of rules that on their face did not discriminate on race. But their effect was basically to prevent black people from voting and enjoying their civil liberties.

The laws about voting (poll taxes, grandfather clauses) did claim to not be about race to pass muster regarding the 15th amendment, but the same is not true of laws concerning exercise of other civil liberties. The bulk of Jim Crow laws were quite explicitly discriminating on race.

[softwaredoug]

Though the “separate for equal” doctrine rationalized the protection of black civil rights. We have a long history of putting a fig leaf over racial power dynamics.