Civil rights protections were dismantled under the fiction of equal citizenship.

Evidence

When a man has emerged from slavery and with the aid of beneficent legislation has shaken off the inseparable concomitants of that state,” Bradley concluded, “there must be some stage in the progress of his elevation when he takes the rank of a mere citizen, and ceases to be a special favorite of the laws, and when his rights … are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men’s rights are protected.” A mere citizen without special favors protected in the ordinary modes? Did Justice Bradley not understand that Black people only wanted to be mere citizens? Did Justice Bradley not understand that their rights were not being protected from planters and Klansmen? — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 700

Categorization

• XREF: Justice Bradley’s ‘special favorite of the laws’ language is colorblindness rhetoric — connects to the reader’s project of placing arguments into Kendi’s three-way scheme, here a segregationist move wearing assimilationist clothing.
• SEED: The equality-as-ideology trick — declaring you’ve reached equality so you can stop doing anything about inequality — is an article-worthy contemporary pattern.