'Exiled' Republican warns US 'effectively recreated Jim Crow'

A conservative columnist warned Thursday that the United States has effectively rebuilt an odious institution from its past.

David Brooks, columnist for The New York Times, argued in a new column that the U.S. has effectively recreated the Jim Crow era. However, the division lines are class-based in the new institution compared to the race-based lines of yore. To make his point, Brooks cites data showing the academic gap between the affluent and the less wealthy is larger today than it was during the Jim Crow era.

"I’d like to let that sink in," Brooks wrote. "Nearly all of us were raised on the conviction that Jim Crow was rancid. We’ve effectively recreated it on class lines."

Brooks, who has described himself as a Republican in "exile," also warned that resisting President Donald Trump or the rising tide of global populism is only part of the solution.

"So you may want to stand up and be part of the resistance to Trump," Brooks wrote. "More power to you. I myself have called for this. But let’s be clear that resistance is treating the symptom, not the ailment."

"The ailment is the tide of global populism that has been rising across the developed world for years, if not decades," he continued. "And the cause is that our societies have segregated into caste systems, in which almost all the opportunity, respect, and power is concentrated within the educated caste, and a large portion of the working class understandably wants to burn it all down."

Read the entire column by clicking here.