African Americans still suffer from systemic discrimination, and the country’s “war on drugs” is chiefly to blame. Police disproportionately search young black men, and are much more likely to imprison them for nonviolent drug offenses. On release, they often can’t find work because of stringent background checks. This process deprives black Americans of their rights as effectively as the segregation laws the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s fought to overturn. Watch Macat’s short video for a great introduction to Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, one of the most important sociology books ever written.