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The selection of Ben Carson to be secretary of housing and urban development is yet more evidence that Donald Trump and his transition team are embracing an approach that uses race as cover for a return to the racially oppressive past.

Carson, whose professional ascent was aided by civil rights victories and affirmative action, has pointedly rejected the very methods that allowed him to access opportunities that were unheard of in America’s pre-civil rights years. He will lead an agency tasked with helping combat poverty and support vulnerable Americans, yet Carson has openly dismissed the idea that government can be trusted with that work.

It isn’t just that Carson isn’t qualified; his selection in combination with Trump’s choice of Steve Bannon as his chief strategist and Jeff Sessions as attorney general suggests that America is headed toward becoming a neoconfederacy. By publicly nominating officials who in a different era would have worn their defiance against racial integration and voting rights as a badge of honor, Trump has publicly sanctioned the politics of massive resistance against civil rights and social justice into an extension of the federal government. He’s made the politics of racial reaction and economic injustice part of the American mainstream.