Besides, the tools becoming available allow for much more subtle oppression, and that's the point being made here: you point at gross and obvious abuses of the past, when we can do much worse much more quietly.

Your jury, for example? Why care about skin color when what you really want is employment history, or socioeconomic class, or whatever other advertising criteria best help a prosecutor win a case?

EDIT: At least post counter-arguments before downvoting, folks. Rayiner used a strawman and distraction "oh ho, but but but ~executing thieves~!" as a way of discrediting a reasonable opinion "You know, little by little we can end up in a Minority Report sort of world". I was merely responding in kind.

People can express racism without it being overt, yet it can be just as destructive. In a relatively recent North Florida murder case, the jury was pruned to be all-white by the white prosecuter, citing a "sympathetic age similarity" with one of the prospective black jurors, who was 34. The defendant was 19.