QSI: The American Caste System (4): President Obama's Eulogy of Con. John Lewis

John Robert Lewis was an American politician and civil-rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020 from pancreatic cancer. 

"Some people are selected to occupy the status "criminal."  Usually this happens because they are thought to have acted in ways that threaten the interests embodied in the law.  Criminalization thus involves the application of criminal law to a person's behavior.  Insofar as the criteria for labeling someone a "criminal" reflect some disparity in group interest and Power, that which is defined as crime and those who are selected to fill the criminal status are socially created objects of the structural characteristics of human society that produce conflict and an inequitable distribution of power in society." 

Clayton A. Hartjen "Crime and Criminalization"