Final answer:
The Black Codes of Louisiana, similar to those in other Southern states, deliberately conflated Blackness with criminality to maintain antebellum racial hierarchies and economic structures post-Civil War. These laws denied African Americans numerous fundamental rights, imposed severe punishments for interracial relationships, and subjugated them to labor conditions akin to slavery.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Black Codes of Louisiana indeed conflated Blackness with criminality, as they were enacted to maintain White supremacy by controlling the lives and limiting the freedoms of African Americans.
These codes, stemming from the earlier Slave Codes, were tailored to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor akin to the conditions of slavery. They sought to maintain the racial hierarchy of the antebellum South after the Civil War by denying fundamental rights to African Americans. While the codes allowed for legal recognition of marriage amongst Black individuals and the provision to sue or be sued, they otherwise imposed severe restrictions. Freedmen were denied the right to vote, bear arms, serve on juries, co-mingle with whites, leave an employer without permission, own property in unrestricted areas, and testify in court against whites.
More draconian measures involved harsh penalties for interracial relationships, and vague vagrancy laws could trap Black people into oppressive labor contracts, a term some historians describe as "slavery by another name." Therefore, the Black Codes aided in the systemic and legal marginalization of African Americans.