It's Time to Dissolve Castes

This past weekend, I participated in the 50th reunion of our having graduated in 1974 from C.E. Byrd High School.  We celebrated, talked until we were hoarse, reminisced, laughed, and cried when we remembered our classmates who had died.  We connected with close friends we hung out with in high school, and, we made new friends of those attendees we hadn’t gotten to know well during our high school years.  Perhaps because I have been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, I noticed some things, related to ‘caste,’ at the reunion.

First, I noticed how some of the caste-like divisions from our high school years that divided us no longer appeared obvious.   During those years, we separated according to whether one was an athlete, if one was in a club, if one was in ROTC or the band, if one was in the student government or on the yearbook team, if one was an academician or an average or a poor student, if one was a ‘druggie,’ if one was one of the cool & popular students or one of the less popular students.  Socio-economic and racial divisions also existed.  50 years after graduation, we came together to celebrate without the pettiness of keeping some of our teenaged old caste systems in place.

Next, it was clear how overwhelmingly ‘white’ the crowd was at the reunion.  While everyone we could locate, from the graduating class, was invited, our friends of color were very few in attendance.  Everyone from our graduating class was welcome. There was no goal to divide by race or ethnicity; it was disappointing to witness how many friends of color did not attend.  Perhaps there had been an underlying fear that those caste systems from the past 50 years would exist.

“Wilkerson defines caste as a system that, ‘sets the presumed supremacy of one group up against the presumed inferiority of other groups, on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits’ (qtd. in Caste: The Origins of our Discontents,17). These systems are always designed by those who seek to preserve their power and that of their descendants. Caste is also about ‘power—which groups have it and which do not’ (qtd. in, 17).  Wilkerson points out that, “Many people may rightly say, ‘I had nothing to do with how this all started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves.’ And, yes, not one of us was here when this house was built. But here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joints, but they are ours to deal with now”( pp. 15-16)

“Wilkerson dispenses early with any notion that distance from the mistakes of the past absolves her readers of personal responsibility. Protestations of innocence may be factually accurate, but she considers them unhelpful. Using the metaphor of America as a building, she stresses ownership and occupancy over intention. To deny responsibility for America’s defining faults is impossible as long as one lives in it. Cultivating moral responsibility in her readers is one of her fundamental aims” (https://www.supersummary.com/caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents/important-quotes/). 

So, how are race and caste related? Wilkerson writes, “Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. They can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place. Caste is fixed and rigid. Race is fluid and superficial, subject to periodic redefinition to meet the needs of the dominant caste in what is now the United States. While the requirements to qualify as white have changed over the centuries, the fact of a dominant caste has remained constant from its inception — whoever fit the definition of white, at whatever point in history, was granted the legal rights and privileges of the dominant caste. Perhaps more critically and tragically, at the other end of the ladder, the subordinated caste, too, has been fixed from the beginning as the psychological floor beneath which all other castes cannot fall” (qtd. in https://peacejoyaustin.medium.com/top-quotes-caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents-isabel-wilkerson-273170d130d5).

Casteism is as insidious as ever. What we have been seeing in the United States recently, and especially since the 2016 presidential election, is that the ‘sleeper groups’ of white supremacists, religious zealots, and the wealthy conservatives who felt the cracks in the culture widen, instigated by a political party and leader, to emerge as “patriots” for the cause to perpetuate the caste system in the USA.  “Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage, privilege, or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you. For those in the marginalized castes, casteism can mean seeking to keep those on your disfavored rung from gaining on you, to curry the favor and remain in the good graces of the dominant caste, all of which serve to keep the structure intact ”(qtd. in https://peacejoyaustin.medium.com/top-quotes-caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents-isabel-wilkerson-273170d130d5 ).

This isn’t just about racial castes; look at how those who seek to push women back to the 1950s by taking away basic rights are supporting a gender caste in an attempt to make straight men top of the heap again. We all know the famous quote by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Unfortunatley, that’s just what is happening.

Consider the Nazi caste. “The man chairing the meeting, Franz Gürtner, the Reich minister of justice, introduced a memorandum in the opening minutes, detailing the ministry’s investigation into how the United States managed its marginalized groups and guarded its ruling white citizenry. The seventeen legal scholars and functionaries went back and forth over American purity laws governing intermarriage and immigration. In debating ‘how to institutionalize racism in the Third Reich,’ wrote the Yale legal historian James Q. Whitman, ‘they began by asking how the Americans did it.’

Hitler had studied America from afar, both envying and admiring it, and attributed its achievements to its Aryan stock. He praised the country’s near genocide of Native Americans and the exiling to reservations of those who had survived. He was pleased that the United States had “shot down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand.” He saw the U.S. Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 as “a model for his program of racial purification,” historian Jonathan Spiro wrote. The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste of African-Americans, having become aware of the ritual torture and mutilations that typically accompanied them. Hitler especially marveled at the American ‘knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death’” (qtd. in https://peacejoyaustin.medium.com/top-quotes-caste-the-origins-of-our-discontents-isabel-wilkerson-273170d130d5 ).

Do you see similarities between the Nazi caste and the caste in the USA?  How are castes dissolved?  I wish someone had the answer.  “‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ It’s a quote routinely attributed to Edmund Burke. But it turns out falsely so. Apparently, he never uttered these words. At best, the essence of the quote can be traced back to the utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill, who delivered an 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews and stated: ‘Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject’”(qtd. in https://www.openculture.com).

How do we, as ‘good people’ protest, as Stuart Mill suggests?  What can we do as individuals and collectively to dissolve castes? Is it possible?  I highly recommend reading Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents.  The content was deeply researched and shines a bright light on the problems of ‘caste.’ Please share your thoughts and insights by either commenting below this post if you are reading this on social media, or, if you are reading this through your email subscription, please share, by emailing me, at reimaginelife22@gmail.com.

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