Caste in America

      America's Enduring Caste System: "Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all. Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries."  So writes Isabel Wilkerson, in an article in the July 5, 2020 issue of The New York Times Magazine, adapted from her forthcoming book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She is also the author ot The Warmth of Other Suns, about the great African American from the south to northern cities.

     She writes "Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The lingering, millenniums-long caste system of India. The tragically accelerated, chilling and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures becasue it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text of the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout culture and passed down through generations."   P. 31  She defines caste: "Caste is the the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy." P. 33.  She quotes Mississippi Governor James K. Vardaman, elected in 1903, "Anything that causes the Negro to aspire to rise above the plow handle, the cook pot--in a word the functions of a servant, will be the worst thing on earth for the Negro. God Almighty designed him for a menial; he is fit for nothing else." P. 50.

     Helpfully reminding us that race is a social construct not a scientific one she cites the work of geneticists tracing the human genome.   

      A fascinating section treats of narcissism. "...with groups trained to believe in their inherent sovereignty. 'The essence of this overestimation of one's own position and the hate for all who differ from it is narcissism' wrote Erich Fromm. 'He is nothing but if he can identify with his nation. or can transfer his personal narcissism to the nation then he is everything.'" P. 53. Think Nazi Germany with millions blindly following Hitler. Narcissism in impervious to logic, the narcissistic leader is always right and facts mean nothing, the nation/party/tribe is everything. 

      Wilkerson has done for race what Nancy Isenberg has done for 'class' in her book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. I highly recommend it, too.

     

 Now I've shifted into 9 months of being cold. One of my thermometers read 38 degrees this morning but I think it exaggerated, probably the low 40s.

Takk for alt,

Al