CT Blue

We returned from a Vermont vacation a few days ago, which explains the absence of posts, though I can rest assured no one cares. Despite the gloomy weather we managed to fill the time, so I didn’t do much reading, but I did continue to make my way through Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, which I finished shortly after we got back. I read The Warmth of Other Suns, her last book, which I thought was good, but this one is far better.

This is the sort of book that indirectly explains the recent right wing rage against Critical Race Theory. I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of Critical Race Theory, but, then again, neither do the right wingers condemning it know precisely what it is. What they do know is that they don’t want to acknowledge the role of racism in this nation’s past history, or in the history unfolding in the present. The last thing they would want to see taught in our schools is a book like Wilkerson’s, which makes a solid historical case for her thesis while also making a solid emotional case. It would be a worthwhile read in any high school American history class, a useful antidote to the societal conditioning American kids are undergoing at that time in their life.

The book is a blend of history and personal memoir. She examines the caste systems in three cultures: the United States, India, and Nazi Germany, but the main focus is on the United States. We don’t normally think of this nation in terms of caste, but as she demonstrates, we very much do have a caste system, and while the people at the bottom (black people always, indigenous people, Latinos and immigrants when it serves the interest of the dominant caste) suffer the most, almost everyone but those in the very most dominant caste suffer as a result of caste, for one overriding concern of the Brahmins of this society is preventing the lower castes from seeing that their interests actually coincide. She makes a compelling case that this country lacks adequate health care, among other basics, because the very most dominant caste has been so successful in keeping lower caste whites obsessed with maintaining their position vis a vis the even lower class blacks. As Dylan put it pithily in giving voice to white politicians of the South, being white is sufficient:

A South politician preaches to the poor white man

“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain

You’re better than them, you been born with white skin,” they explain.

And the Negro’s name

Is used it is plain

For the politician’s gain

As he rises to fame

And the poor white remains

On the caboose of the train

Well, not exactly on the caboose, since that was definitely reserved for black people.

Wilkerson demonstrates that we are, all of us, infected by the caste system, our mental operating systems being programmed around it. We have the choice of fighting the programming or giving in, but it’s always there. Some of the most disturbing passages in the book are recountings of humiliations that black people have endured at the hands of white people, often when those white people are not being consciously racist, but are merely operating consistent with the societal assumptions with which they have been indoctrinated.

Though I’ve certainly been aware of these issues, the book opened my eyes a lot wider.

I’ll close with a quote from the Epilogue, which I think encapsulates the book’s lessons, though it doesn’t convey her pessimism about the possibility of America destroying its caste system:

A caste system persists in part because we, each and every one of us, allow it to exist-in large and small ways, in our everyday actions, in how we elevate or demean, embrace or exclude, on the basis of the meaning attached to people’s physical traits. If enough people buy into the lie of natural hierarchy, then it becomes the truth or is assumed to be.

Once awakened, we then have a choice. We can be born to the dominant caste but choose not to dominate. We can be born to the subordinated caste but resist the box others force upon us. And all of us can sharpen our powers of discernment to see past the external and to value the character of the person rather than demean those who are already marginalized or worship those born to false pedestals. We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity.

If anything, the modern day “Party of Lincoln” is looking to strengthen the caste system. It’s all they’ve got to maintain power, as they’re offering nothing of substance to anyone but the rich.