A few months ago I read a new book by Rutger Bregman called Humankind. I was so moved by its boundless optimism about human nature that I diaried about it here.
Now I have been moved again, this time by Isabel Wilkerson and her examination of American Society entitled Caste, the Origins of Our Discontents. (The UK edition is called Caste: The Lies that Divide Us). Wilkerson is already well known for her Pulitzer-prize-winning journalism with the New York Times and for her account of the Great American Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, published in 2010. Her new book presents aspects of humanity that are not as positive as those in the Bregman book. But the fact that she wrote about them at all is in itself a positive, because of the deeper understandings that it brings to bear on our current society. So, as with the Bregman book, her insights should be part of every conversation about justice going forward.
Personally, her book has helped me deal with a longstanding conundrum.
Wrestling with my own conundrum
Around 1968 I saw a first-season episode of 60 minutes that dealt with the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. In it, several Scotch-Irish people disparaged the Irish Celts (their fellow citizens). They employed the same language, almost word-for-word, as American white racists whom I’d seen on TV slandering African Americans. But to my American eyes, the Scotch-Irish and the Celts appeared to be the same race. So maybe there was more to racism than race. That is, racism is real, but it must also link to something deeper in the human psyche that operates outside of “race.” But I couldn’t take the idea much further back then. Too many missing clues.
Then in college, I took ethnic studies courses given by Charles C. Irby. He helped me understand the relation of culture to language, the persistence of cultures (and languages) through generations, and where misunderstandings can occur between cultures — like if your Chinese friend regularly asks if you’ve eaten yet — it’s not a dinner invitation.
Critically, he helped me see that stereotypes, including most racial stereotypes, are not in themselves a problem. What matters, and what does make them into the problems that they so-often are, is who controls the stereotypes. What matters most in our multi-ethnic society is not stereotypes, but fair and equitable access to available resources.
And, of course, race itself is primarily a sociological/cultural construct, not a biological one.
He also showed me how Americans have always lived in a multiculture. Always. Since Jamestown. Actually, since before Jamestown. It’s nothing new. As I began to see how it all fits together, I also began to see how bad actors could exploit any fault lines between different American cultures, perhaps through wielding negative stereotypes, assuming they have the cultural power to effectively do so.
Unfortunately Professor Irby died relatively young, which has limited his influence in the wider world. He has been quoted as saying "that ethnic studies serves a necessary purpose in today's society and that only by understanding this country's rich multi-racial and multi-cultural heritage will it be possible to create a more loving and just society." Amen.
A Missing Piece Now Discovered
Events of recent years have spurred me to think more closely about racism in an unjust multicultural society. First of all, “multicultural” does not necessarily mean unjust, nor racist. Take, for example, Switzerland, a land of four major cultures. They seem pretty just. So why isn’t our multiculture?
And for that matter, what is racism, anyway, given that race is primarily cultural?
For most of my younger life, I understood “racism” as simply an individual’s personal prejudice based on race. Later I finally figured out that systemic racism (or structural racism), a system that allows personal prejudice free reign, and that itself limits access to resources for some races, is what we must deal with. But to a lot of people, racism simply seems to mean flinging inappropriate names at people based on race. And might there not be yet more meanings than these three?
These multiple meanings are all negative and tinged with strong emotions. They are related, but they aren’t the same. So you can’t have a productive conversation about racism unless the participants first agree on the word’s definition. Otherwise they might be just talking (or shouting) past each other. So how can we move forward with the conversation that needs to happen?
At times, I imagined that I could almost touch a missing piece to this puzzle within my mind. It felt clear, and invisible, cold and austere, like a 3-dimensional maze blown from glass, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. And then Isabel Wilkerson and her book stepped up to put a label on it, and paint in some details to make it easier to see.
The academic advantage of discussing Caste over Race.
That label was “caste,” a concept usually associated only with India. Wilkerson defines caste as “an artificial hierarchy with graded ranking of human value within a society. It determines standing, benefit of the doubt, access to resources, and assumptions of competence, which caste members acquire through no fault or action of their own — but simply by being born into a particular caste.” And “caste” does not necessarily involve what we think of as race.
Significantly, “caste” does not suffer from a plethora of different meanings like “racism” does. “Caste” only refers to a system or structure, and not directly to an individual’s behavior. And since a system is what needs reform, productive conversations about it can play out more efficiently.
And by the way, Isabel Wilkerson is not afraid to use the word “racism,” but when she was researching her previous book, The Warmth of Other Suns, she found herself avoiding it in favor of “caste,” in the interest of accuracy, to promote meaningful dialogue, and to focus on systems and not solely on individual bad actors.
Now, science is a search for universals, so Wilkerson decided to travel to India, home of the most well-known caste system, centuries old, to make comparisons with America and determine what’s truly universal about castes.
But as she viewed news reports of White Nationalist gangs in Virginia, she noticed that they often displayed both the confederate flag and the Nazi Swastika, thus linking caste in the Old South with what appeared to be caste in Nazi Germany. So she also traveled to Germany in her search for universals. She could have included still more countries, but didn’t, because she wanted to examine more deeply the three that she did include.
She does not claim that Nazi Germany, America, and India have identical caste systems. But they have enough in common that each can more fully illuminate an understanding of the others. Indeed, she paints with such a broad brush that she even talks about the aged in America as a caste.
In the end, she distilled her observations into eight “pillars” or key characteristics that typify all caste systems. (As I composed this review, I’ve paraphrased them — repeatedly — because doing so helped me process the information. Other book reviewers seem to have done the same)
Anyway, here is the paraphrased “duck test” for caste, Wilkerson’s eight pillars:
Caste characteristics — the eight pillars
1. Castes are perceived by caste members as instituted by God.
2. People are irrevocably born into castes.
3. Mating is tightly circumscribed to stay within castes.
4. Members of higher castes are characterized as pure, others as polluting.
5. Particular jobs and job status are assigned to particular castes.
6. Members of lower castes are stigmatized as not quite human.
7. The entire system is maintained through terror and cruelty.
8. Members of higher castes are viewed as inherently superior (and more competent) than others.
The book adds more details to these characteristics. For example, among other things, pillar 4 is usually connected with water, separating castes when they wish to drink, bathe, or swim.
These eight pillars can make us aware of other caste systems as we come across them, increasing our store of examples to study, and hopefully to derive solutions to our present inequities.
So, for instance, as I’ve been composing this, I’ve been listening to novelist John Green’s sometimes snarky YouTube series, “Crash Course in World History” (which I highly recommend).” In his episode about Medieval Japan (the Heian Period) he seems to describe exactly the sort of caste system that this book describes. And of course, to this day, Japan has its own version of the “untouchables,” the burakumin.
So my cold missing puzzle piece came alive. I could see that the Scotch-Irish in that long-ago 60 Minutes segment about Northern Ireland expressed many of those eight pillars. Nobody would think to label it as “caste” back then. Indeed, at the time, they called it a religious conflict between Protestants and Catholics, even though religion was clearly not a major factor in the struggles. I mean, nobody was arguing about the transubstantiation of bread and wine, nor the proper time to perform baptisms, nor any other truly religious issue.
Meanwhile, the whole concept of “caste” seems to fit with what I had learned about culture and about native languages in Professor Irby’s class, particularly in the way that they are passed down from one generation to the next — that is, somewhat consciously and explicitly, but mainly subconsciously and implicitly. Thus, caste, language and culture could form a seamless conceptual whole. So when certain politicians talk about “culture wars,” perhaps what they really mean is “caste wars.”
History of American Caste in Academia
Surprisingly, social scientists have been using “caste” to describe American society since long before Wilkerson was even born. In fact, she relates a rather harrowing situation of two married couples — one black and one white — all of them anthropologists from Harvard — Allison and Elizabeth Davis, and Burleigh and Mary Gardener. The African-American Allison Davis led the team in researching the phenomenon of caste in the American South. One can imagine how dicey it was for them to live and coordinate their work in the Natchez area of Mississippi for two years in the 1930’s, all the while watching and taking notes on society there. They added St. Clair Drake to their team part way through.
But they finished the task with their health intact. Their book is called Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (abstract here) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941. Googlebooks preview here.
But if the use of “caste” to describe American Society was long established in academia, why does it seem so totally fresh now?
It would seem that it fell out of favor, in large part, due to the influence of the Marxist academic Oliver C. Cox, as expressed in his 1959 book Caste, class, & race; a study in social dynamics, New York: Monthly Review Press. As can be seen in his Wikipedia biography, Cox’s analysis of capitalist America focused on economic class instead of caste, which he rejected as an organizing principle for American society. As he writes in the prologue to his book, “the slave was a worker whose labor was exploited in production for profit in a capitalist market. It is this fundamental fact which identifies the Negro problem in the United States with the problem of all workers regardless of color.”
Cox’s desire to contextualize American society within a wider global human experience is laudable. That’s what Wilkerson is also trying to do. But Wilkerson would point out that caste and class don’t work the same way. For example, it’s possible for members of one class to wind up in another one, perhaps through hard work. Caste, on the other hand, cannot be escaped, even if a lower-caste member attains the highest class in a society (which does happen). Her specific answer to Cox is on page 254.
Comedian and sociologist Chris Rock, who is African-American, makes this same point (warning: he’s a comedian, so he makes this point with language that many might deem objectionable), in this speech saying, “There ain’t a white man in this room who’d change places with me, and I’m rich”
So caste trumps class (so to speak). Wilkerson describes the American caste system with the metaphor of a physical body. Race is the skin, while caste is the hidden bones that actually define the structure. In other words, race is a signifier that places individuals into the deeper caste structure, but is not itself that structure. Meanwhile, class is like clothing and spoken accents.
Lots of Details
Caste, the Origins of Our Discontents presents many examples of caste-based discrimination, mostly from America, but some from India, and some from Germany, so the reader can see the patterns and cogitate upon them.
Many of these stories are already rather familiar. Some I remember from Professor Irby’s class so long ago. Others are the author’s personal experiences. But to read them as consequences of caste rather than the usual interpretation of racial prejudice gives them new meaning.
So, for example, in America, pillar number 7 — that the system is maintained through terror and cruelty — is normally perceived as racist hatred, pure and simple. Well, it actually is that, I suppose, but it’s also something deeper. It’s the dominant class’s desperate compulsion to defend caste boundaries at all costs, even to the point of damaging its (otherwise) own self-interests, even to the point of sometimes murdering their fellow human beings. That sort of protectiveness towards boundaries is where the hatred acquires its virulence.
And this indicates where systemic reform is needed to rebuild and heal in order to achieve genuine peace and justice. This strategy contrasts with the expedient of simply not threatening existing boundaries, which is how those Harvard anthropologists safely completed their research in Natchez.
Of course, the history of America shows how easily the dominant caste can be triggered into violence by even the tiniest perceived threat to caste boundaries.
The Old House
The author’s principle goal for this book is descriptive. She wants to help everyone see the caste situation for what it is. It’s the job of others (read: all of us) to straighten out the injustices. However, she does present more metaphors, some to encourage the kinds of thinking needed.
One is to think of our caste-based society as an old house in which we all must live. No one alive today built it, so we are not responsible for its design nor for its construction. Nevertheless, if we want continue living in it without leaky roofs or cracked foundations, or, for that matter, Winchester-house stairways that don’t go anywhere, we may want to refurbish or renovate it, keeping in mind the hidden framework of beams and joists. Perhaps we might want to tear down or move some walls, or make stairs that actually go somewhere.
And like an old house that needs regular maintenance, whenever we slack off on curbing the temptations of castes and racism, they reassert themselves like corrosive mildew.
Caste hurts everybody in the system
Caste systems mainly hurt those at the bottom, but by no means only them. As Wilkerson shows, even those at the top suffer from having to constantly expend energy on maintaining caste boundaries. And consider how much is lost to the entire system when those at the bottom are not likely to share their inventiveness and entrepreneurial spirit in a system where they are kept from having any skin in the game.
I’ve always thought it ironic that the cotton gin, arguably the most important invention in maintaining and expanding the “Southern Way of Life,” was developed by a New Englander, and not by Southerners themselves — not by the slaves, who had little motivation nor extra energy to invent something just to enrich their unsharing masters — and not by the masters, since the nagging need to defend caste boundaries robbed them of energy for entrepreneurship.
What a different and probably more successful South it would have been had the caste system not gotten in the way. It wouldn’t have lost so many self-motivated and hard workers during the Great Migration.
And what a different and more successful America it would be now if that caste system wasn’t still gumming up the works all over the country. As with every caste system, it thrives on inequality, the higher castes tending towards narcissism while employing the lower castes as scapegoats. That isn’t team work! The prison population in America would be its fifth largest city, due to unusually long sentences. In part, it’s a development of slavery and the caste system, even to today. That’s why, in some states, prisoners who supposedly “paid their debt to society” will still not regain their right to vote. Our lack of a national health system is also in large part a result of guarding access to health care from the lower castes (always viewed as “undeserving”). Meanwhile contagious members of lower castes are just as capable of spreading disease as anybody else.
Moving Forward and The Wave
The end goal, of course, is to fashion a system that’s more just than what caste can provide. The difficulty in accomplishing this should not be underestimated, and the book does not furnish glib answers. Certainly, continued study is needed, and Wilkerson does point out some directions for that.
For instance, she finds clues in present-day Germany. After the war, Germany took responsibility, and didn’t just forget an ugly Nazi history or sweep it under the rug. Wilkerson describes the reparations that they paid, and the many monuments such as Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, as well as the 7500 “stumbling stones,” that memorialize where Jews had lived before they were carted away, lest anybody forget.
So why don’t we have such stumbling stones for the many who were lynched in America? Instead we have a head of state who urges history teachers to teach a sanitized, bowdlerized, “patriotic” version of American history worthy of the censored Internet in the People’s Republic.
In contrast, when I was in Germany, I was surprised to find that all high school kids had to read The Wave, by Todd Strasser (pen-name Morton Rhue). It’s historical fiction, but based on true events that occurred at a high school in Palo Alto, California in 1967. A first-year history teacher, Ron Jones, hoped to demonstrate for his students how the Germans could go along with Hitler, so he turned his classroom into a miniature fascist society. The experiment almost got completely out of hand, so it’s not likely to be attempted ever again.
The Germans read this book as an admonishment of how easily even the most enlightened society, like their own, can be led astray. Actually, I’ve often thought that The Wave should be required reading in America, too, for the same purpose. It was made into a film in 1981, however, which ABC once presented as an after-school special in 1983. It’s on YouTube here, featuring antique 1980’s hair styles and low picture quality. The real Ron Jones is interviewed here in 2014. A more conventional documentary about the experiment called “Lesson Plan” is available here.
I present this “Wave” experiment because in some ways it complements the caste observations that Wilkerson made. That is, it shows one mechanism for creating and maintaining a caste system. If you read it, keep her “Eight Pillars” in mind. I find that they are a “gateway” into a new way of looking at America, that both solves old questions and raises new ones. I hope that others can use it to integrate their own knowledge and experiences, as I have done.
I’ll finish by linking to a famous photo, which Wilkerson describes in a prologue to her book. Taken in 1936, it shows a crowd of German workers enthusiastically giving the Nazi salute, except for one guy, who stands with crossed arms. He’s the only one in that huge crowd who ended up on the right side of history. Those of us who may wish to dismantle our local caste systems may find that just such independence of thought may be necessary to get the ball rolling. And it may also be just as rare.
The Icing on the Cake
Wilkerson’s long experience writing journalistic narratives shows through in the quality of her writing. Indeed, at times the book reads like a short story collection. Of course, seen from my nerd perspective, she’s simply providing lots of examples that the thinker can distill into concepts. But her descriptive style is actually much richer than just that.
Well, as with any book, different readers may understand/interpret the text in various ways. I have presented how her work fits into my own study / experience. I would invite potential readers / thinkers to hear directly from the source. They may do so by purchasing / borrowing the book itself, or by listening to some of the many interviews that Wilkerson has recently given to promote it.
Here are some links. Perhaps my favorite is the KQED radio interview, because her work inadvertently provoked a couple phone-in callers so vehemently that it shows she’s really on to something, here.
Presently on sale at Amazon.com
Some brief interviews with the author
Some longer interviews with the author
and some fairly lengthy interviews with the author
at the Edinburgh Book Festival (UK)
Written book reviews (by writers more talented than me)