“Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson
The idea is that there’ve been three big caste systems in mondern history: India, Nazi Germany, and the American South. The reason why slavery was so horrible in the USA, and so much of the mindset continues today, was that it was set up as a caste system, and that mentality continued after the act of slavery was abolished. I think this gives us a lot to consider, and is an interesting way of looking at things. Some quotes:
“In the same way that individuals cannot move forward, become whole and healthy, unless they examine the domestic violence they witnessed as children or the alcoholism that runs in their family, the country cannot become whole until it confronts what was not a chapter in history, but the basis of economic and social order.”
“American slavery, which lasted from 1619-1865, was not the slavery of ancient Greece or the illicit sex slavery of today. The abhorrent slavery of today is unreservedly illegal, and any current day victim who escapes, escapes to a world that recognizes her freedom and will work to punish her enslaver. American slavery, by contrast, was legal and sanctioned by the state and a web of enforcers. Any victim who managed to escape, escaped to a world that not only did not recognize her freedom but would return her to her captors for further unspeakable horrors as retribution.”
“Southerners minimized the horrors they inflicted and to which they had grown accustomed. “No one was willing,” Baptist wrote, “To admit that they lived in an economy whose bottom gear was torture.”
“While the Nazis praised “the American commitment to legistlating racial purity.” they could not abide the “unforgiving hardness” under which “an American man or woman who has even a drop of Negro blood in their veins’ counted as blacks,” Whitman wrote. “The one-drop rule was too harsh for the Nazis.”
“Endogamy, by closing off legal family connection, blocks the chance for empathy or a sense of shared destiny between the castes. It makes it less likely that someone in the dominant caste will have a personal state in the happiness, fulfillment, or well-being of anyone deemed beneath them or personally identify with them in their plight…The Supreme Court did not overturn these prohibitions until 1967. Still, some states were slow to officially repeal their endogamy laws. Alabama, the last state to do so, did not throw out its law against intermarriage until the year 2000. Even then, 40 percent of the electorate in that referendum voted in favor of keeping the marriage ban on the books…for much of American history, dominant-caste men controlled who had access to whom for romantic liaisons and reproduction.”
“The caste lines in American may have at one time been even starker than those in India. In 1890, “85 percent of black men and 96 percent of black women were employed in just two occupational catagories,” wrote the sociologist Stephen Steinberg, “Agriculture and domestic or personal service.”
“Dehumanization distances not only the out-group from the in-group, but those in the in-group from their own humanity. It makes slaves to groupthink of everyone in the hierarchy. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable.”
“After slavery ended, the former Confederates took power again, but now without the least material investment in the lives of the people they had once owned. They pressed down even harder to keep the lowest caste in its place. African-Americans were mutilated and hanged from poplars and sycamores and urned at the courthouse square, a lynching every three or four days in the first four decades of the twentieth century.”
“While while immigrants stand to gain status by becoming “Americans,” Wrote the sociologist Philip Kasinitz, “by assimilating into the highter status group—black immigrants may actually lose social status if they lose their cultural distinctiveness.”
“If one examines the judgement of the poor whites regarding blacks, or of the Nazis in regard to Jews,” Fromm wrote, “One can easily recognize the distorted character of their respective judgments. Little straws of truth are put together, but the whole which is thus formed consists of falsehoods and fabrications. If the political actions are based on narcissistic self-glorifications, the lack of objectivity often leads to disasterous consequences.”
“Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy said, “Its cornerstone rests upon the great turth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…with us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.”
***
I have had some interesting conversations with people of an older generation about race. They seem to consistently tell me that “It used to be so much worse.” But it is said in a way that I feel I am supposed to be GRATEFUL that it is “so much better now,” even while they tell me they know things today are not as they should be.
I have been told that it “takes people time to change,” and to give it time. But when you are talking about MY FAMILY, even yesterday is not soon enough to be treated as equal humans.
I know the world is broken, and horrible evils happen all the time: but that does not change the fact that racism is wrong and I refuse to give people a break because they are “less racist than they used to be.” Wrong is wrong, and you don’t get a free pass because “that’s just how the world used to be.”
We need repentance. Isn’t that what our Christianity is based on? We, as a country, have never repented from the horrible act of slavery, and the caste mindset that continues even today. The Confederate leaders retired and lived honored lives with statues that continue to be a sorce of battle and pain. History was written favorably enough about the south that as a child, I didn’t get that it was such a big deal until I read historic novels outside of my school books. I remember being shocked when I actually envisioned the reality of it, and felt horrible shame the next time I was with my Black friends. “Does she know what my family did to her family back then?” I kept wondering.
I know the word “Reparations” is loaded, and so I use the word repentance and lament: our country desperately needs it. Over our treatment of indigenous people as well. I have no idea how that can be done on a country-wide level. But I am doing it on a personal level by listening. By learning more about it, having conversations with others, changing how I say things (wording and terms matter), self-examination, confession to God and those I need to make things right with, and a whole lot of grief and lament. It is heavy and hard.
My prayer is for the church first. That we would come together in repentance and lament over how our body is broken and hurting from the open wounds of the racial caste system in America. No excuses. No “just put it in the past.” Just sitting with it and let the tears pour down. Can the white church sit beside the black church and not be Job’s friends? That would be a good first step.