Friend Gord suggested the book, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; it’s an enlightening read at this time when racism and white supremacy terms are supporting a particular culture war in North America. You may find it odd that I’d review it before I’ve even ploughed through the entire first half, but the theme I’ve already picked up has got me thinking, and writing is a system of thinking I use. So sue me.
I was already familiar with sentiments behind, for instance, “There’s only one race; the human race,” and the biological evidence supporting that. I was also marginally aware that in India, particularly, the population has been sorted into social-status baskets we’ve come to call castes. What is new to me is the organic connection between social caste systems and the divisions we normally attribute to racism. As harsh, cruel and arbitrary as slavery or as benign as waiters wearing uniforms, all around us are the markers of societies’ propensity to pigeon-hole their people into categories of privileged/not privileged, respectable/unrespectable, worthy/unworthy, master/servant.
Caste systems serve purposes, or else they would die out. Plantation owners in the Southern USA became obscenely wealthy by utilizing slave labour, but for justifying their practices, slaves had to be dehumanized, made into an “untouchable caste,” unworthy of independent thought, self- determination, even of pity. The marker by which their unworthiness could easily be deduced was skin colour. The unwritten objective in the slave trade was not tied to racism though; race (skin colour) was a handy marker of caste. Had the plantation slaves had white skin but blue teeth, they would have been “the blue-toothed sub-humans fit only for slavery.”
Come to think of it, our language is full of terms that infer caste. Middle class, working class, working poor, elites, celebrity, wealthy, poor, the great unwashed, professional, Harvard educated, etc., the list is long. Treaties with Canada’s indigenous people turned out to be the legalizing of a caste system that persists, the relevant marker not so much skin colour as a crown registry and a tendency toward black hair and a certain swarthiness of complexion. Again, racism supports casteism.
As I read on, I’ll be looking for the possibility that Wilkerson is making a distinction without a difference. I expect not; her book is copiously notated and leans on credible research and authoritative data. But if racism is just an adjunct of casteism, then a whole different strategy for guaranteeing freedom and equal opportunity for citizens may be called for. What that strategy might be is one thing for which I’ll be reading.