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Kathryn's Reviews > Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by
by
This Oprah 2.0 Book Club Book was announced on August 4th, 2020, but I have only now read this nonfiction book about how one of the major problems in America is not racism, but Caste, the same kind of Caste that exists in Hindu society in India. This book is very well researched, by an author who belongs to America’s subordinate Caste, and I am very glad that I read this book.
Way back in the early 17th century, the settlers at Jamestown and Virginia needed a way to differentiate between the servitude of European indentured servants and the involuntary servitude of enslaved Africans. The obvious solution was color – those of European ancestry are various shades of white, and the Africans, depending on their tribe, were various shades of black. Thus was begun the caste system in America. Everyone who came to America for the next three or four hundred years has found it necessary to fit into the Caste system to find their level; this has happened even if a given person did not want to do so in any conscious way. So what we have now is a very large upper caste of White (even if before arriving, a given person was Irish or German or French), a midcaste of Other (Asians and Latinos), and a large subordinate caste of African Americans. I have known for years that the hierarchy goes White Men, White Women, Other, Black Men, Black Women, and I found out years after I left my small town on the Ohio River in West Virginia that my town was a “sundown town” (I had always wondered why people of color lived in the county seat town, but now my town). I also know that the indignities I have experienced as a White Woman are as nothing compared to those visited on a woman of color of my own age, either in our own lifetime or in the lifetimes of our ancestors in America. What is also of interest is that the author posits that the White Caste in this country, run by White Men largely, would prefer to have their White Caste maintained rather than to see Democracy maintained in this country. This is what happened in Germany before the War (when the Nazis encouraged the country to hate the Other to the point of acquiescing in the deportation and killing of the Other), and to a degree what is happening in Hindu India (where the Caste system has been going on for millennia, to the joy of those on top and the deep despair of those who are born so low that they are not even allowed into the Caste system). I have lived in Louisiana for fifty-one years (several of those years in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, which are more racist than other areas), and I know that I have had advantages by being a white person in my parish (if I am stopped by a traffic cop, I sigh because I am about to get a ticket; I do not break into a cold sweat because I might be shot dead).
This is a great book, and one that I think every person in this country should read.
Way back in the early 17th century, the settlers at Jamestown and Virginia needed a way to differentiate between the servitude of European indentured servants and the involuntary servitude of enslaved Africans. The obvious solution was color – those of European ancestry are various shades of white, and the Africans, depending on their tribe, were various shades of black. Thus was begun the caste system in America. Everyone who came to America for the next three or four hundred years has found it necessary to fit into the Caste system to find their level; this has happened even if a given person did not want to do so in any conscious way. So what we have now is a very large upper caste of White (even if before arriving, a given person was Irish or German or French), a midcaste of Other (Asians and Latinos), and a large subordinate caste of African Americans. I have known for years that the hierarchy goes White Men, White Women, Other, Black Men, Black Women, and I found out years after I left my small town on the Ohio River in West Virginia that my town was a “sundown town” (I had always wondered why people of color lived in the county seat town, but now my town). I also know that the indignities I have experienced as a White Woman are as nothing compared to those visited on a woman of color of my own age, either in our own lifetime or in the lifetimes of our ancestors in America. What is also of interest is that the author posits that the White Caste in this country, run by White Men largely, would prefer to have their White Caste maintained rather than to see Democracy maintained in this country. This is what happened in Germany before the War (when the Nazis encouraged the country to hate the Other to the point of acquiescing in the deportation and killing of the Other), and to a degree what is happening in Hindu India (where the Caste system has been going on for millennia, to the joy of those on top and the deep despair of those who are born so low that they are not even allowed into the Caste system). I have lived in Louisiana for fifty-one years (several of those years in the Florida Parishes of Louisiana, which are more racist than other areas), and I know that I have had advantages by being a white person in my parish (if I am stopped by a traffic cop, I sigh because I am about to get a ticket; I do not break into a cold sweat because I might be shot dead).
This is a great book, and one that I think every person in this country should read.
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