More About CASTE--the Book and the Reality

                                                                                              

The predictable knee-jerk reactions of so many true believers to the former's guy's conviction on 34 counts (kangaroo court, all political, Jesus was convicted too, sending money) saddens me.  

For a long time, the fact that this vulgar, manipulative, lying individual, a person I wouldn't let in my house on a bet, had so many avid supporters baffled me. But now, having finished reading Isabel Wilkerson's excellent analysis of the effects of caste on our country, at least I begin to understand.

                                                         

It's like LBJ famously said--

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.” 

Wilkerson addresses the question that has baffled me and so many progressives: why do so many working-class white people v0te against their own best interests (health care, social services, job creation etc.)?

Her answer: "...the people voting this way were, in fact, voting their interests. Maintaining the caste system as it always had been in their interest."

Like LBJ said.

I remember when Obama was elected, the reaction of a (white)woman I knew slightly to the Obama children in the White House, was a somewhat incoherent lament 'I think of my little granddaughters . . ." The unspoken subtext, I later realized, was that her granddaughters were more deserving of such an honor, because of their whiteness.

Wilkerson's book traces the long sad history of the effects of caste in India, Nazi Germany, and our own "land of the free."

It seems to be almost inherent in human nature to want somebody to look down on, somebody to be the scapegoat, somebody to do the nasty, unpleasant jobs that accompany life.

Wilkerson's thorough documentation (the book is about half reference notes) hammers home the operation of caste in our society. The enslaved were freed, technically, only to fall under the bondage of Jim Crow laws and more subtle forms of discrimination which still continue. The dominant caste was so successful at keeping the Black population in a subservient role, that the architects of Nazism actually studied the South for tips. (Terror and violence worked well, they found.)

The myriad examples of the physical brutality of the caste system are not always easy to read. Equally shocking to me was the fact that Black Americans were routinely denied so many of the benefits--Social Security, insurance, loans, education--available to the poorest white, thus perpetuating the class divide.

I found so much in this book that I either didn't know or hadn't quite understood. Highly recommended.