“Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson

Written by

in

,
  • Silent earthquakes are a thing
  • “We did not build this broken house, but it is our house now”
  • Castes are about power, not feelings
  • In America, race is a strawman that maintains the caste
  • Virginia colony had a special form of enslavement more extreme than in England
  • We are shocked when the actors do not match the expected containers
  • Rooting out offenders helps us think we solved the problem but does little
    • (Offenders are people who crossed a line. Excising them pushing them out of the system… but the system still remains.)
  • Color does not indicate race (multiple “races” have the same shades)
  • Color is a fact; Race is a social construct
  • Caste is not inherently hatred
  • Casting is based on
    • Assumption of divine will and laws of nature
    • Heritability
      • “If you can act your way out of it, then it is class not caste”
    • Endogamy and marriage control
      • (Restricting marriage to intra caste)
    • Purity vs pollution
      • Their degradation justified their degradation
    • Occupational hierarchy
    • Dehumanization and stigma
    • Terror as enforcement, cruelty as control
    • Inherent superiority vs inherit inferiority
  • Dominant group threat syndrome
  • True Alphas do not need to yell
  • Omega’s act as a jester and pack glue
    • Because they can poke fun at everyone, they can defuse and mellow the group
  • Culture is built to subordinate castes successes more than almost anything else
  • “There is never ‘caste’ only ‘castes’”
  • Caste usually trumps class
  • We usually tend to defend our caste even if sacrificing self-interest
  • Tolerance is not love; we need to love, not just tolerate

Comments

Leave a Reply