Goaded on by then-President Trump, a mob of nationalists, white nationalists, white supremacists, QAnon believers and minions waving Confederate flags stormed the Capital building on January 6th, 2021, with the goal of stopping the certification of Joe Biden’s election and Electoral College victory.
In a stroke of brilliant timing on my part, I had been reading Caste throughout November and December so I had a new lens through which to peer as I watched the chaos unfold.
How did we get here? Simple enough, as it turns out. America was built on the idea that whites (and more specifically, white men) are the divinely destined rulers of the American land. To various diminishing degrees, Blacks, natives, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants, LGBTQ+, women, etc., all fall somewhere further down the ladder of caste. What we saw on January 6th was, by and large, white men clinging to their station at the top of the American caste system.
For years, many in my social circle (including myself) have long bemoaned working-class white voters voting against their immediate economic self-interest by voting Republican. Why would they do that, my white ass would wonder. Aha. Wilkerson lays this bare. White working-class voters aren’t voting against their self-interests, not in the least. Not by a long shot. They are voting to uphold a caste system that places them at the top of America’s caste hierarchy. Simple. Duh. “Maintaining the caste system as it had always been was in their interest. And some were willing to accept short-term discomfort, forgo health insurance, risk contamination of the water and air, and even die to protect their long-term interest in the hierarchy as they had known it.” Well, shiite. I guess that’s pretty simple, isn’t it? In order to convince voters from a high caste that something as straightforward as clean water is something worth supporting and voting for, it’s only worth supporting and voting for if the lower caste only has less clean water. If everyone wins, that’s a loss for the upper caste.
Wilkerson structures her work by drawing out parallels and symmetries between America’s caste system, India and Nazi Germany. For me, it was her comparison of America to the Nazi reign that kept my jaw on the floor.
Let’s shift back 80+ years and take a peek at the beginnings of Nazi Germany. In 1934, the Nazi party had come to power but hadn’t fully cemented their grasp on the institutions and structures that would allow them to eventually kill millions. Looking for inspiration on how to scapegoat, subjugate and dehumanize an entire segment of society, a small group of Nazi politicians, lawyers and sympathizers gathered for a study session. Being Nazis, they took meticulous meeting notes. And Wilkerson tracked down those notes. Being ever-efficient, one of the attorneys in the room had already completed a foreign student exchange as an undergraduate at university in the American South and he recommended looking to America as an inspiration and role model. And so they did. After extensively studying American Jim Crow laws and the systematic degrading of African Americans, the Nazis — yes, the Nazis — decided that America went further than necessary with our racially based segregationist approaches. They concluded that Germany could obtain their goals without being such… uh… Nazis.
The linchpin to the Nazi’s plan can be boiled down to the concept of caste. The ability to get an entire population (working-class whites, perhaps? or German gentiles?) to view themselves as superior and more naturally deserving of better jobs, better schools, better neighborhoods, etc., than lower castes is all that it takes to justify genocide. And then… here’s the trick: with such a superiority structure in place, resentment of lower castes can be kept simmering on a low boil when the good jobs and good schools and good neighborhoods don’t materialize as advertised.
The mob that invaded the Capital of the United States of America, encouraged and emboldened by the previous President of the United States of America, are pissed that their jobs and schools and neighborhoods aren’t what they want them to be. Look where they are directing their anger.
Worth reading? Yep. 5 stars. Go find a copy here: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1193280092
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