[late]

I am reading a book titled Caste, about how Blacks are a caste. This is not a new idea, a social scientist commented on it in the 1940s. MLK realised it while he was touring India to learn about Ghandi.

But it hasn't gotten much attention from the general public. I am going to talk about that, even throw in some quotes from the book.

So this is just a placeholder intended to force me to get off my ass and actually do it.

https://www.amazon.com/Caste-Origins-Discontents-Isabel-Wilkerson/dp/0593230256/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1MIXQ2FEMMQZV&dchild=1&keywords=caste+the+origins+of+our+discontents+by+isabel+wilkerson&qid=1617218202&s=books&sprefix=caste%2Caps%2C182&sr=1-1

[Wellsy]

I saw someone wonder how the author distinguishes class and seems a tension has existed in the past in whether class is emphasized or caste in explain race and racism.
http://bostonreview.net/race/charisse-burden-stelly-caste-does-not-explain-race

[late]

I saw someone wonder how the author distinguishes class and seems a tension has existed in the past in whether class is emphasized or caste in explain race and racism.
http://bostonreview.net/race/charisse-burden-stelly-caste-does-not-explain-race

That's a good point.

I take a middle ground, I am not entirely happy with either characterization. Both approaches offer insight, I don't see either as the last word on the subject.

However, even if the idea of caste is not really applicable here, the book still has a lot to offer. A politician in India called MLK an American Untouchable. That was a revelation for King. It got me thinking, as well.

[late]

"And it was Du Bois who, decades before had invoked an Indian concept in channeling the bitter cry of his people in America: "Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?"

"Caste, on the other hand, predates the notion of race and has survived the era of formal, state sponsored racism that had long been openly practised in the mainstream. The modern day version of easily deniable racism may be able to cloak the invisible structure that created and maintains hierarchy and inequality. But caste does not allow us to ignore structure. Caste is structure.

Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things."