“Caste: a division of society based upon differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, occupation or race; a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion” (from Merriam-Webster dictionary). Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, has a new bestseller: “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent”; a central theme being that “caste, while a global occurrence, achieves its most violent manifestation in the treatment of American Blacks, set at the lowest level in society through historical & contemporary oppression, marginalization & violence — all legally maintained through systems of law & order.” NYT Chicago bureau chief said, “the book does not disappoint; a profound achievement of scholarship & research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral story-telling & cogent analysis”. Wilkerson explains, “caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Racism & casteism do overlap, and that what some people call racism could be seen as merely one manifestation of the degree to which we have internalized the larger American caste system.”
“The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies, loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to convene an owner’s debts or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Convention would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil.” Wilkerson asserts, “The English in North America developed the most rigid & exclusionist form of race ideology.” She indicates “ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity”.
It is within our power & our responsibility to right these wrongs in the degree to which we can do so.
Trish Forsyth Voss
Aug 3 2021
America’s caste system
“Caste: a division of society based upon differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, occupation or race; a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion” (from Merriam-Webster dictionary). Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, has a new bestseller: “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent”; a central theme being that “caste, while a global occurrence, achieves its most violent manifestation in the treatment of American Blacks, set at the lowest level in society through historical & contemporary oppression, marginalization & violence — all legally maintained through systems of law & order.” NYT Chicago bureau chief said, “the book does not disappoint; a profound achievement of scholarship & research that stands also as a triumph of both visceral story-telling & cogent analysis”. Wilkerson explains, “caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy. Racism & casteism do overlap, and that what some people call racism could be seen as merely one manifestation of the degree to which we have internalized the larger American caste system.”
“The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies, loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to convene an owner’s debts or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Convention would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil.” Wilkerson asserts, “The English in North America developed the most rigid & exclusionist form of race ideology.” She indicates “ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity”.
It is within our power & our responsibility to right these wrongs in the degree to which we can do so.
Trish Forsyth Voss
By spiritspeak • Uncategorized 0