caste

From Wikipedia:

Caste is a form of social stratification characterised by endogamy, hereditary transmission of a style of life which often includes an occupation, status in a hierarchy, and customary social interaction and exclusion based on cultural notions of purity and pollution.

Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origin of our Discontents argues that the system of racial hierarchy in place in the United States for centuries fits this description. I’d been socialized to believe that caste systems were something that existed somewhere else, in particularly unself-conscious societies. In hindsight, I was being unself-conscious myself.

In a conversation with On Being, Wilkerson offers a compressed definition that caste is about “who matters most in the society, and who matters less.” In this way, the Black lives matter movement, which asserts that Black lives matter just as much as white ones, is a direct indictment of the American caste system.

Caste and COVID-19

I found this thread by Ethan Grey interesting that applies Wilkerson’s analysis of caste to the behavior of Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Grey cites from Caste:

Caste behavior is essentially a response to one’s assigned place in the hierarchy. According to the script that the culture hands us all, the dominant caste (whether man over woman, rich over poor, white over black, Brahmin over Dalit) is not to take instructions or even suggestions from the lower caste. The script decrees that the dominant caste must be right, more informed, more competent, first in all things. The caste system primes the dominant caste to experience discomfort, unfairness at the sight of a lower-caste person in a position above their perceived station and more particularly above them, and may feel the need to restore equilibrium by putting the lower-caste person in their place.

The dominant caste tends to resist comparison to lower-caste people, even the suggestion that they have anything in common or share basic human experiences, as this diminishes the dominant-caste person and forces the contemplation of equality with someone deemed lower. A comparison forces the contemplation of that person’s humanity, a source of internal conflict when confronted with injustice that society deems appropriate if the target is not seen as fully human as themselves.

Why were Republicans so vehemently opposed—often at the cost of their own lives—to precautions proven to protect them (and the rest of us) from the virus? A major factor predicting Republican support is concern about declining dominance of white Americans in society. The last thing someone anxious about their position at the top of a caste system wants to do is undermine it by taking direction from, or appearing to care about, anyone in a lower caste.