Cohousing-L Mailing List: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Just started reading "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel 
Wilkerson. The paperback has just been released:

https://amzn.to/3yNl0Rv

“Caste" is incredible. I’ve only begun reading and have listened to interviews 
with Wilkerson, but important to me is that she has explained my own resistance 
to viewing racism as _the_ problem. Since race is an invented social 
construction, why do we keep enforcing it by discussing it? Efforts to 
eradicate it have failed miserably — on all sides. As many cling to it as a 
definition of self, others think it should be just canceled. But we can’t seem 
to educate people out of it. Approaching it as a “class” issue is only 
substituting another social construction that is as subject to interpretation 
as skin color.

Wilkerson defines the issue straight on as a caste system. Race or the idea of 
race, black and/or white, was invented to enforce a self-perpetuating caste 
system that is pervasive and all of encompassing. 

We avoid looking at history and don’t even know our history because caste is so 
fundamental to all our lives. She goes deep into history and reveals more than 
most of us, even those who have read extensively, have known about the who, 
what, when, why, and how. 

The first Africans were brought to the US _before_ the Puritans arrived, for 
example. There was no government, no America. When the government was formed 
African Americans were Americans as much as anyone else. The legal documents 
were written to change that. Thus our national identity was structured from the 
beginning to justify and retain the caste system of free labor. “White” is also 
a social construct and was necessary to establish and enforce the caste system. 
Until we understand the complexities of that — the way it defines and limits 
everyone, we won’t be able to unhinge the system. 

That is the key that I’ve been missing. I’ve studied how the British embedded 
and reinforced the caste system in India and North Africa. They use the 
“whites” to “control” the "blacks.” They had to create white in order to define 
black. Some white populations are living in fear of losing privileges that they 
actually don’t have and never had.

Wilkerson defines this so well and has such wonderful metaphors and 
illustrative examples that I’m stunned as I reflect on my life from this 
perspective. It’s like reading David Graeber and rearranging everything I’ve 
learned about pre-history and oppressive states.

The effect of analyzing how caste plays out in cohousing, I think will be in 
very different ways than we have imagined race playing out. It is a more 
fundamental identification of the problem allowing us to approach it 
differently.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org