Cohousing-L Mailing List: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Mar 21, 2023, at 11:53 AM, JoAnna Allen via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> My own experience growing up was in Milwaukee where there were so few Asians 
> that we were more a curiosity rather than a threat.  We pretty much ignored 
> what we now call microaggressions.   Growing up different was actually 
> empowering for me.

This is one of the influences on people’s reactions to racism, etc. In Santa 
Fe, for example, where discrimination is more focused on Native Americans and 
Mexicans, a former NYC resident said that Blacks are found to be exotic because 
there are so few.

> On Mar 21, 2023, at 12:07 PM, David Heimann <heimann [at] theworld.com> wrote:
>> 
> I've read "Caste" as well, and agree with you that she has a variable usage 
> of caste.  For example, the Nazi caste system lasted only 12 years rather 
> than centuries, but did much more damage than any of the others.  Also, the 
> U.S. system is the only one that is based on outright slavery, with the 
> heritage of that slavery being still active 160 years after its abolition, 
> leaving in place a caste system similar to that of India.

It is complicated to measure differences because they exist at so many levels — 
more on that later. The Nazis intensified discrimination that had existed since 
the birth of Christianity. They acted on what the dominant culture felt. I am 
angry that I have studied WWII and read two long biographies of Hitler and did 
not know the connection between Hitler’s men and their admiration of the South. 
That they studied the South to learn how to make discrimination legal. How was 
that buried for so long? 

The caste system in India is less old than many, particularly the British, make 
it seem. The names of some of the castes come from early religion but there is 
one that is mentioned only once in one of the texts and not in the others. They 
were more like ideals and the teaching of reincarnation than legally enforced 
distinctions. The British were in India for 200 years and they solidified the 
caste system in order to set up hierarchies of control. By emphasizing the 
hierarchy, they got the Indian people to control themselves. Very much like the 
lower caste white people in the South controlled the slaves. They believed they 
were dominant because they were white but in many ways, they were more enslaved 
than the enslaved.

> On Mar 20, 2023, at 12:02 AM, carol collier via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> I read both her books. In Caste, she left me confused due to, what appeared 
> to me to be, her interchangeable usage of caste and race throughout the book. 

What has worked better for me is to think in terms of dominant and subordinate. 
The use of caste is good in that it emphasizes the permanence of the 
distinction — that it is defined at birth and never changes. The definition of 
“race" is so sloppy that it is and always was meaningless. What race people are 
considered to be by whom changes every decade.  I grew up thinking Asian 
Indians were white only to find out that the reason I couldn’t understand 
British stories about them was that the British considered them black. I missed 
the undertone completely. The same is true of Italians depending on where you 
live and in what decade you came to maturity. 

To think of all the relationships as if they were ranked like the game of 
measuring privilege — the one where you take two steps forward if you are 
white, one step forward if you have never been on welfare, one step forward if 
you have 2 never-divorced parents, etc.

I disagree with Wilkerson that a rich Black person will always be treated like 
the lowest uneducated white person. It can be true, of course, but only if they 
are strangers. There are so many levels of white people and black people within 
each caste that a game of privilege would be very complicated. Not all 
dark-skinned people have grown up in a context that embedded the feelings of 
caste inside them. As a Black man who had chosen to go to school in the North 
but had left his wife and family living in the South said, "I don’t want them 
to grow up fighting. We have a good life in our community there. We don’t have 
to deal with it the way you deal with it up here.” It doesn’t mean he wanted 
his family to live in denial, it means one’s daily life is complicated as long 
as any form or attitude of caste exists and you have to choose how you deal, or 
not deal with it.

Once you treat “class" as “caste," it is impossible to ignore. “Class” is often 
seen as superficial and changeable. It really isn’t. I feel it as an artist and 
a poor person. Poor artists are glamorous and often have upper-class 
backgrounds. Poor people who are poor artists do not have families that speak 
French at home or have trust fund backups. 

Not knowing about wines, regardless of whether you can afford to drink them, is 
a marker of class. Ending up at a multiple wine dinner and you are two steps 
back before you get to the entree. Artists have to rub elbows with rich people 
because rich people are the ones who fund museums and buy art. You are supposed 
to learn how to be as good as rich but not too good. You have to be able to act 
and speak comfortably as if you were rich and never forget that you aren’t.

Every once in a while I sit down and think where did these ideas come from? How 
do you know this? Like others, I just grew up negotiating the landmines, and I 
was in a field that held many landmines. I have only understood them 
retroactively after reading civil rights and feminist literature in the 1960s 
and 70s and now, people like Wilkerson.

Studying sociocracy pulled a lot of things together for me because it 
understands the divide between being a leader and a follower and between being 
an equal partner and being a worker bee. How can we all be equal and at the 
same time be good at just doing a job? Operations are guided by policy 
decisions, but at the moment, they are not. Maintaining standing armies with 
rigid discipline as the military forces do is not only an efficient 
organization of thousands of people, it’s the only way to win a war. Or to keep 
the Peace Corps going. Or feed 2,000 refugees without a kitchen. Being a leader 
doesn’t mean being dominant and being a follower doesn’t mean being 
subordinate. Everyone needs to be equally proficient at being a leader and a 
follower.

“Sociocracy" means governance by society — the people with whom one associates, 
the members of the society govern themselves as equals. In order to decide the 
rules or the policies about how we live together in ways that are fair and 
nurturing for each of us, we need to make decisions as equals. When executing 
our jobs, the jobs we have all defined together as needing to be done, we work 
in hierarchies of roles and responsibilities and follow our chosen leaders.

An example is sociocratic consultant Gina Price who teaches in Australia. When 
the room she is teaching in is large enough, she arranges two sets of chairs. 
One set is in a circle and the other is in rows facing a speaker’s podium and 
whiteboard. When the group is making decisions as equals they sit in the chairs 
in a circle. Circle decisions, in this context, are about the order of the day, 
expectations for the workshop, the amount of material to be covered, etc. 
Policy decisions. The teacher and the students have to make these decisions in 
such a way that all their needs are met, thus they have to understand each 
other’s needs. The teacher’s needs as well as the students’ needs. For 
“operations,” when she is presenting information and explaining concepts they 
move and sit in rows facing her as she stands in the front. A focused hierarchy 
of presenting and listening and questioning.

I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of distinguishing between 
policy decisions and operational decisions. Enslaved people make no decisions 
policy or operational. The only decisions a foreman, the subordinate to the 
enslaver, can make are operational decisions to enforce the policies determined 
by the slave owner. He can be as arbitrary as he pleases in applying them and 
has more control if he is arbitrary because then he is more dangerous. Since he 
has no real control over anything, fear is what he substitutes for power. The 
owner is dominant and has the power to make all decisions. But in the end, 
unless the owner makes decisions that take into account the needs of the 
enslaved and the needs of the lower caste white foremen, he has no power either 
unless he instills fear.

I use the male gender purposely. This is a male game.

In cohousing, there is often confusion about when to exert leadership and when 
to seek consensus because we don’t have a clear distinction between making 
policy decisions and operations, of getting things done. 

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