Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

[JoAnna Allen (jowooallen]

I read Caste a few years ago and with Sharon's excellent remnider, I 
need to re read it.  The suggestion by several others to have a 
discussion group is very welcome.  I myself am in a minority (Asian) 
which is now under threat with more and more attacks and enmity.  I have 
been tempted to jump in during all the discussion about diversity in 
co-housing but life takes over :-)   My community in Oakland was 
described in Senior Co-housing by Sherry Cummings + as the most diverse 
she visited.  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.  I will watch for further 
discussion of this mind-changing great book.
JoAnna Allen
Phoenix Commons

On 3/16/2023 4:43 PM, Sharon Villines via Cohousing-L wrote:
> 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
> ----
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
>
>
>
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