America’s Enduring Caste System

Just came across this and thought it might enlighten our conversation of racism in America and the right wing’s desperate attempts to ignore - well, when not feeling all victimized.

America’s Enduring Caste System

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/magazine/isabel-wilkerson-caste.html

Our founding ideals promise liberty and equality for all.

Our reality is an enduring racial hierarchy that has persisted for centuries.

By Isabel Wilkerson - July 1, 2020 -

We saw a man face down on the pavement, pinned beneath a car, and above him another man, a man in uniform, his skin lighter than the man on the ground, and the lighter man was bearing down on the darker man, his knee boring into the neck of the darker man, the lighter man’s hands at his sides, in his pockets — could it be that his hands were so nonchalantly in his pockets? — such was the ease and casual calm, the confidence of embedded entitlement with which he was able to lord over the darker man.

We heard the man on the ground pleading with the man above him, saw the terror in his face, heard his gasps for air, heard the anguished cries of an unseen chorus, begging the lighter man to stop.

But the lighter man, the dominant man, looked straight at the bystanders, into the camera, and thus at all of us around the world who would later bear witness and, instead of heeding the cries of the chorus, pressed his knee deeper into the darker man’s neck as was the perceived right granted him in the hierarchy.

The man on the ground went silent, drained of breath. A clear liquid crept down the pavement. We saw a man die before our very eyes.

 

What we did not see, not immediately anyway, was the invisible scaffolding, a caste system with ancient rules and assumptions that made such a horror possible, that held each actor in that scene in its grip. Off camera, two other men in uniform, who looked like the lighter man, were holding down the darker man from the other side of the police car as dusk approached in Minneapolis.

Yet another man in uniform, of Asian descent and thus not in the dominant caste, stood near, watching, immobilized, it seemed, at a remove from his own humanity and potential common cause, as the darker man slipped out of consciousness.

We soon learned that the man on the ground (had a name), George Floyd (He) had been accused of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, and,

like uncountable Black men over the centuries, lost his life over what might have been a mere citation for people in the dominant caste. … (so it begins)


 

And any further deterioration is, in fact, on our hands.

Unaddressed, the ruptures and diagonal cracks will not fix themselves. The toxins will not go away but rather will spread, leach and mutate, as they already have. …


 

Isabel Wilkerson, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of “The Warmth of Other Suns,” which was named one of Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. This article is adapted from her forthcoming book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.”
Is there any rational discuss left in us - when one side seems absolutely convinced these concerns are a joke to be pooped on.
In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance. In America, race is the primary tool and the visible decoy for caste.
Rubbish. The writer of this article, Isabel Wilkerson, is an American black woman with a net worth of $19 million. In capitalist America, your money - not your race - is the signal of rank. Caste is something else. Ms Wilkerson's caricature of the American social totem pole is make-belief. If she was telling the truth, the Oprah Winfrey Show wouldn't be watched by so many white women. And Barrack Obama would have been serving coffee instead of serving two terms in the White House.
In capitalist America, your money – not your race – is the signal of rank.
You haven't a clue.
You haven’t a clue.
Tell this to Jeff Bezoz at $166.3 billion and counting. What's in your wallet?
And Barrack Obama would have been serving coffee instead of serving two terms in the White House.
If he had, then I imagine he would have gotten great tips. Cause that man knew how to serve the people.

Unlike a certain developmentally disabled and narcissistically impaired t rump, who only knows how to serve himself. (And sometimes he even fails at that.)

What’s in your wallet?
I am picturing you with black $ signs as pupils. And huge ears like a Ferengi (those hyper capitalistic aliens on Deep Space Nine and other Star Trek incarnations.)

No, it’s actually one’s skin colour, not one’s own money. Wealth is based on the colour of one’s skin in the U.S. but it’s not voiced. At the same time, there are a lot of white people who don’t have money too, but the economy is one way to keep a group of people oppressed.

@sree

What’s in your wallet?

Nada, zelch, nothing, because I don’t get paid squat.

@timb

I am picturing you with black $ signs as pupils. And huge ears like a Ferengi (those hyper capitalistic aliens on Deep Space Nine and other Star Trek incarnations.)

RTFL! Too funny.

I am picturing you with black $ signs as pupils. And huge ears like a Ferengi (those hyper capitalistic aliens on Deep Space Nine and other Star Trek incarnations.)
You should pay attention to Ferengi. He is right. If you folks had managed your lives better, you won't be trying to destroy the USA.

Have you considered making him your picture icon?

You know @sree no one in the Star Trek universe like the Ferengi. On top of it all, all Quack thinks about is getting gold press latinum. That’s not a life.

If you folks had managed your lives better, you won’t be trying to destroy the USA.
We hope to save the USA from destructive "philosophies" like yours.
We hope to save the USA from destructive “philosophies” like yours.
It's July 4. I just had a barbecue dinner in my back garden (after watching Trump's salute to America) and the air is filled with sounds of fireworks going off everywhere. We are happy.

Macallan 12 years old. Cheers, my friend.

@sree I think the dotard destroyed the U.S. It had nothing to do with how we managed our lives. BTW, fireworks is not freedom and often causes PTSD moments for many vets.

@mriana

Do you drink? I would love to stuff you with single malt scotches tonight so you can feel how great it is to be white.

Where the hell is Lausten North? There are no enemies tonight even though he is an untouchable.

Not really. A glass or two of wine on special occasions, but not scotch. Scotch IMO is horrible and has nothing to do with being white anymore than drinking Colt 45 has to do with being black and actually, stuffing me with alcohol would only make me feel horrible, not great. Lausten has some RL issues to deal with. He’ll drop in when he can.

Hmmm, I was wondering about sree ethics in another post.

Now I’m wondering what does a petty provocateur believe in?

Why ruin a nice single malt with all that ice?

Why ruin a nice single malt with all that ice?
It's summer, dude. The better stuff is meant for sipping by the fireside, in winter.

Do you have money? It matters, if you are talking about “fine living”. Outsiders think they know the phrase but they don’t understand it viscerally. And they often miss that when the rich deploy the term that comes with an edge whetted on the stone of class.

I am still waiting for @citizenschallengev3 to engage me on the topic of the culinary arts.

Now I’m wondering what does a petty provocateur believe in?
Petty stuff.