A Masterful Work
Isabel Wilkerson’s recent book Caste is a masterful
exploration of the meaning and ubiquity of caste divisions in American society.
The author’s comparisons of our caste system with those of India and Nazi
Germany are telling and accurate. Her descriptions of the horrors that have
been visited on members of her caste are harrowing, and her recounting of her
own experiences in pushing the boundaries of caste are authoritative in the way
that only first-person experiences can be.
An Incomplete View of the Role of Caste
However, her discussion of the role of caste in American politics
is incomplete because it fails to take account of the role of money and of the
people who provide it. In Wilkerson’s view, issues of caste are the main
drivers of political divisions in American politics. She sees the contemporary
Republican Party as driven by the status anxiety of the members of the dominant
caste. Speaking of the presidential campaign of 2016, she says (p. 6)
The campaign had become … an
existential fight for primacy in a country whose demographics had been shifting
beneath us all. People whose … ancestry traced back to Europe had been the
dominant racial caste in an unspoken hierarchy since before the beginning of
the republic. But …, in the summer of 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau announced
its projection that by 2042, … whites would no longer be the majority ….
Then, that fall … an
African-American … was elected president of the United States.
The effect of all this was to produce anger and anxiety
among working class white people. As Wilkerson puts it (p. 183),
If a lower-caste person manages
actually to rise above an upper-caste person, the natural human response from
someone weaned on their caste’s inherent superiority is to perceive a threat to
their existence, a heightened sense of unease, of displacement, of fear for
their very survival. “If the things that I have believed are not true, then
might I not be who I thought I was?” The disaffection is more than
economic. The malaise is spiritual, psychological, emotional. Who are you if
there is no one to be better than?
For Wilkerson, this spiritual malaise and insecurity
accounts for the strength of working-class support for Donald Trump in 2016 and
for the victory of the Republican Party that year. She is correct as far as she
goes, but her explanation is incomplete because it fails to account for the financial
cost of turning widespread malaise and insecurity into a political movement.
It Takes Money and the Support of People Who Have It
The rallies that Trump held during his campaign had to be
paid for. The propaganda that links “welfare” to the "laziness" of black people
has to be paid for. The propaganda telling us that Mexican immigrants are
gangsters and rapists has to be paid for. The people who spread racist
propaganda on Fox News and talk radio earn six-figure salaries, and they have
to be paid.
The money for these things comes from people at the top of
our society. The Koch brothers’ political action committee has contributed
millions of dollars to Republican political campaigns, and the Kochs along with
other wealthy people and corporations have also made large donations to the
American Legislative Exchange Council. Betsy DeVos’s family has made millions
of dollars of contributions to Republican political campaigns. Their
contributions and the contributions of others like them supported the effort to
build a movement based on racist fears. Why do people like these donate money
to support such a movement?
Why Rich People Support Racist Politics
They don’t do it because of status anxiety. It is ludicrous
to say that the likes of Charles Koch, Betsy DeVos or Rupert Murdoch act
politically because they are suffering from status anxiety. Great wealth always
confers high social status in the United States. Rich people are admired for
their wealth. Our white billionaires are not threatened by the election of
Barack Obama as president or by the fact that Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are
also billionaires. So, why do American billionaires support racist politics?
The short answer is that they do it to keep wages low, taxes
low, the working class docile and government safely in the hands of people like
themselves. They do it to divide the working class and thereby keep its members
from joining together to act in their own interest.
Class and Caste in India and Nazi Germany
This was true in the past as it is today. Let us look at the
cases that Wilkerson uses for comparison to our caste system. She mentions the
Indian caste system. In Indian villages, the major landowners belong to the
higher castes, while the tenant farmers and landless laborers are lower caste
people and Dalits. Thus, the caste system bolsters the control that the wealthy
exercise over the lives of the poor. It prevents the Shudras (members of the lowest caste) from allying with the Dalits (untouchables). The system provides divine legitimation
for an oppressive class system.
Wilkerson also compares our system to that of Nazi Germany.
In understanding the rise of the Nazi Party, we should remember that in the
early nineteen thirties, the German capitalists were desperately afraid of
communism. A successful communist revolution had taken place just next door in
Russia only a few years earlier, and the German communist party was large and
well organized. German capitalists supported Hitler and the Nazis as a bulwark
against communism. For the wealthy, the Nazi caste system was a price they were
willing to pay to maintain their wealth and power.
Caste and Class in American Politics
The same kinds of motives underlie upper class support of racist
politics in American History. In the late nineteenth century, the planter class
in the South promoted racial divisions not only to keep black people in line
but also to prevent poor black and white people from joining together in the
populist movement of that period. The restrictions on voting that were put in place eliminated
millions of poor white voters along with the black voters, and the planters
maintained their control in a region where they were a small minority of the total, white population.
Racial divisions in the United States have also been
exploited to break strikes and to prevent the development of labor unions in
many parts of our country, and racial divisions continue to be used that way
today.
People like Robert Koch, Betsy DeVos or Rupert Murdoch exploit
the racial fears of the working class in order to maintain their own wealth and
power. They support racist politics to bring in votes for candidates who will
pass right-to-work laws, oppose higher taxes, prevent environmental regulation
and prevent the creation of a decent national health care system. They support
racist politics not because they are worried about their caste positions but to
advance their economic agendas. Rupert Murdoch has even turned supporting
racist politics into a profitable business in Fox News.
We can see the outcome of this kind of cynical politics in
the legislative actions of the Trump administration. It did very little to
advance a racist agenda, but it succeeded in passing an enormous tax cut that
benefits mainly rich people, and it rolled back many environmental regulations.
The administration also succeeded in appointing judges who will limit voting
rights in order to maintain the power of the rich. Above all, the racist
politics of the Republican Party kept the members of the working class from
getting together to advance their shared interests.
Isabel Wilkerson is right when she says that caste plays a
huge role in American politics, but the Republican political movement based on
caste did not spring spontaneously from the soil of American culture and
history. It cannot be explained solely as an expression of the American caste system. The movement was created and
nurtured deliberately and cynically to split the working class and to prevent
the emergence of a strong, working class political movement dedicated to
improving life for all Americans and not just for the wealthy few.
