Caste and Class in American Politics

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.

Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo

 DiAngelo's Approach is Conservative

White people in America often confront racism in a conservative way by treating the confrontation as an occasion for personal growth rather than social conflict. One source of this attitude is Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility, which I have argued is a profoundly conservative book because it leads its readers to treat racism as a private sin rather than a social issue just as popular, Protestantism has frequently done. I said,

Protestant Christianity generally focuses on salvation from sin through faith in Jesus Christ, but what is sin?  We can divide sins into two categories. There are public sins like oppression of the poor or corruption in public business, and there are private sins like fornication, gambling or drinking. American Protestantism has recognized both, but popular Protestant religiosity has focused much more on private sin than on public sin. Those like the 19^th century abolitionists who have insisted on social justice have faced widespread opposition from religious groups. 

 

The focus on private sin encourages individuals to work for personal development, self-understanding, psychological growth and repentance rather than to engage in social action, and White Fragility fits neatly into this tradition.  Just as Protestantism insists that sin is the inescapable condition of mankind, so White Fragility insists that racism is the inescapable condition of our society. Just as Protestantism says that we should look into our hearts, find the sin there and turn away from it, so, White Fragility says that we should look into our hearts, find the racism there and turn away from it. In both cases, “salvation” comes from personal improvement, not from social action.

 

Kendi is Different

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi is quite different. Kendi insists that racism begins with racist policies that are adopted out of economic or political self-interest. Racist ideas and attitudes are developed and promulgated later to justify the policies. Moreover, Kendi says that changes in attitudes follow rather than precede changes in policies. Therefore, antiracists work directly to change policies. They do not worry much about what is in people’s hearts, because changes in beliefs and attitudes follow policy changes.

What is a “racist policy” in Kendi’s view? He says,

A racist policy is any measure that produces or sustains racial inequity between racial groups. By policy, I mean written and unwritten laws, rules, procedures, processes, regulations and guidelines that govern people.

Racist policies may exist at any level of society. For example, “redlining” was a racist policy that existed at a societal level and was supported by major political and economic institutions, but racist policies may also be local. For example, a private business in a particular community might recruit its managers from among members of the church to which the owner of the business belongs. Since churches in our society are highly segregated by race, the effect would be to exclude anyone who is not of the same race as the owner.

Then, there are subtle, cultural “policies” that can have the effect of making people from a different culture uncomfortable in a certain group.  For example, an organization’s members might talk to one another in the style of a certain social class, and that might make people of a different social class feel uncomfortable or unwelcome.

Kendi Demands Political Action

Such local practices might be characterized as racist policies, but they are not the focus of Kendi’s interest. Kendi is interested in the policies that create “racial inequity,” which he defines as follows,

Racial inequity is when two or more racial groups are not standing on approximately equal footing. Here’s an example of racial inequity: 71 percent of white families lived in owner-occupied homes in 2014, compared to … 41 percent of black families.

We can see here that Kendi is interested mainly in policies like redlining that have the effect of creating substantial racial inequity. In his view, the job of antiracists is to work to eliminate that inequity. Thus, antiracism for Kendi is fundamentally political. It demands social struggle and political action. However, because of the breadth of Kendi’s definition of “policy,” it is possible for his readers to avoid political action and focus instead on changing their own, individual behavior and on changing the processes in the local organizations to which they belong. People taking this approach can work on “inclusion” rather than equity. This approach is convenient because it avoids social conflict, and in addition it fits well with the ideas advanced in White Fragility. Racism becomes again a private rather than a public sin, and in this reading the book demands not political struggle but personal growth.

I think, however, that this approach misreads Kendi’s intent. Ibram Kendi is not Robin DiAngelo, and How to be an Antiracist is not White Fragility. To be antiracists in Kendi’s sense, we must really support policies that reduce the gap that Kendi calls “racial inequity.” Being more “inclusive” is not enough.

Why is Watching Hallmark Movies Like Going to Church?

Going to Church

People who go to “church” regularly receive the satisfaction of having their identities as well as their moral and institutional commitments confirmed. I use the word “church” here as a shorthand for “religious services,” and what I have to say applies equally well to services in synagogues, mosques or temples. 

The confirmation that churchgoers receive comes both from the form of the service and from its content. A church service has a standard form, and those who attend regularly know it well. Typically, there is a ceremonial beginning, which may be an opening blessing. Then, there is a series of prayers that affirm the core beliefs and values of the church’s religious denomination. There is usually a reading from a religious text, and the reading is followed by a sermon that expounds on the meaning of the text. Finally, there is a closing blessing. At regular points during the service, there may be music. In some churches, the music consists of songs sung by the congregation, and it may also include instrumental accompaniment.

The familiar form of the service envelops the congregants. As they repeat familiar words and sing familiar songs, they feel at home among people like them in a place that is theirs. The unchanging form of the service gives them identity and belonging. In a changing and uncertain world, it gives them stability.

The content of the service supplements the form. The words affirm traditional beliefs and values, and in the context of the service, each congregant reaffirms his/her commitment to them. The congregant does this even though he/she may in fact have serious doubts about their validity. This is hypocritical if you like, but it is very human. It gives the congregants a sense of sharing a tradition with deep roots in the past. It tells them who they are.

A religious service also has a “happy ending.” Our religions tell us that the world is ultimately a just place ruled by a just God or perhaps by an impersonal karma. People will get what they deserve. The good will surely be rewarded, and the bad will be punished. The moral books will be balanced in an afterlife, in what Judaism calls “the world to come,” or in a subsequent life for those who believe in reincarnation. Of course, many churchgoers doubt the truth of such teachings, but they suspend their disbelief just as playgoers enter into the spirit of a play by suspending their disbelief in its reality.

Watching Hallmark

Watching a Hallmark movie is a similar kind of experience. The movie has a formulaic plot with standard characters. It takes place in a familiar setting. People who watch Hallmark movies regularly know exactly what to expect. Just as in a familiar religious service, they are enveloped in a familiar environment in which they can feel at home. They know that they are sharing the experience with many other people, and that gives them a sense of belonging and community.

Hallmark movies, like religious services, affirm traditional values: family, home, romantic love, rural living, second chances. During the movie, the viewer accepts those values even though he/she may not really believe in them. A person firmly committed to a busy career in a big city can, for a moment, believe that life in a small town in the Rocky Mountains is more authentic and more humane. A person going through his/her second divorce can for a moment believe that his/her true love is waiting somewhere. Finally, a Hallmark movie always has a happy ending. As the characters often say, “Things have a way of working themselves out.” The lovers find each other; the conflicts are resolved; true love wins out; and the audience turns off the TV feeling good about themselves and about the world.

A Fake Issue

A Fine Example of a Fake Issue 

The current uproar over the stopping of trading in the stock of the company Gamestop is a beautiful example of a fake issue in American politics. A fake issue is an issue that gives politicians an opportunity to express intense moral outrage without having to do anything to improve the lives of Americans. This is a good example of a fake issue. Speeches will be made; outrage is being expressed on Facebook; hearings will be held; maybe, a new regulation will be enacted; but the lives of most Americans will be unaffected, and the regulation, being badly thought out, will turn out to be a source of trouble.

Members of both parties are now bloviating that the stopping of trading the stock of Gamestop is yet another a case of the big guys on Wall Street stepping on the little guys. That much may well be true, but this relatively minor action is being compared to the decision in 2009 to rescue the big banks but not the homeowners who lost their homes. The day traders who conspired to drive up the price of Gamestop are said to have been motivated not merely by greed but by populist anger at a system that is rigged against them. Their anger at being denied a chance to make more money is now alleged to be like the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement. Members of both parties in Congress – including Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – have jumped on the issue and are calling for hearings. The attorney general of Texas is calling for an investigation into Robinhood, the on-line app that halted the trading.

Take a Deep Breath

Take a deep breath. There cannot have been more than a few hundred day-traders trying to buy shares of Gamestop when the trading was halted. This is not a mass movement. In any case, brokers frequently halt trading in a stock if it seems to be running away with the market. The issue will not affect most of us in any way.  Only 55% of Americans own any stocks, and among those who do, the majority own them in mutual funds in retirement accounts. Very few people are day-traders, and trading or investing in stocks is not an altruistic activity. This is a fake issue.

We have plenty of real issues to occupy our attention: national health care, free post-secondary education, affordable child care, global warming and of course, the pandemic. We could worry about saving Social Security or about fixing our immigration system. Most politicians try to avoid discussing these issues because they come with risks for political risks. Taking a position on any of these issues can end up committing a politician to action that alienates some voters.  Fake issues are much safer, and politicians love them.

So, enjoy the political spectacle, but don’t allow moral outrage to rob you of sleep.

A Farcical End to a Farcical Presidency

 A Farcical Presidency

Last week’s insurrection was a farce. It was a deadly farce but a farce nevertheless, and as such, it was a fitting end to a farcical presidency. Farce and fakery have been the hallmarks of this presidency. It has been entirely consumed by the president’s image.  His farce has served as a curtain behind which the Republican Party has carried on business as usual, which has included tax cuts for the very rich and elimination of environmental regulations.

When Mr. Trump was elected, he claimed to represent the voiceless “forgotten people” in our society. He claimed that he would return the people’s government to them, but he never pursued or even defined policies to benefit the “forgotten people.” The signature policy achievements of his administration have been passing a big tax cut for the very rich, building a small piece of a wall on the Mexican border and moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. None of these provide any benefit for our “forgotten people.” They serve only to bring votes and money to the Republican Party.

Trump’s Farcical Use of the Media

We can see Mr. Trump’s fakery and his successful use of farce in his treatment of the media. He repeatedly claimed that the mainstream media published only “fake news,” and he claimed that people who wanted to know the truth should listen to him.  His effort to discredit the media was quite successful, and millions of people believe what he says to this day.

He might have used the power that the success of his campaign to discredit the media gave him to shape public opinion on serious issues. If he had not been a complete fake, he would have used his power to propose a program of legislation to benefit the people who put their trust in him. In fact, he did no such thing. He never proposed anything to benefit the “forgotten people."

He used his enormous media presence only to flatter his ego and attack his enemies. His populism was entirely fake and he conducted a political farce to the applause of his supporters and of the mainstream media who found themselves utterly captivated by his performance. He acted like a small boy who makes a lot of noise not because he expects to achieve anything useful by it but only to get people to pay attention to him.

Discrediting the Election

During 2020, Mr. Trump continually and loudly worked to discredit the election. He claimed that it would be and was a fraud. He brought dozens of legal cases to overturn the results of the election, but he did so in a way that was almost guaranteed to fail because he had no evidence to present. He tried to pack the courts in the hope that they would support him, but he forgot that prominent, conservative judges often have a strong commitment to upholding the Constitution. Again, the whole thing was never really designed to succeed. It was Mr. Trump’s standard political farce, which kept the national attention focused on him.

Unfortunately, there were millions of people who took the farce seriously. They believed what he said, and as a result, they believe today that our next president was not legitimately elected. Thus, serious damage has been done to our democracy and to our country, and the Republican Party, which also treated Trump’s farce serious bears considerable responsibility for the damage that has been done.

A Fitting End

The events of January 6 were a fitting coda to Trump’s four-year farce. He gave a speech to stimulate an insurrection with the ostensible purpose of preventing the certification of the electoral results by Congress, but there was never any chance that the insurrection would succeed.  The military did not support it; representatives of our ruling class immediately distanced themselves from it; the judges who might have legitimized the insurrection had already shown that they were not inclined to do so. The poor saps who were the foot soldiers of the farcical insurrection are now being rounded up and arrested. They will end up paying the price for it, while Mr. Trump and his Republican enablers will go free.  The insurrection itself was a typical Trump event: it was noisy; it was dirty; it was crowded; thousands of people cheered wildly; but nothing of substance was achieved. The farcical presidency came to a farcical end.

Should We Expect More Terrorism from the Radical Right?

 The Terrorism of the Weak

The short answer is, “Yes, we should expect more terrorism.” Terrorism is a tool adopted by people who feel that they have no other way to be heard or acknowledged by the political system under which they live. Terrorist acts are committed by people who feel that they face a political system of overwhelming strength that refuses to accept the legitimacy of their cause. The radical right feels that way as we can see from the popularity of the myth that last November’s election was fraudulently stolen from Mr. Trump.

Terrorism may take various forms. One them is the assassination of political leaders.  The most famous political assassination in modern times is the surely the killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which touched off the First World War. A famous American example is the killing of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Terrorism may also include killing of journalists like the twelve who were killed at the office of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015. Terrorism may also include the destruction of buildings or monuments or the killing of random people by bombings or shootings. The killing of more than 100 people at the Bataclan Theater in Paris in 2015 is a well-known example.

Elite Terrorism

An entirely different kind of terrorism may be used by members of an elite that is struggling to maintain its position. Such terrorism is different from the terrorism of the weak. Elite terrorism is better organized, more sustained and much more deadly. The terrorist campaign unleashed against black people in the South after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 is an example. The campaign went on for decades, and it included lynchings, burnings, rapes and whippings. It included actions by private individuals, by law enforcement agents and by mobs. It even involved the destruction of whole communities. Thousands of innocent black people were killed, and millions moved out of the South to northern cities.  I do not think that we will see this kind of terrorism in our country in the immediate future. Our elites are very secure. They will not feel the need to terrorize us.

The Terrorism of the Weak in America

The extreme right in America has frequently employed the terrorism of the weak in recent years. During the Civil Rights Movement, we had the murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, and in 1995, we had  the Oklahoma City bombing. More recently, we saw the murder of children at a church in South Carolina,  the murder of Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and the murder of a black man in Kenosha only last year.

There Will be More Terrorism

Should we expect the use of this kind of terrorism to increase? I think that the answer is “Yes.” Today, the members of the radical right see themselves in a position of weakness in confrontation with a powerful system. The myth of the stolen election in 2020 tells them that our allegedly democratic elections are controlled by a shadowy elite, which is determined to use fraud to deny electoral victories to the political right.

Mass actions have also failed them. The recent invasion of the Capitol in Washington was dramatic but failed to produce any long-lasting result. The takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 1916 was similarly ineffective. From the radical right’s point of view, it may have no alternative but terrorism.

So, we should prepare ourselves for a difficult time. The radical right is very well armed, and its members are desperate. The internet facilitates the organization of desperate acts. Our law enforcement agencies must prepare themselves for repeated acts of terrorism by the radical right. The lack of preparedness that we saw recently at the Capitol must not be repeated.

The Creation of a Political Myth

 The “Stolen Election” is a Perfect Issue for Republicans

Ted Cruz and 10 other GOP senators join Hawley in attempt to throw out election results: CNN's Tapper - Raw Story - Celebrating 16 Years of Independent Journalism. This is a perfect issue for the contemporary Republican Party. It is perfect because the effort to throw out the electoral results will fail, and therefore, the issue of “stolen elections” will continue to motivate voters in the future.

The Fragile Republican Alliance Needs Issues that Don’t Go Away

Today’s Republican Party is a fragile and unstable alliance between Trump’s populist followers and the traditional, business Republicans. The populist wing is useful to the party because it brings in millions of votes, but the business Republicans never really want to enact populist policies. They want tax cuts and reduced regulation of business, but those are not issues that excite most people.

To appeal to ordinary voters, the Republicans use cultural issues like abortion and gay marriage, and the party supports coded race-baiting. For the Republican Party, the great thing about these issues is that they don’t go away. They never get resolved. So, they can be used over and over again to appeal to voters. They are permanent grievances that can bring people to the polls.

The issue of the “stolen election” is ideal in that way. Millions of people will never believe that the election was fairly won by Mr. Biden. Instead, they will continue to believe that a shadowy “elite” stole the election, and that grievance will bring votes to the Republicans for years to come. Thus, the “stolen election” myth will function as the “lost cause” myth functioned in Southern politics for decades and as the “stabbed in the back” myth functioned in German politics in the nineteen-twenties.  

They Are Creating a Myth

Ted Cruz and his colleagues know that the effort to throw out the election results will fail just as dozens of lawsuits have failed, but that failure is the point of the effort because failure will perpetuate a grievance that can be exploited in future elections. Cruz and his colleagues are not really attempting to upend the election; they are creating a political myth that may serve them well for many years.