“Though systematic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and I imagine for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden systems of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily-awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them.”White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy Macintosh
Education, social class, places, spaces and living in the “ghetto life,” etc. In America, race an inextricably salient feature of our collective consciousness. There have been multiple claims of color-blindness, or the prospect of a post-racial society has been by many normative groups, especially espousing the Eurocentric (White) vision and version of reality, history, hegemony, culture and society.
1. I can be with only white people all the time
2.If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8.If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods, which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can sear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to “the person in charge,” I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having co- workers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can choose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.”
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy Macintosh. 1988
Does America Have A Caste System?
Definition of Caste
1: one of the hereditary social classes in Hinduism that restrict the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes
2: a division of society based on differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, and occupations.
3: India is the pinnacle of a caste system. Other places with caste systems include: Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, and even Eastern Europe. My focus is on America and India.
In the system, Hindus are divided up into four classes.
The Brahmins (the priestly class.)
The Kshatriyas (the ruling, administrative and warrior class.)
The Vaishyas (the class of artisans, tradesmen, farmers and merchants.)
The Shudras (manual workers.)
India currently has thousands of castes, they are all categorized into four different groups. Three of these four are: are beneficiaries from the scheduled castes (SC), the scheduled tribes (ST) and other backward castes (OBC.) it is true. The SCs were historically among the most repressed communities. The lowest were known, and shunned by the upper castes as “untouchables.” They constitute the lowest segment of India’s caste-based hierarchical society.
“The ST groups, on the other hand, were tribal communities living in remote forests with little contact to outside world. The SCs and STs have been granted quotas, of 15 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively, in all government jobs and higher education institutions.” https://www.dw.com/en/caste-protests-spotlight-indias-contentious-quota-system/a-19068170.
The Dalits, was previously known as “untouchables.” For centuries, inter-caste marriage was forbidden. In the main they lived in villages, castes mostly lived separately and did not share amenities such as wells to collect water. Or, no eating while the Master ate. Make sure to watch “Bandit Queen” and your critique of it. HINT: It is so sexist, class and caste-conscious.
The caste system was bolstered under the British Raj where upper-caste Hindus administrators or civil servants. Then, in the midway in 1920’s, the colonial administration introducing a system of quotas under which a certain percentage of government jobs were reserved for lower-caste Hindus.
After India gained independence (1947,) India introduced laws to make discrimination against lower castes illegal and to improve their socioeconomic positions. Quotas were introduced for college admissions and jobs.
As a result, some Dalits have made it to leading positions, such as BR Ambedkar. (He is my hero, who played an important role as writer of the Indian constitution,) and KR Narayanan, who was elected president in 1997.
Protesters belonging to the “Jat” community recently went on a rampage in the Northern Indian state of Haryana. They were protesting by blockading traffic on the main highway connecting the state with the national capital New Delhi. They also cut off water supply to the city by seizing a crucial waterway. The funny thing about it is that the protests the “Jats, “currently listed as upper caste, are demanding that they be given quotas in jobs and education similar to those enjoyed by the country’s lower castes. Earlier they only called off their protests late. The state government accepted their demands, pledging to introduce a bill on quotas for their community in the next assembly session.
But to fully understand the Jats’ demand, one needs to take a look at the quota policy, known in India and the U.S.A. (like the “reservation system,” that Native Indians occupy.) The Indian government has implemented since the country’s independence in 1947.
India’s post-independence constitution, adopted in 1950, mandates that “positive discrimination,” for the upliftment of those who were traditionally oppressed and neglected as a result of the caste system.
RACE AS CASTE AND CASTE AS RACE
In the mid-20th century, the American anthropologist Gerald Berreman returned home from fieldwork in India as the civil rights movement was getting underway. His 1960 essay, “Caste in India and the United States,” concluded that towns in the Jim Crow South bore enough similarity to the North Indian villages he had studied to consider that they had a caste society. America’s equivalent problems get exempted from examination. Whether caste is somehow different or similar phenomenon in America. After all, every society has strata and ethnic groups. “In modern America, we call these ‘demographic segments’ There are ‘demographic segment such as ‘inner city African Americans’, ‘rural Hispanics’, ‘suburban whites’, ‘Asian immigrants’ etc. and these are common terms in consumer marketing. I wonder how different these are from India’s much studied castes. Yet, people give funny looks when the term ‘caste’ is suggested pertaining to America.” https://rajivmalhotra.com/library/articles/american-caste-system-2/ A religion-sanctioned, segregation system that divides people into different social groups based on their birth or, in some cases, their occupation.
In the book entitled book entitled “The Invention of the White Race” by Theodore W. Allen it tells of gives an interesting account group we now call ‘white.’ “Until the 16th century, the white skin privilege was recognized neither in the law nor in the social practices of the labor classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans would continue to suffer for more than two centuries African bond-laborers were turned into chattel slaves and were differentiated from their fellow proletarians of European origin.” Shocked by the solidarity across racial lines exhibited by the rebellious laboring classes in the wake of the famous Bacon’s Rebellion, the plantation bourgeoisie sought a solution to its labor problems in the creation of a buffer control stratum of poor whites, who enjoyed little enough privilege in colonial society beyond that of their skin color, which protected them from enslavement. For example take your gated community “churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls. A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.” Tim Lane, the NY Times.
As soon as these social variations are perceived, we become conscious that caste rules in American life with an iron rod, fiery furnace of much wealth or rare intellectual ability: the lower we descend, in what is called social life, the more perceptible become its demarcations. In the working class its sway is omnipotent. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1881/12/caste-in-american-society/305936/
Wealth inequality is dividing our country: into two Americas: one that is the extreme wealth of the rich and one that is poor, very poor. Like the caste system in India, the rich don’t use the same schools, don’t frequent the same restaurants, don’t attend the same social functions, don’t support similar causes, and don’t use the same modes of transport. Unless it’s charitable concerns, such as the rich people do.
Social Security to help the poor with health insurance, or medical care, support unemployment compensation or increase the minimum wage. The very rich write the laws produce norms and establish the rules for the rest of us to follow.
Now, the wealth gap in the United States is the forth highest in the world; only Russia, the Ukraine and Lebanon are worse. Leaders of industry and commerce are more internationalists with no real allegiance to any particular country or to its citizens. They own multiple homes perhaps in New York, Paris or London. They are known “I’m rich, bitch” They couldn’t care less about the workers in those factories. All they care about is making more money for themselves and their heirs.
Definition of Caste
1: one of the hereditary social classes in Hinduism that restrict the occupation of their members and their association with the members of other castes
2: a division of society based on differences of wealth, inherited rank or privilege, profession, and occupations.
3: India is the pinnacle of a caste system. Other places with caste systems include: Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Mongolia, and even Eastern Europe. My focus is on America and India.
RACE AS CASTE AND CASTE AS RACE
In the mid-20th century, the American anthropologist Gerald Berreman returned home from fieldwork in India as the civil rights movement was getting underway. His 1960 essay, “Caste in India and the United States” concluded that towns in the Jim Crow South bore enough similarity to the North Indian villages he had studied to consider that they had a caste society. After all, America’s equivalent problems get exempted from examination. Whether caste is somehow different or similar phenomenon in America. After all, every society has strata and ethnic groups. “In modern America, we call these ‘demographic segments’ There are ‘demographic segment such as ‘inner city African Americans’, ‘rural Hispanics’, ‘suburban whites’, ‘Asian immigrants’, etc. and these are common terms in consumer marketing. I wonder how different these are from India’s much studied castes. Yet, people give funny looks when the term ‘caste’ is suggested pertaining to America.” https://rajivmalhotra.com/library/articles/american-caste-system-2/
A religion-sanctioned, segregation system that divides people into different social groups based on their birth or, in some cases, their occupation.
In the book entitled book entitled The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen it tells of gives an interesting account group we now call ‘white.’ “Until the 16th century, the white skin privilege was recognized neither in the law nor in the social practices of the labor classes. But by the early decades of the eighteenth century, racial oppression would be the norm in the plantation colonies, and African Americans would continue to suffer for more than two centuries African bond-laborers were turned into chattel slaves and were differentiated from their fellow proletarians of European origin.” Shocked by the solidarity across racial lines exhibited by the rebellious laboring classes in the wake of the famous Bacon’s Rebellion, the plantation bourgeoisie sought a solution to its labor problems in the creation of a buffer control stratum of poor whites, who enjoyed little enough privilege in colonial society beyond that of their skin color, which protected them from enslavement. For example take your gated communities, “churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls. A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.” Tim Lane in the NY Times.
As soon as these social variations are perceived, we become conscious that caste rules in American life with an iron rod, fiery furnace of much wealth or rare intellectual ability: the lower we descend, in what is called social life, the more perceptible become its demarcations. In the working class its sway is omnipotent.
Wealth inequality is dividing our country: into two Americas: one that is the extreme wealth of the rich and one that is poor. Like the caste system in India, the rich don’t use the same schools, don’t frequent the same restaurants, don’t attend the same social functions, don’t support similar causes, and don’t use the same modes of transport. Unless it’s charitable concerns, such as the rich people do.
Social Security to help the poor with health insurance, or medical care, support unemployment compensation or increase the minimum wage. The very rich write the laws produce norms and establish the rules for the rest of us to follow.
Now, the wealth gap in the United States is the forth highest in the world; only Russia, the Ukraine and Lebanon are worse. Leaders of industry and commerce are more internationalists with no real allegiance to any particular country or to its citizens. They own multiple homes perhaps in New York, Paris or London. They are known “I’m rich, bitch.” From the famous David Chapel show. They couldn’t care less about the workers in those factories. All they care about is making more money for themselves and their heirs.
Dalit Dastak is one of the several dedicated publications that have come up in recent years, raising issues that concern Dalits and other lower castes. Many are exclusively online and carry mainly opinion pieces. As a commercially oriented, vernacular print magazine disseminating news and reportage, Dalit Dastak has a unique position, Das contends. “It was intentional to put the word Dalit in the title. It catches the eye and differentiates us from other publications.”
After graduating from a journalism college in Delhi in 2006, Das worked for several Hindi newspapers but felt discriminated as one of very few Dalit journalists in their newsrooms. He decided to break away and start a website catering to Dalits.
Take education, so the objective of work around the analysis of Whiteness, power, and privilege to education, concluding with some suggestions for critical engagement in and through education so as to lay the groundwork for social justice and a just society. The White House’s budget proposed striking $17.6 million in grants to expand the event.