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| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste Isabel Wilkerson, 2023-02-14 #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions—now with a new Afterword by the author. #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist “As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.” In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: White Space, Black Hood Sheryll Cashin, 2021-09-14 A 2021 C. Wright Mills Award Finalist Shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality—and issues a call for abolition. The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the ideology of white supremacy. Politicians and people of all colors propagated “ghetto” myths to justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces. In White Space, Black Hood, Sheryll Cashin traces the history of anti-Black residential caste—boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance—and unpacks its current legacy so we can begin the work to dismantle the structures and policies that undermine Black lives. Drawing on nearly 2 decades of research in cities including Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Cleveland, Cashin traces the processes of residential caste as it relates to housing, policing, schools, and transportation. She contends that geography is now central to American caste. Poverty-free havens and poverty-dense hoods would not exist if the state had not designed, constructed, and maintained this physical racial order. Cashin calls for abolition of these state-sanctioned processes. The ultimate goal is to change the lens through which society sees residents of poor Black neighborhoods from presumed thug to presumed citizen, and to transform the relationship of the state with these neighborhoods from punitive to caring. She calls for investment in a new infrastructure of opportunity in poor Black neighborhoods, including richly resourced schools and neighborhood centers, public transit, Peacemaker Fellowships, universal basic incomes, housing choice vouchers for residents, and mandatory inclusive housing elsewhere. Deeply researched and sharply written, White Space, Black Hood is a call to action for repairing what white supremacy still breaks. Includes historical photos, maps, and charts that illuminate the history of residential segregation as an institution and a tactic of racial oppression. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Warmth of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson, 2011-10-04 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves. With stunning historical detail, Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three unique individuals: Ida Mae Gladney, who in 1937 left sharecropping and prejudice in Mississippi for Chicago, where she achieved quiet blue-collar success and, in old age, voted for Barack Obama when he ran for an Illinois Senate seat; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, where he endangered his job fighting for civil rights, saw his family fall, and finally found peace in God; and Robert Foster, who left Louisiana in 1953 to pursue a medical career, the personal physician to Ray Charles as part of a glitteringly successful medical career, which allowed him to purchase a grand home where he often threw exuberant parties. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous and exhausting cross-country trips by car and train and their new lives in colonies that grew into ghettos, as well as how they changed these cities with southern food, faith, and culture and improved them with discipline, drive, and hard work. Both a riveting microcosm and a major assessment, The Warmth of Other Suns is a bold, remarkable, and riveting work, a superb account of an “unrecognized immigration” within our own land. Through the breadth of its narrative, the beauty of the writing, the depth of its research, and the fullness of the people and lives portrayed herein, this book is destined to become a classic. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Class Paul Fussell, 1992 This book describes the living-room artifacts, clothing styles, and intellectual proclivities of American classes from top to bottom. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Annihilation of Caste B.R. Ambedkar, 2014-10-07 “What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste The classic work of Indian Dalit politics, reframed with an extensive introduction by Arundathi Roy B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Castes of Mind Nicholas B. Dirks, 2011-10-09 When thinking of India, it is hard not to think of caste. In academic and common parlance alike, caste has become a central symbol for India, marking it as fundamentally different from other places while expressing its essence. Nicholas Dirks argues that caste is, in fact, neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a single system that reflects a core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon--the product of a concrete historical encounter between India and British colonial rule. Dirks does not contend that caste was invented by the British. But under British domination caste did become a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's diverse forms of social identity and organization. Dirks traces the career of caste from the medieval kingdoms of southern India to the textual traces of early colonial archives; from the commentaries of an eighteenth-century Jesuit to the enumerative obsessions of the late-nineteenth-century census; from the ethnographic writings of colonial administrators to those of twentieth-century Indian scholars seeking to rescue ethnography from its colonial legacy. The book also surveys the rise of caste politics in the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of caste-based movements that have threatened nationalist consensus. Castes of Mind is an ambitious book, written by an accomplished scholar with a rare mastery of centuries of Indian history and anthropology. It uses the idea of caste as the basis for a magisterial history of modern India. And in making a powerful case that the colonial past continues to haunt the Indian present, it makes an important contribution to current postcolonial theory and scholarship on contemporary Indian politics. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Beyond Caste Sumit Guha, 2013-09-12 'Caste' is today almost universally perceived as an ancient and unchanging Hindu institution preserved solely by a deep-seated religious ideology. Yet the word itself is an importation from sixteenth-century Europe. This book tracks the long history of the practices amalgamated under this label and shows their connection to changing patterns of social and political power down to the present. It frames caste as an involuted and complex form of ethnicity and explains why it persisted under non-Hindu rulers and in non-Hindu communities across South Asia. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The New Jim Crow Michelle Alexander, 2020-01-07 One of the New York Times’s Best Books of the 21st Century Named one of the most important nonfiction books of the 21st century by Entertainment Weekly‚ Slate‚ Chronicle of Higher Education‚ Literary Hub, Book Riot‚ and Zora A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller—one of the most influential books of the past 20 years, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education—with a new preface by the author It is in no small part thanks to Alexander's account that civil rights organizations such as Black Lives Matter have focused so much of their energy on the criminal justice system. —Adam Shatz, London Review of Books Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow. Since it was first published in 2010, it has been cited in judicial decisions and has been adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads; it helped inspire the creation of the Marshall Project and the new $100 million Art for Justice Fund; it has been the winner of numerous prizes, including the prestigious NAACP Image Award; and it has spent nearly 250 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Most important of all, it has spawned a whole generation of criminal justice reform activists and organizations motivated by Michelle Alexander's unforgettable argument that we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. As the Birmingham News proclaimed, it is undoubtedly the most important book published in this century about the U.S. Now, ten years after it was first published, The New Press is proud to issue a tenth-anniversary edition with a new preface by Michelle Alexander that discusses the impact the book has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Caste of Merit Ajantha Subramanian, 2019-12-03 How the language of “merit” makes caste privilege invisible in contemporary India. Just as Americans least disadvantaged by racism are most likely to endorse their country as post‐racial, Indians who have benefited from their upper-caste affiliation rush to declare their country post‐caste. In The Caste of Merit, Ajantha Subramanian challenges this comfortable assumption by illuminating the controversial relationships among technical education, caste formation, and economic stratification in modern India. Through in-depth study of the elite Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—widely seen as symbols of national promise—she reveals the continued workings of upper-caste privilege within the most modern institutions. Caste has not disappeared in India but instead acquired a disturbing invisibility—at least when it comes to the privileged. Only the lower castes invoke their affiliation in the political arena, to claim resources from the state. The upper castes discard such claims as backward, embarrassing, and unfair to those who have earned their position through hard work and talent. Focusing on a long history of debates surrounding access to engineering education, Subramanian argues that such defenses of merit are themselves expressions of caste privilege. The case of the IITs shows how this ideal of meritocracy serves the reproduction of inequality, ensuring that social stratification remains endemic to contemporary democracies. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Marriage and Caste in America Kay S. Hymowitz, 2006 Examines the widening gap in America's social structure, revealing how lower-class children are being separated from their middle-class peers by single parenthood and a lack of strong male role models. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: South Asians in the Diaspora Knut A. Jacobsen, Pratap Kumar, 2018-08-14 This volume deals with a phenomenon of increasing global significance, the South Asian diaspora. In particular it deals with the role of religion. The diversity of religious life in South Asia is remarkable and much of this diversity is replicated in the diaspora communities around the world. The case studies in this book explore and analyse the social, religious and cultural reality of people in the diaspora belonging to Jainism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism and originating from four of the South Asian nation states (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka). The book highlights the religious diversity that exists in the diaspora communities both across the traditions and within the particular religions. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste, Class, and Race Oliver Cromwell Cox, 2018-05-05 Excerpt from Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics Religion and caste The Meaning of Hinduism Hinduism as a Religion Mysticism, an Indispensable Factor Karma and Caste. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Republic of India Alan Gledhill, 2013 |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Homo Hierarchicus Louis Dumont, 1980 Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement on the Indian caste system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. Dumont moves gracefully from the ethnographic data to the level of the hierarchical ideology encrusted in ancient religious texts which are revealed as the governing conception of the contemporary caste structure. On yet another plane of analysis, homo hierarchicus is contrasted with his modern Western antithesis, homo aequalis. This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics. A new Postface, which sketches the theoretical and comparative aspects of the concept of hierarchy, and three significant Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste Matters Suraj Yengde, 2019 In this explosive book, Suraj Yengde, a first-generation Dalit scholar educated across continents, challenges deep-seated beliefs about caste and unpacks its many layers. He describes his gut-wrenching experiences of growing up in a Dalit basti, the multiple humiliations suffered by Dalits on a daily basis, and their incredible resilience enabled by love and humour. As he brings to light the immovable glass ceiling that exists for Dalits even in politics, bureaucracy and judiciary, Yengde provides an unflinchingly honest account of divisions within the Dalit community itself-from their internal caste divisions to the conduct of elite Dalits and their tokenized forms of modern-day untouchability-all operating under the inescapable influences of Brahminical doctrines. This path-breaking book reveals how caste crushes human creativity and is disturbingly similar to other forms of oppression, such as race, class and gender. At once a reflection on inequality and a call to arms, Caste Matters argues that until Dalits lay claim to power and Brahmins join hands against Brahminism to effect real transformation, caste will continue to matter. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: White Trash Nancy Isenberg, 2016-06-21 The New York Times bestseller A New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016 Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction One of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head On NPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great Reads San Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended books A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016 Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016 “Formidable and truth-dealing . . . necessary.” —The New York Times “This eye-opening investigation into our country’s entrenched social hierarchy is acutely relevant.” —O Magazine In her groundbreaking bestselling history of the class system in America, Nancy Isenberg upends history as we know it by taking on our comforting myths about equality and uncovering the crucial legacy of the ever-present, always embarrassing—if occasionally entertaining—poor white trash. “When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there’s always a chance that the dancing bear will win,” says Isenberg of the political climate surrounding Sarah Palin. And we recognize how right she is today. Yet the voters who boosted Trump all the way to the White House have been a permanent part of our American fabric, argues Isenberg. The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement to today's hillbillies. They were alternately known as “waste people,” “offals,” “rubbish,” “lazy lubbers,” and “crackers.” By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called “clay eaters” and “sandhillers,” known for prematurely aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature and scientific theories over four hundred years, Isenberg upends assumptions about America’s supposedly class-free society––where liberty and hard work were meant to ensure real social mobility. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early nineteenth century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics–-a widely popular movement embraced by Theodore Roosevelt that targeted poor whites for sterilization. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ’s Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty. Marginalized as a class, white trash have always been at or near the center of major political debates over the character of the American identity. We acknowledge racial injustice as an ugly stain on our nation’s history. With Isenberg’s landmark book, we will have to face the truth about the enduring, malevolent nature of class as well. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Brown V. Board of Education Robert J. Cottrol, Raymond T. Diamond, Leland Ware, 2003 Tracing the litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the NAACP, and including incisive portraits of key players, this book simply but powerfully shows that Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste, it also changed our view of the Court's role in American life. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Stepping into the Elite Jules Naudet, 2018-07-10 The experience of shifting from one social class to another—from a dominated group to a dominant group—raises the question of how the upwardly mobile person relates to his/her group of origin. Stepping into the Elite traces the particular ways in which upwardly mobile people in India, France, and the United States—countries embodying three distinct stratification systems—make sense of this change. Given that people draw upon specific cultural tools or repertoires to analyse their world and situate themselves in it, Naudet identifies the extent to which narratives of ‘success’ vary from one country to another. For instance, he explains that while stories in a caste-ridden society such as India hinge on the preservation of bonds with the original class, in France, they are centered on the idea that an upwardly mobile person is alienated from all social groups. In the United States, on the other hand, the rhetoric of success is tinged by the ardent belief in the American society being classless. A sociological journey in three different cultural contexts, this book deftly ties the exploration of questions regarding transformation of social identity and views on being successful. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Truth About Us Sanjoy Chakravorty, 2019-05-07 ‘India...has an information space packed with numerous sources and agents – from politicians and activists to profiteers and extortionists – all competing for attention and legitimacy in a growing information market... Whom does one believe?’ The political manipulation and simplification of information about a dizzyingly complex society have fashioned certain ‘truths’ about India. These truths have resulted in the creation of major religious and caste identities, which have been the defining features of the country’s politics and history for over 200 years. An unsparing study of how this situation has come about, The Truth about Us explores answers to crucial questions: Is India a homogenous Hindu nation sprinkled with minorities, or a pluralistic, heterogeneous one? Is our knowledge of the inequalities in our society founded on facts or perceptions? What are the real origin stories of India’s social categories, and how are they being constructed and challenged today? At a time when India is in the throes of an existential debate, convulsed by contesting claims over identity and history, Hindutva and Dalit consciousness, nationalism and freedom of speech, and the rights and realities of minorities, this deeply provocative book is urgent reading for every thinking Indian. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: After the Flight 93 Election Michael Anton, 2019-02-05 In September 2016, the provocative essay “The Flight 93 Election” galvanized many voters by spotlighting the stakes ahead in November and reproaching complacent elements of the Right. It also drew disparagement from many who judged it too apocalyptic in its assessment of the options facing the electorate. Its author, Michael Anton—writing as “Publius Decius Mus”—addressed the main criticisms of his argument soon afterward in a “Restatement on Flight 93.” A new criticism emerged later on: that he had painted a dire scenario to be averted, but no positive vision. Here, Anton presents the positive ideal that inspired him—a distillation of his thinking on Americanism and the West, refined over decades. He lays out the foundational principles of the American and Western traditions, examines the biggest threats to their survival, and underscores the necessity of continuing to defend them. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Red Rising Pierce Brown, 2014-01-28 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Pierce Brown’s relentlessly entertaining debut channels the excitement of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. “Red Rising ascends above a crowded dystopian field.”—USA Today ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Entertainment Weekly, BuzzFeed, Shelf Awareness “I live for the dream that my children will be born free,” she says. “That they will be what they like. That they will own the land their father gave them.” “I live for you,” I say sadly. Eo kisses my cheek. “Then you must live for more.” Darrow is a Red, a member of the lowest caste in the color-coded society of the future. Like his fellow Reds, he works all day, believing that he and his people are making the surface of Mars livable for future generations. Yet he toils willingly, trusting that his blood and sweat will one day result in a better world for his children. But Darrow and his kind have been betrayed. Soon he discovers that humanity reached the surface generations ago. Vast cities and lush wilds spread across the planet. Darrow—and Reds like him—are nothing more than slaves to a decadent ruling class. Inspired by a longing for justice, and driven by the memory of lost love, Darrow sacrifices everything to infiltrate the legendary Institute, a proving ground for the dominant Gold caste, where the next generation of humanity’s overlords struggle for power. He will be forced to compete for his life and the very future of civilization against the best and most brutal of Society’s ruling class. There, he will stop at nothing to bring down his enemies . . . even if it means he has to become one of them to do so. Praise for Red Rising “[A] spectacular adventure . . . one heart-pounding ride . . . Pierce Brown’s dizzyingly good debut novel evokes The Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies, and Ender’s Game. . . . [Red Rising] has everything it needs to become meteoric.”—Entertainment Weekly “Ender, Katniss, and now Darrow.”—Scott Sigler “Red Rising is a sophisticated vision. . . . Brown will find a devoted audience.”—Richmond Times-Dispatch Don’t miss any of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising Saga: RED RISING • GOLDEN SON • MORNING STAR • IRON GOLD • DARK AGE • LIGHT BRINGER |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The 9.9 Percent Matthew Stewart, 2021-10-12 A “brilliant” (The Washington Post), “clear-eyed and incisive” (The New Republic) analysis of how the wealthiest group in American society is making life miserable for everyone—including themselves. In 21st-century America, the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution have walked away with the big prizes even while the bottom 90% have lost ground. What’s left of the American Dream has taken refuge in the 9.9% that lies just below the tip of extreme wealth. Collectively, the members of this group control more than half of the wealth in the country—and they are doing whatever it takes to hang on to their piece of the action in an increasingly unjust system. They log insane hours at the office and then turn their leisure time into an excuse for more career-building, even as they rely on an underpaid servant class to power their economic success and satisfy their personal needs. They have segregated themselves into zip codes designed to exclude as many people as possible. They have made fitness a national obsession even as swaths of the population lose healthcare and grow sicker. They have created an unprecedented demand for admission to elite schools and helped to fuel the dramatic cost of higher education. They channel their political energy into symbolic conflicts over identity in order to avoid acknowledging the economic roots of their privilege. And they have created an ethos of “merit” to justify their advantages. They are all around us. In fact, they are us—or what we are supposed to want to be. In this “captivating account” (Robert D. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone), Matthew Stewart argues that a new aristocracy is emerging in American society and it is repeating the mistakes of history. It is entrenching inequality, warping our culture, eroding democracy, and transforming an abundant economy into a source of misery. He calls for a regrounding of American culture and politics on a foundation closer to the original promise of America. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? Alexander Keyssar, 2020-07-31 A New Statesman Book of the Year “America’s greatest historian of democracy now offers an extraordinary history of the most bizarre aspect of our representative democracy—the electoral college...A brilliant contribution to a critical current debate.” —Lawrence Lessig, author of They Don’t Represent Us Every four years, millions of Americans wonder why they choose their presidents through an arcane institution that permits the loser of the popular vote to become president and narrows campaigns to swing states. Congress has tried on many occasions to alter or scuttle the Electoral College, and in this master class in American political history, a renowned Harvard professor explains its confounding persistence. After tracing the tangled origins of the Electoral College back to the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Keyssar outlines the constant stream of efforts since then to abolish or reform it. Why have they all failed? The complexity of the design and partisan one-upmanship have a lot to do with it, as do the difficulty of passing constitutional amendments and the South’s long history of restrictive voting laws. By revealing the reasons for past failures and showing how close we’ve come to abolishing the Electoral College, Keyssar offers encouragement to those hoping for change. “Conclusively demonstrates the absurdity of preserving an institution that has been so contentious throughout U.S. history and has not infrequently produced results that defied the popular will.” —Michael Kazin, The Nation “Rigorous and highly readable...shows how the electoral college has endured despite being reviled by statesmen from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson to Edward Kennedy, Bob Dole, and Gerald Ford.” —Lawrence Douglas, Times Literary Supplement |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste and Race in India Govind Sadashiv Ghurye, 1969 Over The Years This Book Has Remained A Basic Work For Students Of India Sociology And Anthropology And Has Been Acknowledged As A Bona-Fide Classic. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste Isabel Wilkerson, 2020-08-04 THE TIME NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR | #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Powerful and timely ... I cannot recommend it strongly enough - Barack Obama From one of America's most celebrated and insightful writers, the moving, eye-opening bestseller about what lies hidden under the surface of ordinary lives In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways we can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. 'Required reading for all of humanity' Oprah Winfrey If you haven't read it yet, you absolutely must. - Edward Enninful, Vogue 'An instant American classic' Dwight Garner, The New York Times |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Dalit Women's Education in Modern India Shailaja Paik, 2014-07-11 Inspired by egalitarian doctrines, the Dalit communities in India have been fighting for basic human and civic rights since the middle of the nineteenth century. In this book, Shailaja Paik focuses on the struggle of Dalit women in one arena - the realm of formal education – and examines a range of interconnected social, cultural and political questions. What did education mean to women? How did changes in women’s education affect their views of themselves and their domestic work, public employment, marriage, sexuality, and childbearing and rearing? What does the dissonance between the rhetoric and practice of secular education tell us about the deeper historical entanglement with modernity as experienced by Dalit communities? Dalit Women's Education in Modern India is a social and cultural history that challenges the triumphant narrative of modern secular education to analyse the constellation of social, economic, political and historical circumstances that both opened and closed opportunities to many Dalits. By focusing on marginalised Dalit women in modern Maharashtra, who have rarely been at the centre of systematic historical enquiry, Paik breathes life into their ideas, expectations, potentials, fears and frustrations. Addressing two major blind spots in the historiography of India and of the women’s movement, she historicises Dalit women’s experiences and constructs them as historical agents. The book combines archival research with historical fieldwork, and centres on themes including slum life, urban middle classes, social and sexual labour, and family, marriage and children to provide a penetrating portrait of the actions and lives of Dalit women. Elegantly conceived and convincingly argued, Dalit Women's Education in Modern India will be invaluable to students of History, Caste Politics, Women and Gender Studies, Education Studies, Urban Studies and Asian studies. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Black Broadway in Washington, DC Briana A. Thomas , 2021 Before chain coffeeshops and luxury high-rises, before even the beginning of desegregation and the 1968 riots, Washington's Greater U Street was known as Black Broadway. From the early 1900s into the 1950s, African Americans plagued by Jim Crow laws in other parts of town were free to own businesses here and built what was often described as a city within a city. Local author and journalist Briana A. Thomas narrates U Street's rich and unique history, from the early triumph of emancipation to the days of civil rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell and music giant Duke Ellington, through the recent struggle of gentrifiction -- |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Unlearning the Ropes Denise M. Bressler, 2021-07-31 A valuable book for parents, educators, and policymakers. William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep As an educational researcher, Denise Bressler has spent a lot of time in today's classrooms, and she is deeply concerned. Students are largely disengaged and unmotivated. How can that be? Learning should be a thrilling adventure, not drudgery. Drawing on established learning theories and contemporary educational research, Unlearning the Ropes demonstrates that what people are tacitly taught by school is basically backwards. For example, school teaches that good grades matter, yet good grades don't guarantee learning. In Unlearning the Ropes, Bressler reveals the moments that changed her beliefs about education. Through relatable anecdotes, she helps readers reframe the way they think about school, education, and learning. Rethinking what school teaches is the first step towards helping young people become enthusiastic learners. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Deep South Allison Davis, Burleigh Bradford Gardner, Mary R. Gardner, 2009 First published in 1941, Deep South is the cooperative effort of a team of social anthropologists to document the economic, racial, and cultural character of the Jim Crow South through a study of a representative rural Mississippi community. Researchers Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner lived among the people of Natchez, Mississippi, as they investigated how class and caste informed daily life in a typical southern community. This Southern Classics edition of their study offers contemporary students of history a provocative collection of primary material gathered by conscientious and well-trained participant-observers, who found then, as now, intertwined social and economic inequalities at the root of racial tensions. Expanding on earlier studies of community stratification by social class, researchers in the Deep South Project introduced the additional concept of caste, which parsed a community through rigid social ranks assigned at birth and unalterable through life, a concept readily identifiable in the racial divisions of the Jim Crow South. As African American researchers, Davis and his wife, Elizabeth, along with his assistant St. Clair Drake, were able to gain unrivaled access to the black community in rural Mississippi, unavailable to their white counterparts. Through their interviews and experiences, the authors vividly capture the nuances in caste-enforcing systems of tenant-landlord relations, local government, and law enforcement. But the chief achievement of Deep South is its rich analysis of how the southern economic system, and sharecropping in particular, functioned to maintain rigid caste divisions along racial lines. In the new introduction to this edition, Jennifer Jensen Wallach situates this germinal study within the field of social anthropology and against the backdrop of similar community studies of the era. She also details the subsequent careers of this distinguished team of researchers. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Bobos in Paradise David Brooks, 2010-05-11 In his bestselling work of “comic sociology,” David Brooks coins a new word, Bobo, to describe today’s upper class—those who have wed the bourgeois world of capitalist enterprise to the hippie values of the bohemian counterculture. Their hybrid lifestyle is the atmosphere we breathe, and in this witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age, Brooks has defined a new generation. Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Do you work for one of those visionary software companies where people come to work wearing hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? If so, you might be a Bobo. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Defying the Odds Devesh Kapur, D Shyam Babu, Chandra Bhan Prasad, 2014-07-18 Defying the Odds is about the new Dalit identity. It profiles the phenomenal rise of twenty Dalit entrepreneurs, the few who through a combination of grit, ambition, drive and hustle—and some luck—have managed to break through social, economic and practical barriers. It illustrates instances where adversity compensated for disadvantage, where working their way up from the bottom instilled in Dalit entrepreneurs a much greater resilience as well as a willingness to seize opportunities in sectors and locations eschewed by more privileged business groups. Traditional Dalit narratives are marked by struggle for identity, rights, equality and for inclusion. These inspiring stories capture both the difficulty of their circumstances as well as their extraordinary steadfastness, while bringing light to the possibilities of entrepreneurship as a tool of social empowerment. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Caste, Society and Politics in India from the Eighteenth Century to the Modern Age Susan Bayly, 2001-02-22 The phenomenon of caste has probably aroused more controversy than any other aspect of Indian life and thought. Susan Bayly's cogent and sophisticated analysis explores the emergence of the ideas, experiences and practices which gave rise to the so-called 'caste society' from the pre-colonial period to the end of the twentieth century. Using an historical and anthropological approach, she frames her analysis within the context of India's dynamic economic and social order, interpreting caste not as an essence of Indian culture and civilization, but rather as a contingent and variable response to the changes that occurred in the subcontinent's political landscape through the colonial conquest. The idea of caste in relation to Western and Indian 'orientalist' thought is also explored. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Other One Percent Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, Nirvikar Singh, 2017 In The Other One Percent, Sanjoy Chakravorty, Devesh Kapur, and Nirvikar Singh provide the first authoritative and systematic overview of South Asians living in the United States. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Race, Caste, and Status Robert Howard Jackson, 1999 A study of the hierarchical social order imposed on indigenous peoples by their Spanish conquerors. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Immigrant Spirit Sam Wyly, 2016-01-10 In his new book, The Immigrant Spirit: How Newcomers Enrich America, Sam Wyly presents a fascinating, often surprising portrait of the immigrant experience in America, focusing on communities throughout the country and people from all walks of life and parts of the world. Readers will enjoy colorful portraits of diverse cities like Houston, Texas, which Wyly dubs the new face of immigrant America. They'll discover the inspiring stories of people like Albert Gallatin, a French-speaking Swiss immigrant who became our longest-serving Secretary of the Treasury, and Bill Knudsen, a Dane who took on the most important stateside job during World War II and helped seal victory for America. Then there are the so-called regular people, like contractor Carlos Camuñez, who came from Mexico as a boy, learned English on his own, and now runs a successful contracting company in Aspen, Colorado. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: Matrilineal Kinship David Murray Schneider, 1974 |
| american society is based on the caste system.: From Slavery to Citizenship Richard Ennals, 2007-04-04 Citizenship is not a spectator sport; it is all about engagement. From Slavery to Citizenship is part of a bigger picture - a development process which will enable us to gain more control over our own lives and to participate in decisions about the future direction of society and the organisations we are involved in. This book is unusual in suggesting that slavery is not a remote historical phenomenon, but a fundamental component of our present. People have been slaves in the past and some people are enslaved today. The subject of slavery is highly charged with emotion. From Slavery to Citizenship seeks to facilitate dialogue and to bridge gaps. This is not easy as people have been speaking different languages and working from diverse sets of assumptions. A first step is to listen and to learn from differences. In this book, a single author's voice brings together contributions from major public figures and respected thinkers. Within a rich tapestry of perspectives, there is no single line of argument, or one overall conclusion. There are contributions from Africa, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe and Asia, and from discourses in work organisation, occupational health, psychiatry and human rights, as well as education. After reading the book, you are unlikely to conclude that all of the contributors have agreed, but you will find that they give you a starting point from which to reflect and begin discussion, as well as the tools to engage in active citizenship. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The American Dilemma Gunnar Myrdal, 1972 Non Aboriginal material, excerpt from his book An American dilemma, (1944); 1964; 75-80. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: On Intersectionality Kimberle Crenshaw, 2019-09-03 A major publishing event, the collected writings of the groundbreaking scholar who first coined intersectionality as a political framework (Salon) For more than twenty years, scholars, activists, educators, and lawyers--inside and outside of the United States--have employed the concept of intersectionality both to describe problems of inequality and to fashion concrete solutions. In particular, as the Washington Post reported recently, the term has been used by social activists as both a rallying cry for more expansive progressive movements and a chastisement for their limitations. Drawing on black feminist and critical legal theory, Kimberlé Crenshaw developed the concept of intersectionality, a term she coined to speak to the multiple social forces, social identities, and ideological instruments through which power and disadvantage are expressed and legitimized. In this comprehensive and accessible introduction to Crenshaw's work, readers will find key essays and articles that have defined the concept of intersectionality, collected together for the first time. The book includes a sweeping new introduction by Crenshaw as well as prefaces that contextualize each of the chapters. For anyone interested in movement politics and advocacy, or in racial justice and gender equity, On Intersectionality will be compulsory reading from one of the most brilliant theorists of our time. |
| american society is based on the caste system.: The Passing of the Great Race Madison Grant, 2012-05-31 The Passing of the Great Race is one of the most prominent racially oriented books of all times, written by the most influential American conservationist that ever lived. Historically, topically, and geographically, Grant’s magnum opus covers a vast amount of ground, broadly tracing the racial basis of European history, emphasising the need to preserve the northern European type and generally improve the White race. Grant was, logically, a proponent of eugenics, and along with Lothrop Stoddard was probably the single most influential creator of the national mood that made possible the immigration control measures of 1924. The Passing of the Great Race remains one of the foremost classic texts of its kind. This new edition supersedes all others in many respects. Firstly, it comes with a number of enhancements that will be found in no other edition, including: an introductory essay by Jared Taylor (American Renaissance), which puts Grant’s text into context from our present-day perspective; a full complement of editorial footnotes, which correct and update Grant’s original narration; an expanded index; a reformatted bibliography, following modern conventions of style and meeting today’s more demanding requirements. Secondly, great care has been placed on producing an æsthetically appealing volume, graphically and typographically—something that will not be found elsewhere. |
Class, Caste and Race in the U.S. - Hofstra University
In Caste, she compares three hierarchical societies: America, India, and Nazi Germany. With three distinct “subordinate castes”, across three continents, Wilkerson uses these societies …
The American Caste System - internationalviewpoint.org
Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, describes the “American caste system” forged over 400 years. While others have written about the unique American …
AMERICAN CASTE: A SECRET HISTORY - surajyengde.com
In my research on the American caste system, I traced the existence of caste lingo in public use to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Caste was often understood in the dual chambers …
AMERICA’S RACE-BASED CASTE STRUCTURE: ITS IMPACT IN …
from a race-based caste system embedded in American society. Relying on the work of author Isabel Wilkerson, Part II describes major pillars of America’s race-based caste structure. Part …
Racial Caste and Post-Racial Caste Impact on American …
Based on this comprehensive conception of what constitutes a racial caste society, this chapter will examine the history, scope, and theoretical underpinnings of how and why the pre-United …
Race and Caste: Its Impact on the American Political System
2. The Caste System in the United States One of the dysfunctional elements of American society that concerns Doctorow is the American caste system based on a color code of “white” and …
India's Caste System and American Pluralism--Some Similariies
This essay describes features of India’s caste system, its origin, and its negative and positive features. It concludes with a description of the caste-like pluralistic American social
Comparative Social Analysis of Caste in India and Race in …
In the rigid Indian Caste system, ranking is based on religious and philosophical justification which turned into a system of domination or ability to control others is observed in Brahmins over …
Summary of “Caste” by Isabel - cdn.bookey.app
Wilkerson proposes that a caste system also exists in the United States. Understanding how the caste system in American society functions can help us understand the problems underlying …
American Caste and Class - JSTOR
There is not only a caste system, but there is also a class structure. Ordinarily the social scientist thinks of these two different kinds of vertical structure as antithetical to each other. It is rare …
Race and caste in the making of US sociology - SAGE Journals
Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery …
The Emerging Protected Class: Caste Discrimination in the …
– Caste discrimination is “based on birth and descent, and occurs in the form of social segregation, physical and psychological abuse, and violence.” – New law also prohibits …
American caste system: the bones inside a body, the beams …
What are some of the steps that society, and each of us, can take toward dismantling the caste system? Thanks to Penguin Random House for these discussion questions.
No Caste Here? Toward a Structural Critique of American …
argued that in the United States, there was “no caste here.” Justice Harlan was rejecting the idea that American society operated to assign preordained outcomes to individ. ls based upon …
Comparing Race and Caste? - booksandideas.net
Numerous American sociologists, known under the name “Caste school of race relations”, upheld the view that African Americans formed a sort of caste in North American society, according to …
Interpreting the American Caste System as Racialized
First, the entanglement of occupational and social roles is a key component of a racialized caste system. Second, deeply rooted racial animus prevents the social cohesion necessary to …
Caste and Race: Analogy or Juxtaposition? The relationship …
women to understand the comparison and connection between the caste system in India and the system of racial segregation in the United States, and to explore the cross cultural applications …
Studying Caste in Business and Society - SAGE Journals
Aug 29, 2023 · Caste is a hierarchical division of society into different rungs, where the social, cultural, and economic rights and opportunities available to individuals are inherited at birth …
The Remains of Castas in Latin America - University of Texas …
Oct 21, 2021 · The casta system was used to determine a person’s socioeconomic ranking based on their blood lineage. Those closest to Spanish descent were considered higher up in society …
Class, Caste and Race in the U.S. - Hofstra University
In Caste, she compares three hierarchical societies: America, India, and Nazi Germany. With three distinct “subordinate castes”, across three continents, Wilkerson uses these societies …
America’s Enduring Caste System - Indiana University Maurer …
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 …
The American Caste System - internationalviewpoint.org
Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, describes the “American caste system” forged over 400 years. While others have written about the unique American …
AMERICAN CASTE: A SECRET HISTORY - surajyengde.com
In my research on the American caste system, I traced the existence of caste lingo in public use to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Caste was often understood in the dual chambers …
AMERICA’S RACE-BASED CASTE STRUCTURE: ITS IMPACT IN …
from a race-based caste system embedded in American society. Relying on the work of author Isabel Wilkerson, Part II describes major pillars of America’s race-based caste structure. Part …
Racial Caste and Post-Racial Caste Impact on American …
Based on this comprehensive conception of what constitutes a racial caste society, this chapter will examine the history, scope, and theoretical underpinnings of how and why the pre-United …
Race and Caste: Its Impact on the American Political System
2. The Caste System in the United States One of the dysfunctional elements of American society that concerns Doctorow is the American caste system based on a color code of “white” and …
India's Caste System and American Pluralism--Some Similariies
This essay describes features of India’s caste system, its origin, and its negative and positive features. It concludes with a description of the caste-like pluralistic American social
Comparative Social Analysis of Caste in India and Race in …
In the rigid Indian Caste system, ranking is based on religious and philosophical justification which turned into a system of domination or ability to control others is observed in Brahmins over …
Summary of “Caste” by Isabel - cdn.bookey.app
Wilkerson proposes that a caste system also exists in the United States. Understanding how the caste system in American society functions can help us understand the problems underlying …
American Caste and Class - JSTOR
There is not only a caste system, but there is also a class structure. Ordinarily the social scientist thinks of these two different kinds of vertical structure as antithetical to each other. It is rare …
Race and caste in the making of US sociology - SAGE Journals
Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery …
The Emerging Protected Class: Caste Discrimination in the …
– Caste discrimination is “based on birth and descent, and occurs in the form of social segregation, physical and psychological abuse, and violence.” – New law also prohibits …
American caste system: the bones inside a body, the beams …
What are some of the steps that society, and each of us, can take toward dismantling the caste system? Thanks to Penguin Random House for these discussion questions.
No Caste Here? Toward a Structural Critique of American …
argued that in the United States, there was “no caste here.” Justice Harlan was rejecting the idea that American society operated to assign preordained outcomes to individ. ls based upon …
Comparing Race and Caste? - booksandideas.net
Numerous American sociologists, known under the name “Caste school of race relations”, upheld the view that African Americans formed a sort of caste in North American society, according to …
Interpreting the American Caste System as Racialized
First, the entanglement of occupational and social roles is a key component of a racialized caste system. Second, deeply rooted racial animus prevents the social cohesion necessary to …
Caste and Race: Analogy or Juxtaposition? The relationship …
women to understand the comparison and connection between the caste system in India and the system of racial segregation in the United States, and to explore the cross cultural applications …
Studying Caste in Business and Society - SAGE Journals
Aug 29, 2023 · Caste is a hierarchical division of society into different rungs, where the social, cultural, and economic rights and opportunities available to individuals are inherited at birth …
The Remains of Castas in Latin America - University of Texas …
Oct 21, 2021 · The casta system was used to determine a person’s socioeconomic ranking based on their blood lineage. Those closest to Spanish descent were considered higher up in society …
