Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Caste, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Caste, Race, and Social Division in the U.S.
Caste as a Global Problem
How Caste Sustains Itself
The Costs of Caste
Summary
Analysis
The greatest threat to a caste system is the success of the lower castes—the idea that members of the bottommost caste will achieve success. In World War I, Black American soldiers fought with the French—but when the French Army treated the Black soldiers as they would treat white soldiers, with respect and dignity, the American military command clarified that the French Army should treat the Black soldiers as inferior. Even when two Black soldiers died bravely in the line of duty and were nominated for Medals of Honor, the American government refused to grant them the awards posthumously.
At a certain point in history, the dominant caste recognized that the subordinate caste was beginning to pursue opportunities and achievements that were perceived to be beyond their station. So, the dominant caste sought to keep them on the “bottom rung” of society.
Themes
In 1946, after the end of World War II, a Black sergeant who had fought in the Pacific theater asked a Greyhound bus driver if he could step off the bus to relieve himself at a pit stop. The driver called the authorities, who arrested the sergeant at the next stop and beat him with a club, permanently blinding him. The courts brought the case before the then-president, Harry S. Truman, who demanded a federal investigation—but during the trial, it emerged that the sergeant had used the word “yes” instead of the phrase “yes, sir” while dealing with the police at the bus stop. The police chief went free.
Structures that were initially created to uphold caste—in this instance, the police force and the U.S. courts—will never act in the best interest of the subordinate caste. A system that was created to strip the subordinate caste of its humanity cannot be reformed easily, even as social norms change.
Themes
In the early 1900s, as Black Americans began achieving success across the nation due to the initiatives of Reconstruction, a wave of anti-Black violence swept the nation. Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Black Wall Street was leveled and burned, its citizens massacred; Black business owners were lynched so that white business owners could take over their properties. Any subordinate-caste person who was seen as “forgetting [their] place in the hierarchy in the white world [they] lived in” was swiftly, inhumanely punished.
This passage shows that any success or joy the subordinate caste found was perceived as a direct threat to the dominant caste. The dominant caste sought to stamp out any threat to the “hierarchy” that served them—even if many lives were lost in the process. Through terror and dehumanization, the dominant caste was trying to keep the subordinate caste from bettering their lives.
Themes
When a smallpox epidemic hit Boston in 1721, people quickly began dying. Cotton Mather, a minister and scientist, owned an African man named Onesimus, who told him about a procedure he’d undergone in his homeland, Africa, to protect him from the very same illness. By inoculating themselves with a specimen of fluid from an infected person, people in West Africa knew, they could lessen the impact of the sickness on their community. Mather tried to persuade others to take up the method, but many found it repulsive. Nevertheless, some scientists and physicians tried the method and were able to save many lives. But Onesimus is not credited with creating our modern-day inoculation practices—in fact, he never even won freedom for his contribution to the world.
This passage illustrates how the dominant caste profited off the subordinate one yet never afforded the members of that caste any reprieve from their subjugation. Though Onesimus’s contribution to society was enormous, he was never even freed from enslavement. Again, this illustrates how no measure of wealth, fame, or intelligence ensures that a member of the subordinate caste will ever be able to rise out of the “container” society has placed them into.
Themes
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Throughout the 20th century, the white establishment actively tried to handicap Black communities and keep Black people from learning, achieving, or rising through society’s tiers. Just as the Nazis sought to exclude Jewish people from any position in which they might match or even outshine Aryans, white Americans purposefully underfunded and even sabotaged Black schools and businesses.
In any caste system, any of the subordinate caste’s successes prove that the dominant caste’s lies about them are false. But if those lies were to be widely recognized as false, the dominant caste’s power would crumble. So, it’s very important for the dominant caste to keep the subordinate caste in lowly positions and menial jobs to continue perpetuating the myths that caste relies on.
Themes
Throughout the 20th century, the culture worked to keep the subordinate caste in their place—and even in the 21st century, U.S. society continues to disregard the achievements and successes of the lower caste.
The caste system prevails by changing the rules constantly; by wielding power against the powerless; and by enforcing arbitrary, cruel boundaries meant to keep the lower caste at the bottom rung of society.
Themes
