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 fourth pillar of caste is the belief that the purity of the dominant caste must be protected from pollution by subordinate castes. Within caste systems, purity amounts to an obsession. In India, certain rules once existed that defined the number of paces that a subordinate-class person had to stand away from any dominant-caste person. Some of the lower castes even had to wear bells so as to alert members of the upper castes that they were near. Anything that had been touched by an Untouchable was considered polluted and could not be handled by a member of another caste. In Nazi Germany, the Nazis banned Jewish citizens from visiting beaches and public pools.
By creating the narrative that members of the subordinate caste are somehow dirty or polluted, the dominant caste can continue to excuse and perpetuate their exclusion from society. While myths about a person’s inherent cleanliness or dirtiness are, of course, false, the idea that the dominant caste could be polluted, and thus could decrease in power, is used to make even the most basic interactions between dominant and subordinate castes extremely taboo. So, over time, the dominant caste buys into these myths.
Themes
In the United States, the subordinate caste was essentially “quarantined” in all aspects of life into the middle of the 20th century. In some places, the books used for Black and white schoolchildren weren’t even allowed to be stored in the same place. Segregation throughout the U.S. was so intense and so violent that white ambulance workers wouldn’t even touch a bleeding Black man as he lay dying on a set of railroad tracks in Memphis.
By using the word “quarantine” (as a person with a contagious disease might be quarantined from other people), the book is calling attention to just how polluted the dominant caste felt the subordinate caste truly was. Ambulance workers’ refusal to touch the body of a man who needed help shows that members of the dominant caste bought into the idea that having any contact with the subordinate caste would somehow contaminate them.
Themes
Members of the subordinate caste in the U.S. were banned from beaches, lakes, and pools—just like the Dalits in India and like Jewish people in Nazi Germany. In 1919, when a young Black swimmer accidentally crossed the invisible boundary between the “white side” and the “black side” of Lake Michigan, he was stoned and drowned to death, and his murder set off some of the most intense race riots in U.S. history. The dominant caste refused to share public pools with the subordinate caste, in some cases demanding that pools be drained, cleaned, and refilled after Black people swam in them. Even young Black children were forced to stand behind chain-link fences and watch as their white playmates enjoyed the water.
Once again, the book compares the interconnectedness of the world’s three major caste systems. All three categorized baths, pools, and even lakes and oceans as places where contamination between the castes could occur. Of course, the true “contamination” that the upper caste feared was the idea that subordinate caste people might be able to share their spaces—and thus see themselves as equal, which would erode caste’s flawed logic.
Themes
The caste system of India derived specific rules for the separation of the castes from the sacred text the Laws of Manu. By contrast, the U.S. had to shape its upper caste—and police the maintenance of its purity—as it went along. The U.S. caste system was based on absolutism—that is, the idea that a single drop of blood belonging to another race was pollutive and barred one from belonging to the upper caste. Even South Africa granted privileges on a graded scale based on how much European blood a person of any race was thought to have.
Physical contamination wasn’t the only thing the upper castes sought to control and prevent—the “contamination” of a person’s lineage, too, was used to restrict certain people to the subordinate caste. Again, allowing the subordinate caste to enjoy privileges afforded to the dominant one would be a threat to the very foundation of caste in the U.S.
Themes
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When the U.S. Congress restricted American citizenship to free white people, whiteness still hadn’t been fully defined. Even Southern European and Eastern European immigrants were seen as insufficiently “pure,” and so as late as 1924, immigration acts restricted immigration to certain quotas. Additionally, in the 1920s, many Southern states began defining, in deeply specific terms, what certain amounts of “African blood” designated a person. A “marabon” was a person who was five-eighths Black, a “mulatto” was one-half, a “sextaroon” was one-sixteenth, and a “sangmelee” was one-sixty fourth.
The U.S’s obsession with keeping whiteness separate from any contamination or pollution defined every aspect of Americans’ lives throughout history. By tracing Black ancestry as far back as possible, the dominant caste was able to ensure that the caste system continued functioning smoothly and always in their favor. Creating absurdly specific categories and tracing ancestry back several generations was a way to make sure that no one with even a shred of connection to the subordinate caste might enjoy the privileges of the dominant one.
Themes
Those in the middle castes, then, found themselves scrambling to “get under the white tent”—in other words, to be seen as white. Because the U.S. caste system was essentially two-tiered, immigrants from places like Cuba, Japan, and even India were baffled as to how to define themselves. The U.S. rescinded the naturalized citizenships of many people of East and Southeast Asian descent, constantly “shape-shift[ing]” in order to keep the upper caste pure.
As more and more immigrants arrived in the U.S., they were not automatically placed in a middle caste or shunted into the subordinate one. Black people continued to remain the “floor” of American society, and the minorities who found themselves participating in the caste system also began dehumanizing Black people. By making whiteness (or even close association with white people) seem valuable to these new immigrants, the caste system continued to perpetuate itself in an entirely new group of people.
Themes
While Black Americans comprised the subordinate caste in the U.S., they were essentially treated more like the Dalits in India: outside of the caste system entirely. Just like the Dalits, Black Americans could not drink from certain fountains, live in certain towns, walk through certain doors to certain buildings, or attend public gatherings like circuses or political rallies. As was the case with the Dalits, soon the exclusion and degradation of Black people was used to continually justify their exclusion and degradation.
This passage explores how caste systems around the world sustain themselves by creating self-perpetuating myths and cycles of exclusion. On a long enough timeline, the initial “pillars” of caste might fade into the background, and the simple fact of one group’s historic dehumanization becomes the excuse for their continued oppression.
Themes
Members of the dominant caste in the U.S. were taught, from birth, that the members of the subordinate caste were quite literally untouchable. Wilkerson cites an interview with a man who moved from the South to the North for a career as a magazine editor. Even in adulthood, having dedicated himself to unlearning his racist and casteist upbringing, he felt the self-described “madness” of an inexplicable urge to wash his hands after shaking hands with Black coworkers.
This anecdote illustrates how deeply ingrained caste becomes over time. Even those who want to divest from caste’s cruelty and violence find themselves unable to shed the negative associations caste creates from birth onward. Caste sustains itself by becoming the underlying “grammar” of how people interact with the world, so that even a conscious rejection of caste’s strictures isn’t enough to eradicate the system.
Themes
