Racial Caste System Term Analysis

A description of the racial hierarchy that has governed American society since its beginnings in the 17th century. Rather than seeing racism as the product of isolated beliefs or actions, removed from a broader social and historical context, the theory of racial caste argues that racism is a hierarchical system that has maintained white supremacy throughout American history by giving different kinds of rights, protections, opportunities, and services to members of different racial groups. Specifically, institutions like slavery and de jure residential segregation are designed to ensure that African Americans remain an inferior and subservient “caste” in relation to white people. The term was popularized by legal scholar Michelle Alexander in her landmark book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, in which she argues that, by labeling black Americans as “criminals,” the government and society at large justify systematically disempowering them and depriving them of rights and privileges they should be afforded by the Constitution. Following Alexander, Richard Rothstein sees his topic—housing discrimination—in the context of the United States’ long history of depriving African Americans of freedom and civil rights. Just as it is impossible to understand mass incarceration in the United States without examining the history of systematic antiblack racism and oppression in the United States, Rothstein considers it impossible to study the history of American residential segregation without recognizing its role in a longstanding campaign (by government and economic elites) to preserve the racial caste system.