The lived experience of caste in the indian subcontinent is so different than race-relations in the US that it is an actual joke that "caste" is being used in this manner.

@alangivre2474

2 жыл бұрын

But, like, segregation wasn't literally caste?

@Aurelian603

2 жыл бұрын

Can you elaborate further? I don’t fully agree with the book and I don’t think you can compare Dalits with Black Americans but I don’t know how helpful your comment is particularly if it’s in the vein of ‘the oppression Olympics’

@laughtersweptoverthetable1259

2 жыл бұрын

People are condemned to clean sewage and carry shit on a daily basis for generations , and more to it in some part of India groups like puduvai vannar are unseeable seeing people from this particular caste is considered as polluting the sight . I don’t think Dalits in India can be compared to blacks in America , I’m not trying to create a hierarchy of oppression or anything but caste has a very different meaning in where I come from .

@burgerboys3730

2 жыл бұрын

"If it isn't the Varna system it's literally not a caste system. No other society in the history of humanity has had a caste system because ours is the worst"

@gamerknown

2 жыл бұрын

@@laughtersweptoverthetable1259 Are their children sold by the sewage overseer to other sewage cleaning facilities, never to be seen again? If they leave their shit carrying station, are they hunted down, whipped and killed? I know India is one of the sites with the highest rates of contemporary slavery, but everyone believes the suffering of their particular community is sui generis.

I love Toure and Adolph Reed Jr. - some of the few, very few sobering voices on the left rooted in the experiences of real people and not in layers and layers of theoretical language and ideology that people use to hide behind and dissociate from their pain and the pain of their communities

"By the time Spike Lee was inflicted upon us." Lol. The level and way that Adolf Reed's deep cynicism about political and racial discourse comes out when he speaks is both extremely endearing and entertaining to me at the same time. People who don't like Adolf or Touré Reed probably just don't understand the context or even just the concepts he is talking about.

Reed has written an introduction to the Monthly Review Press edition of Oliver Cromwell Cox’s Caste, Race, and Class , the first debunking of the “caste school” of race relations. The book is very much worth reading.

@ronmackinnon9374

2 жыл бұрын

Do you mean Adolph or Toure´?

@ronmackinnon9374

2 жыл бұрын

Minor correction -- looks like that's 'Caste, Class, and Race.'

@ChrisSamuel1729

2 жыл бұрын

@@ronmackinnon9374 so was it Adolph or Toure?

@ronmackinnon9374

2 жыл бұрын

@@ChrisSamuel1729 That's what I was asking the OP. I could ascertain the title, but not who wrote the intro to what edition. Though I did find that Adolph wrote the intro to another of Cox's books, 'Race: A study in social dynamics.'

Love the shout out to the Fields sisters by Toure. If anybody hasn't read "Racecraft" by them I highly recommend it. I'd also love to see them on Jacobin Talks sometime.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

That would be a great show.

@tbr7921

2 жыл бұрын

I would love to see more of the Fields sisters too, their work is so important

I am from a family of high-achieving students who attended predominately white schools in the 1970's. We were perceived as anomalies. Even a counselor commended my parents for producing so many smart children. We got a laugh out of that when we got home. My mother was a Tiger Mother and was determined that we would have the opportunities she and my father were denied. We studied all the time. She got her wish.

Why don’t they ever have on Indian caste scholars (like Arundhati Roy who wrote a well versed intro to Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste) on to talk about this? Ambedkar wrote over one hundred years ago that caste could not be equated with either race or class. It is a unique social category - an endogamous class.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

They should have on Sujatha Gidla, a brilliant Dalit writer (author of the book Ants Among Elephants), who wrote a powerful critique of Wilkerson's book for New Left Review. She knows caste inside out and has a sharp materialist analysis of how bourgeois liberals in the U.S. have appropriated the concept.

@lunaridge4510

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you so much for this information! Arundhati Roy is a superb thinker besides being a great writer.

@lunaridge4510

2 жыл бұрын

@@beyondaboundary6034 Thank you, I am looking forward to discovering her

@cecilfarrington

2 жыл бұрын

@@beyondaboundary6034 I just picked up the Verso edition of The Annihilation of Caste with Roy's introduction and it's bang on. Thanks for sharing the recommendation of Gidla!

@burgerboys3730

2 жыл бұрын

Castes definition literally means race

This and the Gentrification clip are among the best of The Reeds....and jacobin in general. Sans the smug "race reductionist" blather.....that's so much more about elites in-fighting and disdain (ironically). This felt focused on context, the substance of the issues, was still quite pointed, and rested on an empathy that is often felt lacking. Thank you.

Unfortunately there are many in India who subscribe to Wilkerson's sketchy and rather silly notions of caste race equivalence. These are established and often well regarded dalit activists and writers like Suraj Yengde. Caste divides emerge from a superimposition of a purity-pollution ideology onto a class divide based on controlling resources. This results in an endless fragmentation of communities based on purity hierarchies and hypogamic rules of marriage and commensality. Often castes are distinguished on grounds of occupation. Race isnt structured like this. It is a biological (or rather bodily) conception of difference that is mapped onto class structure. But this difference is not based on ritual purity, commensality. It has implications on occupation only as far as overall control of means of production are concerned. race does not specify occupation. Further, because bodily appearance and biology are central to race unlike caste, the latter allows for greater status based mobility at various levels of the hierarchy. Castes can move and transform over time to occupy higher levels by means of political power, capturing economic resources and concocting theories of their own ritual purity. There are even cases such as the Nadars, who under colonial rule, went from being untouchables to land owning agrarian, business oriented middle castes. A surname is the most crucial identification of one's caste. beyond that, the village you come from, your father's first name, the kind of language you speak in some cases are the markers of caste. How you look may or may not be a marker. But for race, how you look is the first marker. Thus, you can have a concept such as a black woman passing for white. A lower caste man passing for brahmin is unheard of, and would be tougher as you need to fake a whole history of community associations. The two are similar only in that both are modified forms of class and work to reinforce a dominations over the means of production.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

Thank you for this-informed comment. More people should read it.

@anotherpointofview222

2 жыл бұрын

Very "informed comment." In a way reminded me of a comment made about "two enslaved people arguing over who has the better master. " In this case it would be whose had the worst system of enslavement. Or which implementation of colonial rule upon a subjugated people in a colonized society was the best/worst.

It's unfortunate that so few have seen this discussion. Many wouldn't be interested, sure, but if it were more widely circulated more than a few would watch it and benefit from doing so.

If you ever heard Kathleen Battle sing Somewhere Over The Rainbow, you would become a fan of classical music too!

The professional class and academy focus on microaggressions is a clear example of how class buffers racism and how the Black bourgeois are unwilling to admit that their class standing mitigates their victimization or marginalized identity. Absent overt racism, there is a search for ever more subtle things to be offended by. I think microaggressions exist, but I also think that all forms of isms and typical interpersonal conflict are being interpreted through a singular lens which may often not apply.

@burgerboys3730

2 жыл бұрын

"There's a couple dozen black millionaires; therefore racism over."

@danyalghaznavi6818

2 жыл бұрын

What they actually want is, we can have a dozen more black millionaires, therefore racism is over.

@Gearsturfs

3 ай бұрын

@@burgerboys3730no we’re asking you to be honest and stop obfuscating reality and hyper focusing everything around race when all of us see right in front of our faces how much of an influence class has

Can you guys talk about Rafia Zakaria's idea of "white feminism" (from her book 'Against white feminism')?

The pile-on of analogies in Wilkerson's book creates a smothering effect that strangles the critical organs of the reader's mind like snow in an avalanche, distracting from the fact that after a lengthy class-free analysis of racism she proposes entirely personal solutions to societal problems.

@burgerboys3730

2 жыл бұрын

Mixed metaphors. 0/100, see me after class.

in Ireland there is a type of person who wears tracksuits, this sets them apart and is seemingly a slight form of protest or at least NFG signalling definitely by choosing to wear a tracksuit instead of a pair of skinny jeans and a plain t-shirt, or slacks and a light blue button down shirt etc., they are causing a real difference in how they are perceived and treated for good or bad

i need some clarification: what's postracial about telling people to take advantage of their opportunities?

@ronmackinnon9374

2 жыл бұрын

I suppose it's in how it's done. Like if it's said with a facile optimism to the effect that barriers that formerly would have been in their way have been broken down and are essentially a thing of the past.

I still need to check out Wilkerson's book. I like the comparative history aspect to it.

@claborn79

2 жыл бұрын

@@beyondaboundary6034 Sorry I didn't see your original comment. What resources were you recommending?

@claborn79

2 жыл бұрын

Nevermind. I saw your comment below. I thought Reed was critiquing the limits of the caste framing, not saying it's a bad book and you shouldn't read it. Regardless, it looks like a substantial work of comparative history. Not every historian has to be a Marxist historian.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

@@claborn79 I think there are serious problems with Wilkerson's analytical framework and historical scholarship. As Burden-Stelly points out, her mode of argument is often anecdotal and her conceptualization of race is almost mystical. As she, the Reeds, Gidla and Horn, Carby, and Cox all show, this is the bankrupt politics that the caste framework gives you. It is a liberal politics that separates race from class, grounding it in psychology and attitudes rather than political economy. The caste framework erases class stratification within racial groups by focusing attention only on aggregate-level group disparities. It enables an elitist politics of representation/symbolism/"reckoning" by the wealthiest and most well-connected members of racialized populations, so that their incorporation into the ruling class substitutes for material policies that would help most members of those populations. It makes the common material circumstances of poor and working class whites AND similarly situated people of color invisible (and impossible to organize around politically) by slotting them into different "castes" along with the most privileged people who share their skin color. This politics fails on its own terms as means for ending racism, because it only helps a small stratum of people of color. How can you treat a homeless white person and Jeff Bezos as members of the same "caste," and a homeless Black person and Oprah as members of another "caste"? It's a garbage way of thinking about race and class.

@claborn79

2 жыл бұрын

@@beyondaboundary6034 Okay? It still looks worth reading.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

@@claborn79 Sure, it's worth reading to see why Wilkerson and other liberals want to revive the caste school theory. It's also worth reading Cox and all the critics I cited to see why this effort is misguided.

Elsewhere on KZread I saw a discussion of serfdom in medieval England that seems relevant to this. There were actual slaves, serfs who paid their rent in goods and services and serfs who paid their rents in cash. Everyone wanted to be in the third category because it afforded the most personal freedom and the channel's narrator said there was a lot of litigation people engaged in to move from one category to the next. There was another alternative and that was simply to run away to a town and find work there. The gentry, overlords of the serfs, liked this not at all and I think that's where vagrancy laws came from. In colonial America there were slaves and indentured servants, called 'bound boys' . If they were white they could run to a town and hide, If their skin were black or brown, they stood out and they could be asked to prove their legal status. Skin color was used to reinforce and perpetuate serfdom when the institution had outlived its usefulness. In the Reconstruction South slavery was replaced by sharecropping , which is another word for serfdom. their free status. It reinforced ownership and serfdom

Who is the young lady?

Class and Caste are not the same and this should be talked about.

My best friend in 4th grade was black. His name was Aaron. My best friend in 8th grade was black. His name was Cornell. I changed schools a lot. Maybe we should do that to promote inclusivity.

20 seconds into the video, Ariella says "signal" and both Adolph and Touré reach for their right ear at the exact same time. 😲 🧏🏾‍♂️🧏🏾‍♂️

You know they perceive you different when they ask where you are from and other black people ask the same question. 😮

I can’t sit and listen to the rest of this discussion. I read “Caste,” and I understand race and class from a left perspective. But it sounds like from the five minutes I’ve listened that I read a different book than these intellectuals. Wilkerson makes a strong case for how Black people were treated as a caste, and she didn’t limit her examples to Oprah’s racist experience. I suggest to those listening to this discussion that you read the book for yourself. It’s true Wilkerson doesn’t bring a class analysis to the caste system in America, but she didn’t need to. The racism itself was oppressive enough in and of itself.

You guys are experts at making the simple complex!!!

@TCt83067695

2 жыл бұрын

Lol pls elaborate

I bet Adolph is proud of Toure.

@CF127

11 күн бұрын

they are related Right?

11 күн бұрын

@@CF127 Yea that was my point

Blackness cannot be separated from the person but class can be separated. A person can move from one class to another as class is not a genetic attribute in human beings which means class is eradicable as a social construct while the color of a person is a biological construct that cannot be separated by material means but only separable by immaterial means, and this would be to make a color a subject and the only subject. The color becomes the subject the person of that color predicates the subject. Actions are then attributed to race and not attributed to the individual in their social context. For example, a crime analyzed from a class perspective reveals different results. A cop and a thief are in a struggle and thief gets away. The thief was ripping off the catalytic converter of a car. It looks like two men are the active participants but are not, their struggle is predicating the movement of one object becoming another object, the converter becoming money. Who steals converters are people without or need money. The same crime from a race perspective and the participants are not passive but active expressions of the race relation as conceived by racists, the crime is subjective and the person becomes the object. The world of racism n the mind of racists inverts real material relations of class into a world of victims blaming themselves for being a victim while victimized.

For all people going to the doctor, you will get better treatment, aside from dressing well, by conveying that you have educated yourself on the issues being discussed. That more than race or even class is critical.

I wish I could trade my annoying lumpen black neighbors for these nice petite bourgeois ones. Twenty four hour earth shaking bass concerts are not appealing. Class matters a lot in the US.

I keep hearing people say “race doesn't exist;” it's just a social construct. But then go on to talk for hours about RACE! Until people understand that this social construct was posited to create a "hierarchy of being" to facilitate European hegemony and imperialism, & race talk is just a promotion of “THE EMPIRE” and so much high sounding non-sense! IMHO, we must totally abandon “the framework” and find or create new non-bigoted frameworks!! Continuously babbling about “white and black” people, in my mind is just continuously cosigning European race theory

Demonizing the U.S. plantation system is easy, remember the German University system source of “racial”, nonsense! Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) considered by many to be the greatest philosopher of the modern period, would manage to let slip what is surely the greatest nonsequitur in the history of philosophy. Describing a report of something seemingly intelligent that had once been said by an African, Kant dismisses it on the grounds that “this fellow was quite black from head to toe, a clear proof that what he said was stupid.” Again: "the most eloquent reasoning on a false dichotomy, however nuanced, is high sounding nonsense."

1:16 “…Oprah went into a Louis Vuitton” Well, that’s false. A store clerk refused to show Oprah a handbag at Trois Pommes, an upscale shop in Zurich.

@naturallaw1733

2 жыл бұрын

why?

@DEWwords

2 жыл бұрын

who cares what Oprah does with her spare pocket change $50,000?

@jeff__w

2 жыл бұрын

@@naturallaw1733 Oprah didn’t go into a Louis Vuitton store. It was a boutique shop called Trois Pommes.

@naturallaw1733

2 жыл бұрын

@@jeff__w yeah, but why did they Refuse her service?

@lsobrien

2 жыл бұрын

This is the oddest pedant comment I've seen in some time.

The conservative right says racism is just some people's wrong thinking and can be overcome by individual, personal responsibility and hard work; while the left declares unions and public policy will eliminate racism by sharing resources and democratic participation. Neither accomplish that goal. Caste is a great book though.

@DEWwords

2 жыл бұрын

Unions are bad. BAD! Who needs decent jobs, money, housing, health insurance, retirement? It seems very possible that we should walk town to town self-flagellating ourselves. ---That will woke em for sure.

@BigStar1972

2 жыл бұрын

Racism isn't much of a social problem. Income inequality is.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

@Eliyahu That's a straw man. Can you find a single quote from anywhere in this whole conversation in which they say unions and social democratic policies will end racism? They are critiquing a liberal form of anti-racism which holds that we can't pursue class-based politics and economic justice until we expunge racism from white people's hearts through anti-racism training, therapeutic conversations, and the diversification of existing institutions. Instead, they are saying that racism is fought more effectively through multi-racial working class struggle for shared economic goals (which will require addressing issues of discrimination, bigoted language, etc. in the process) than through endless conversations/"reckonings" with professional race relations administrators who don't challenge the economic status quo.

@beyondaboundary6034

2 жыл бұрын

@@BigStar1972 I assure you that the Reeds, Jen Pan, and Ariella Thornhill would all disagree with this statement. They have all made clear many times (and they're right) that racism is both real and a significant problem. Their critique of liberal anti-racism isn't based on the claim that racism isn't significant, but that liberal anti-racism individualizes the problem and evades class inequality in ways that reinforce the status quo. That's why we need to begin with an anti-capitalist analysis and prioritize building multiracial working class solidarity to pursue common goals like healthcare for all, unions and higher wages, etc. with the ultimate goal being a socialist society where meeting human needs takes priority over maximizing profit.

@eliyahubenysrael6272

2 жыл бұрын

@@BigStar1972 Thanks white man; problem solved.

Regarding xicanx & latinx: The X is out of respect for people who don’t traffic the colonialist metanarratives of gender and the binary structure of Spanish, so if they don’t like it, that’s too bad because they’re acting like a bigot! Millions of people all over the world who are indigenous are deeply disrespected by those who mock this identity that is as valid as any other. The conquistadors justified so much slaughter because they observed the Indians/indigenous people to not have the same binary gender characteristics nor the same so-called heterosexuality so they slaughtered them and indigenous people haven’t forgotten this! If indigenous people didn’t have same binary gender metanarrative that the colonizers had, it did not entitle the colonizer to slaughter them for it and then mock their identity that’s just trying to shed the linguistic colonization of the unnecessary colonialist binary of Spanish. Colonialism is so evil and if you don’t point out where it is the structure, even linguistically, we are doomed!😭

@DEWwords

2 жыл бұрын

What the world needs now is more woo woo, I agree. We're in bad shape. Woo woo, STAT!

@AmandaFromWisconsin

2 жыл бұрын

This is a joke, right? LOL

@hughmac13

2 жыл бұрын

Can you refer to sources that treat European colonizers'-in particular Spanish conquistadores-observations regarding indigenous gender identities? I am aware of certain indigenous peoples having languages and cultures that reflect nonbinary genders, but I'm unaware of original colonizers being explicitly aware of that fact, especially to the extent that it was a motivating and justificatory cause of subjugation and slaughter. That sounds apocryphal, but I'm perfectly willing to be disabused of that notion in the face of evidence. Moreover, is it even appropriate or accurate to consider such extant indigenous peoples as latinx or xicanx?

@DEWwords

2 жыл бұрын

And can anybody tell me where the Aztec anti-slavery-anti-human sacrifice march starts? ---And, I may be confused but I thought it was the west that discovered the lesbian penis and all the great, great money making opportunities in insurance funded cosmetic surgery, pharmacology, and therapy they discovered with it. ---O, and, hey! The Incas want their Iron age . ---Who took it? ---And all through this, (the devil whispered this part in my ear I'm afraid), the UNDERS remained under under under, before and after conquest, down through 20 generations or more in both the new world and the west. ---How bout that? ---Huh.

@lunaridge4510

2 жыл бұрын

@@hughmac13 no such evidence, they had much more serious and clear reasons for the slaughter: the natives lived on the land and possesses the resources that the invaders wanted. Besides, most languages use gendered words, English is so stupid this way. In my language, every noun has a gender: female, male, or neutral. Be it an animal or a kitchen table.

I liked Reed until he revealed himself to be a fool falling for the class over race bs.

2 ай бұрын

Nonsensical comment, internally contradictory.