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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Book by Isabel Wilkerson · 18 quotes · Caste, Racism, Racism In America

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Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents Quotes

“Empathy is no substitute for experience itself. We don’t get to tell a person with a broken leg or a bullet wound that they are or are not in pain. And people who have hit the caste lottery are not in a position to tell a person who has suffered under the tyranny of caste what is offensive or hurtful or demeaning to those at the bottom. The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.”

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“Першою афроамериканкою, якій присудили премію Американської кіноакадемії, стала Гетті Макденієл. Вона отримала цю високу винагороду за роль Маммі (дбайливої, огрядної й асексуальної протилежності Скарлетт ОʼХара, яка була ідеалом жінки) у фільмі 1939 року «Віднесені вітром». Маммі, більш віддана білій родині, ніж власній, була готова вступити в бій із чорношкірими солдатами, щоб захистити своїх білих поневолювачів. Цей образ став зручною підпорою для зображення рабства в художніх фільмах, однак це була вигадка кастової системи, що суперечила історичним фактам. В епоху рабства більшість чорношкірих жінок були худорлявими, навіть виснаженими через скупе харчування, яким їх забезпечували. До того ж мало хто з цих жінок працював у будинках, оскільки їх вважали ціннішими на полі.”

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“Ендогамія зміцнює межі касти, забороняючи шлюби поза своєю групою чи статеві стосунки або навіть найменші ознаки романтичного інтересу до членів інших каст. Вона створює захисний екран між кастами й стає головним засобом утримання ресурсів та спорідненості в межах кожного рівня кастової системи. Завдяки усуненню законних родинних звʼязків між кастами ендогамія позбавляє людей здатності до емпатії чи почуття спільної долі. Під впливом ендогамії члени панівної касти рідко виявляють особистий інтерес до щастя, самореалізації й добробуту тих, кого вважають нижчими за себе, втрачаючи здатність ототожнювати себе з цими людьми та їхньою долею. По суті, ендогамія посилює схильність членів панівної касти вважати нижчих за себе не лише чимось меншим за людей, а й ворогами, чужинцями та загрозою, котру слід тримати під контролем за будь-яку ціну.”

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“You know that there are no black people in Africa,” she said. Most Americans, we have to sit with that statement. It sounds nonsensical to our ears. Of course there are black people in Africa. There is a whole continent of black people in Africa. How could anyone not see that? “Africans are not black,” she said. “They are Igbo and Yoruba, Ewe, Akan, Ndebele. They are not black. They are just themselves. They are humans on the land. That is how they see themselves, and that is who they are.” What we take as gospel in American culture is alien to them, she said. “They don’t become black until they go to America or come to the U.K.,” she said. “It is then that they become black.”

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“As it stands, the United States is facing a crisis of identity unlike any before. The country is headed toward an inversion of its demographics, with its powerful white majority expected to be out-numbered by people not of European descent within two decades. This is unknown territory for everyone in the hierarchy, an ethnic distribution that could potentially look closer to that of South Africa than to what Americans have grown accustomed to. Anticipatory fear seems already to have surfaced, but if history is any guide, a change in demographics might have less of a material effect on the dominant caste than imagined. A 2016 study found that, if disparities in wealth continue at the current pace, it would take black families 228 years to amass the wealth that white families have now, and Latino families another 84 years to reach parity. Thus, as in South Africa, there would be no reason to believe that economic, social, and, in America, political dominance would not still remain in the hands of those who have held it for the entirety of the country's history. This will be a test of the cherished ideal of majority rule, the moral framework for caste dominance in America since its founding.”

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“He [Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1795], coined the term Caucasian on the basis of a favorite skull of his that had come into his possession from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia. To him, the skull was the most beautiful of all that he owned. So he gave the group to which he belonged, the Europeans, the same name as the region that had produced it. That is how people now identified as white got the scientific-sounding yet random name Caucasian.”

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“The institution of slavery was, for a quarter millennium, the conversion of human beings into currency, into machines who existed solely for the profit of their owners, to be worked as long as the owners desired, who had no rights over their bodies or loved ones, who could be mortgaged, bred, won in a bet, given as wedding presents, bequeathed to heirs, sold away from spouses or children to cover an owner’s debt or to spite a rival or to settle an estate. They were regularly whipped, raped, and branded, subjected to any whim or distemper of the people who owned them. Some were castrated or endured other tortures too grisly for these pages, tortures that the Geneva Conventions would have banned as war crimes had the conventions applied to people of African descent on this soil. Before there was a United States of America, there was enslavement. Theirs was a living death passed down for twelve generations.”

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“Do you as Germans feel any guilt for what the Germans did?’ he will ask them. They will go off into groups and have heated discussions among themselves, and then come back to him with their thoughts. ‘Yes, we are Germans, and Germans perpetrated this,’ some students once told him, echoing what others have said. ‘And, though it wasn’t just Germans, it is the older Germans who were here who should feel guilt. We were not here. We ourselves did not do this. But we do feel that, as the younger generation, we should acknowledge and accept the responsibility. And for the generations that come after us, we should be the guardians of the truth.”

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