Statement after statement on how lower-caste (Black and non-white) Americans were treated during Jim Crow or even slavery began to sound like descriptions  of working class people in the modern class structure:

 Citing William Goodell in 1853 (p.146), “He is under control of the law, though unprotected by the law, and can only know the law as enemy.”  My note:  Police enforcing class structure in low-income communities.

“A certain kind of violence was part of an unspoken curriculum for generations of children in the dominant caste.  ‘White culture desensitized children to racial violence,’ wrote the historian Kristina DuRocher, ‘so they could perpetuate it themselves one day.'” (p.150).  My note:  Implanted hate to force class division and embed a classist tool to activate old prejudice on race whenever ruling class is threatened with class action/dissent from their rule or solidarity within the working class.  Racism as a tool of class division, not class division as a tool of racism.

Other stories of recent injustices revolve around a theme of upper-middle-to-upper class Black Americans experiencing discrimination and injustice.  These include a group of Black women being kicked out of a wine tour for laughing too loudly and another group having the police called for playing gold too slowly at a country club.  The author offers a personal story about being insulted and mistreated in first class despite her luggage tags indicating she was a loyal, elite member of the airline—and seeing every slight as white attendants and passengers asserting their caste power (p.295).  When her pedigree West Highland Terrier was “acting up,” she called a canine behaviorist, presumably for a few thousand dollars in service fees, who explained the canine power hierarchy with which she makes some caste system comparisons.  The solution to her dog’s behavioral problems?  Buy yet another pedigree dog to give it a companion (p. 204).  

 My notes on these pages are what you might expect by now.  What about the Black women who aren’t allowed on the course because they are working class and can’t afford the green fees?  Same with the wine tour?  What about the workers on the train and in the fields and at the restaurants?  How are they treated on a daily basis?  Was she offended because she was Black or because she was “First Class”?  And who the hell can afford to spend money on a canine behavior specialist?    

The author goes on to note an incident where her In a scene where she feels hostility from a plumber called to figure out a leak at the end of a long day (p. 373).  She leans into the complexity of his story, finally.  She notes that his father is old and alone, and “mean as hell”—wondering what he had taught him about people who looked like her.  They even have a sincere moment of human connection, and the plumber opens up, even returns a while later with a needed fix.  Wilkerson does offer hope for reconciliation through connection among the otherwise insurmountable walls of the caste system.     

There is a literary whiplash one experiences in going from these modern “micro-aggressions” to the deeply traumatic, historic examples of undeniable racism, systemic abuse, terror, and immorality.  The reaching for examples of overt, present-day racism does a disservice to the weight and impact of the larger injustice.  The avoidance of any mentions of union activity and worker solidarity standing in pure defiance of the caste system.  Universal solidarity, ignorant of race, religion, sex, creed, origin—this was the rallying cry for unions like my family’s UE (United Electrical Workers), the IWW (international Workers of the World), and many other trade and collective unions.  This history and this need for worker empowerment and the class struggle do not fit neatly into the caste system definitions, causes, or cures.

It’s not that the caste structure based on race should be diminished, it’s the exclusion of class from its pillars and definitions.  It’s the added injustice and disservice the framework does to addressing the disease, and a tremendous component of the total injustice and ongoing harm of class over caste.