Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (41 page)

BOOK: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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Chapter Seventeen: On the Early Front Lines of Caste

They would soon discover
:
Varel,
Lost Black Scholar,
p. 85.

They had seen the Nazis
:
Ibid., p. 74.

the proficiency of Allison Davis
:
Jennifer Jensen Wallach, introduction to Davis, Gardner, and Gardner,
Deep South,
p. xvii.

Mary Gardner took a position
:
Ibid., p. xxii.

climb into a hoop skirt
:
Ibid., p. xxi.

“Their encounters were limited”
:
Varel,
Lost Black Scholar,
p. 85.

Every move had to be thought out
:
Davis, Gardner, and Gardner,
Deep South,
pp. 561–62.

“it was explained to them”
:
Varel,
Lost Black Scholar,
p. 86.

“The whole Negro-white research”
:
Ibid., p. 87

“the fundamental division”
:
Ibid., p. 92.

“ostracized from the town”
:
Wallach introduction to Davis, Gardner, and Gardner,
Deep South,
p. xxviii.

“canonical”
:
Jane Adams and D. Gorton, “Southern Trauma: Revisiting Caste and Class in the Mississippi Delta,”
American Anthropologist
106, no. 2 (June 2004): 334–45.

“regardless of his position”
:
Cox,
Caste, Class, and Race,
pp. 498, 519.

he disregarded both the injustices
:
Among the perplexing assertions in Cox’s otherwise comprehensive overview is his observation that in India, “caste is a status entity in an assimilated, self-satisfied society. Regardless of his position in the society, a man’s caste is sacred to him; and one caste does not dominate the other.” Ibid.

Chapter Eighteen: Satchel Paige and the Illogic of Caste

“tear the glove off the catcher”
:
Robert Smith,
Pioneers of Baseball
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), quoted in the
Encyclopedia of World Biography
(Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale Research, 1998), p. 62.

“catchers had to cushion”
:
Larry Tye, interview by Michel Martin, National Public Radio, July 27, 2009,
https://www.npr.org/​templates/​story/​story.php?storyId=111063901
. See Larry Tye,
Satchel: The Life and Times of an American Legend
(New York: Random House, 2009).

a money-back guarantee
:
Steven Goldman, ed.,
It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over: The Baseball Prospectus Pennant Race Book
(Philadelphia: Basic Books, 2007), p. 62.

“may well have been the fastest”
:
Smith,
Pioneers of Baseball,
in
Encyclopedia of World Biography,
p. 62.

“That we know of, he”
:
Tye interview by Martin.

signed him as a free agent
:
“Satchel Paige,” National Baseball Hall of Fame, n.d.,
https://baseballhall.org/​hall-of-famers/​paige-satchel
.

The Cleveland Indians won
:
Pat Galbincea, “Pitcher Satchel Paige Helped Indians Win Pennant in 1948: Black History Month,”
Cleveland Plain Dealer,
February 16, 2013,
https://www.cleveland.com/​metro/​2013/​02/​pitcher_satchel_paige_helped_i.html
.

“It was no big deal for me”
:
Sam Mellinger, “Fifty Years Ago, Satchel Paige Pitched His Last Big-League Game in KC at Age 59,”
Kansas City Star,
September 18, 2015,
https://www.kansascity.com/​sports/​spt-columns-blogs/​sam-mellinger/​article35763006.html
.

“Many critics agree that it”
:
“Satchel Paige 1906–1982,”
Encyclopedia.com
, n.d.,
https://www.encyclopedia.com/​people/​sports-and-games/​sports-biographies/​satchel-paige
.

Part Five:
T
HE
C
ONSEQUENCES OF
C
ASTE
Chapter Nineteen: The Euphoria of Hate

The film footage
:
This chapter was written after I viewed an archival film reel of the crowds at Hitler’s return to Berlin, July 1940, after the Battle of France. The footage was shown at the
Hitler—How Could It Happen?
exhibition, Berlin Story museum, Berlin, Germany,
https://www.berlinstory.de/​hitler-dokumentation/​anfahrt/
. A partial video of the parade and crowd is available for viewing on YouTube:
https://youtube.com/​watch?v=g3xRVKkvx9A
. A few clips of the crowd scenes shown in the museum exhibit appear at the 3:00 mark of the online video. As described in this chapter, however, the museum exhibit carried no sound or commentary and included more extensive footage than available online.

Chapter Twenty: The Inevitable Narcissism of Caste

“No matter how degraded”
:
Hacker,
Two Nations,
p. 250.

“Narcissus could not conceive”
:
Ronningstam,
Identifying and Understanding,
p. 3.

“The essence of this overestimation”
:
Fromm,
Heart of Man,
p. 79.

“He is nothing”
:
Fromm quoted in Sakurai,
Theories of Narcissism,
p. 54.

“has a euphoric ‘on-top-of-the-world’ ”
:
Fromm,
Heart of Man,
p. 71.

“The survival of the group”
:
Ibid., p. 78.

“Group narcissism leads people”
:
Sakurai,
Theories of Narcissism,
p. 53.

“inflated image of itself”
:
Fromm,
Heart of Man,
p. 76.

“There is never caste”
:
Ambedkar,
Castes in India,
p. 47.

“lace-curtain Irish”
:
Niall O’Dowd, “Was Your Family Shanty or Lace Curtain Irish? It’s Important,”
Irish Central,
October 10, 2019,
https://www.irishcentral.com/​roots/​shanty-lace-curtain-irish
. Also see Jeanne Charters, “The Irish Caste System—What Shanty Irish Means,”
Jeanne Charters,
July 25, 2014,
https://jeannecharters.com/​irish-caste-system-shanty-irish-means/
.

Nordic was the region
:
Leonid Bershidsky, “Trump Trolls the Nordics. They Troll Him Back,”
Bloomberg,
August 21, 2019,
https://www.bloomberg.com/​opinion/​articles/​2019-08-21/​trump-doesn-t-seem-to-get-greenland-denmark-or-any-nordic-count
; Frida Ghitis, “Why Trump Is So Obsessed with Scandinavia,” CNN, August 21, 2019,
https://www.cnn.com/​2019/​08/​21/​opinions/​trump-denmark-scandinavia-obsession-ghitis/​index.html
; and Terje Solsvik and Camilla Knudsen, “ ‘Thanks, But No Thanks’—Norwegians Reject Trump’s Immigration Offer,” Reuters, January 12, 2018,
https://www.reuters.com/​article/​us-usa-trump-immigration-norway/​thanks-but-no-thanks-norwegians-reject-trumps-immigration-offer-idUSKBN1F11QK
.

Chapter Twenty-One: The German Girl with the Dark, Wavy Hair

“racial passport”
:
Douglass,
God Among Germans,
p. 117, for a discussion of the racial passport during the Nazi era.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Stockholm Syndrome and the Survival of the Subordinate Caste

“Knowledge without wisdom”
:
Patricia Hill Collins,
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment
(London: Routledge, 2000), p. 257.

“The first moral duty is”
:
Edmund Leach, “Caste, Class, and Slavery: The Taxonomic Problem,” in Reuck and Knight,
Caste and Race,
pp. 10–11.

“It’s almost impossible to”
:
Ashley Reese, “The Perverse Spectacle of Black Forgiveness,”
Jezebel,
October 3, 2019,
https://jezebel.com/​the-perverse-spectacle-of-black-forgiveness-1838747565
.

crime of arriving late to jury duty
:
“Before my hearing, I walked in the courtroom as a free man with no criminal record,” said the man, Deandre Somerville, an assistant in the city’s after-school program. “I left a criminal in handcuffs.” Under public pressure, the judge cleared Somerville’s record, but only after he had already served his time in jail. The judge said he did so because he believed Somerville had been “totally rehabilitated.” P. R. Lockhart, “A Black Man Went to Jail for Missing Jury Duty. After Public Outrage, the Judge Cleared His Record,”
Vox,
October 8, 2019,
https://www.vox.com/​identities/​2019/​10/​8/20904974/​deandre-somerville-jail-sleep-jury-duty-florida-kastrenakes
.

“This expectation feels fueled”
:
Hanif Abdurraqib, “Why Do We Expect Victims of Racism to Forgive?”
Pacific Standard,
November 1, 2018,
https://psmag.com/​social-justice/​why-do-we-expect-victims-of-racism-to-forgive
.

a black child wanting to hug
:
Everton Bailey, Jr., “The Story Behind Devonte Hart’s Famous ‘Hug’ Photo,”
Oregonian,
March 28, 2018,
https://www.oregonlive.com/​pacific-northwest-news/​2018/​03/​the_story_behind_devonte_harts.html
.

Two white women in Minnesota
:
Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “Devonte Hart Family Crash: Deceptions, Missed Signals Preceded Deaths,”
Oregonian,
April 8, 2018,
https://www.oregonlive.com/​pacific-northwest-news/​2018/​04/​devonte_hart_family_crash_dece.html
; and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh, “Devonte Hart’s Little Sister Told Police in 2010 She Was Beaten, Denied Food,”
Oregonian,
March 29, 2018,
https://www.oregonlive.com/​pacific-northwest-news/​2018/​03/​devonte_harts_little_sister_to.html
.

drove off a cliff in Northern California
:
Daniel Victor, “Hart Family Parents Killed 6 Children in Murder-Suicide, Jury Determines,”
New York Times,
April 5, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/​2019/​04/​05/​us/​hart-family-murder-suicide.html
.

“White people embrace narratives”
:
Roxane Gay, “Why I Can’t Forgive Dylann Roof,”
New York Times,
June 23, 2015,
https://www.nytimes.com/​2015/​06/​24/​opinion/​why-i-cant-forgive-dylann-roof.html
.

“Black people forgive because”
:
Ibid.

What saved the boy from
:
Kristine Phillips, “A Black Child’s Backpack Brushed Up Against a Woman. She Called 911 to Report a Sexual Assault,”
Washington Post,
October 16, 2018,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/​nation/​2018/​10/​13/​black-childs-backpack-brushed-up-against-woman-she-called-report-sexual-assault/​?outputType=amp
.

“What white people are really”
:
Gay, “Why I Can’t Forgive.”

caste often migrates with them
:
Tinku Ray, “No Escape from Caste on These Shores, ‘Untouchables’ from India Say,”
Pulitzer Center,
February 26, 2019,
https://pulitzercenter.org/​reporting/​no-escape-caste-these-shores-untouchables-india-say
.

Chapter Twenty-Three: Shock Troops on the Borders of Hierarchy

“standing at the butler’s table”
:
Doyle,
Etiquette of Race Relations,
pp. 3, 4.

“When you laugh”
:
“A group of African American women say they were humiliated by being ejected for ‘laughing while black’—igniting debate on ‘white space’ and a possible lawsuit.” Rupert Neate, “Napa Wine Train Controversy: ‘I Do Think It Was Based on the Color of Our Skin,’ ”
Guardian,
September 13, 2015,
https://www.theguardian.com/​us-news/​2015/​sep/​13/​napa-wine-train-laughing-while-black
. The tour company later apologized for its treatment of the women and came to an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit the women had filed. Mary Bowerman, “Black Women Kicked off Napa Valley Wine Train Settle,”
USA Today,
April 20, 2016,
https://www.usatoday.com/​story/​money/​nation-now/​2016/​04/​20/​black-women-kicked-off-napa-valley-wine-train-settle-racial-discrimination-case/​83280120/
.

a Pennsylvania golf club ordered
:
Dan Cancian, “Pennsylvania Golf Club Ejects Black Women, Including NAACP’s Sandra Thompson, for ‘Playing Too Slowly,”
Newsweek,
April 24, 2018,
https://www.newsweek.com/​golf-club-forced-apologize-evicting-black-women-898381
. See also Tony Marco and Lauren DelValle, “A Group of Black Women Say a Golf Course Called the Cops on Them for Playing Too Slow,” CNN, April 25, 2018,
https://www.cnn.com/​2018/​04/​25/​us/​black-women-golfers-pennsylvania-trnd/​index.html
.

Dao said he was convinced
:
Lori Aratani, “United Passenger: Dragging Incident More Horrifying Than When He Fled Vietnam,”
Washington Post,
April 13, 2017,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​trafficandcommuting/​united-passenger-dragging-incident-more-horrifying-than-when-he-fled-vietnam/​2017/​04/​13/​7941ccdc-206f-11e7-be2a-3a1fb24d4671_story.html
.

“I just cried”
:
Julia Jacobo, “Doctor Dragged Off United Airlines Flight After Watching Viral Video of Himself: ‘I Just Cried,’ ” ABC News, April 9, 2019,
https://abcnews.go.com/​US/​doctor-dragged-off-united-airlines-flight-watching-viral/​story?id=62250271
.

BOOK: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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