Cancel culture: What unites young people against Obama and Trump. America’s Enduring Caste System. Casteism is the investment in keeping the hierarchy as it is in order to maintain your own ranking, advantage or privilege or to elevate yourself above others or keep others beneath you.
For those in the marginalized castes, casteism can mean seeking to keep those on your disfavored rung from gaining on you, to curry the favor and remain in the good graces of the dominant caste, all of which serve to keep the structure intact. In the United States, racism and casteism frequently occur at the same time, or overlap or figure into the same scenario. Casteism is about positioning and restricting those positions, vis-à-vis others. What race and its precursor, racism, do extraordinarily well is to confuse and distract from the underlying structural and more powerful Sith lord of caste. Like the cast on a broken arm, like the cast in a play, a caste system holds everyone in a fixed place.
Race and caste are not the cause of and do not account for every poor outcome or unpleasant encounter. Viewpoint: Why racism in US is worse than in Europe. Media playback is unsupported on your device News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black.
Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique. Last week in California, three black people - a Jamaican, a Canadian of Nigerian descent, and a London native - were confronted by seven police cars as they checked out of their Airbnb because a white American thought they were robbing the house. Though they were not American, they were still subjected to racist American stereotypes - and being confronted with tense, potentially life-threatening altercations with police without ever committing a crime. I've travelled a fair amount around the world, but America's racist status quo remains unique and alarmingly oppressive. Years ago during one of my trips to France, a woman at La Poste refused to sell me stamps because she thought I was African.
Image copyright Getty Images. Fluch des Goldes - Imperium Folge 12. Malcolm X at Oxford: 'They're going to kill me soon' Malcolm X became internationally famous the day after President John F Kennedy was assassinated.
Asked to comment, Malcolm calmly informed US TV reporters that he was not at all surprised that “the chickens were coming home to roost”. It was November 1963 and he was by then a leading member of the Nation of Islam, a black separatist organisation. Its leader, Elijah Muhammad, publicly disavowed him and banned him from public speaking. I had arrived at Oxford a month previously and witnessed the Kennedy assassination on the BBC and read Malcolm’s comments in the press. A year later, Eric Abrahams – the radical Jamaican president of the Oxford Union (and a friend) – decided to invite Malcolm to participate in his farewell debate.
To our astonishment, Malcolm agreed to come and defend the motion. I met him on the day of the debate. His speech at the union was not one of his virtuoso performances in terms of rhythm, improvised cadences, silences and eruptions. Dorothy Butler Gilliam - Why the Media Is More Important Than Ever.