Wait, seems most people prefer pity party subjectivity, and an inane, insane obsession with 'racism' and 'slavery.' These ignoramuses on the Left will do us great harm. They will bring down civil society and democracy. They know not what they reap.
I wrote a longer post about this, but one of the things I found most confusing about the film is that in some sense it tries to move AWAY from obsession with 'racism' and 'slavery' as you put it, but then it sort of comes to the opposite conclusion.
Just an incidental point about "Caste": Wilkerson cites the Gallup poll about how, in 1958, only 4% of Americans approved of black/white intermarriage. But she never cites any of the followup Gallup polls showing an extraordinary reversal of this attitude, so that by 2021, 94% of Americans approve of black/white marriage. Her book is published in 2020, so the 2021 statistic wasn't available to her, but all of the intervening polls were available--and she never references them. If caste is as determinative as she claims, if black Americans have indeed been tarred since the beginning with the brush of low-caste stigma, then surely this would show up as a continuing refusal of high-caste whites to marry black people. But the stigma dissolves. The black untouchables, in intermarriage terms, turn out not to be untouchable at all. This is merely one of the places where Wilkerson's explanatory schema simply doesn't work.
Thanks for pointing this out! Nandini found numerous other instances of this Wilkerson's book: finding the worst possible data point on a given issue and ignoring all the evidence that things have changed since.
I'd say the actual number of Black-White marriages along with poll results asking specifically about Black-White intermarriage of a close relative are more revealing statistics.
The article from 2014 seems full of problems. They say, for example, that only 1% of marriages are interracial, and yet even wikipedia will tell you that that has not been true for many, many decades:
"The number of interracial marriages as a proportion of new marriages has increased from 3% in 1967 to 19% in 2019."
The 1% figure is for Black-White intermarriage specifically. The quote from Wikipedia includes intermarriage across all racial groups.
A more recent study on racial intermarriage echoed the claim made by researchers in the work referenced in the 2014 article: "Our calculation using the data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that among all married couples, the rate of black–white intermarriage had slowly climbed from 0.15% in 1970 to 0.34% in 1980, 0.40% in 1990, 0.64% in 2000, and 0.92% in 2010. At no point, the black–white intermarriage rate was over 1%."
For me, this was the most interesting takeaway from this research:
"The means for the white sample indicate that on average whites favored intermarriage with Hispanics the most (3.279), followed by Asians (3.260), and blacks (3.050). In descending order, blacks on average favored intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and Asians; Asians on average favored intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and blacks; and Hispanics on average favored intermarriage with whites, Asians, and blacks. Reading the table column by column, one can see that for support for intermarriage with blacks, Hispanics had the highest mean (3.437), and for support for intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and Asians, blacks had the highest means...
Additionally, we find varying effects of the control variables on attitudes toward intermarriage across different racial or ethnic groups. Age is inversely correlated with support for intermarriage with all outgroups, albeit significantly only for whites, blacks and partly for Asians. Women were more likely to support intermarriage than their male counterparts among whites and blacks with regard to intermarriage with whites. Being Republican and level of political conservatism decreased the probability of support for intermarriage for whites but had no significant effect for minority groups. Education increased the probability of support for intermarriage significantly among whites, had varying effects for Asians and Hispanics, and had no effect for blacks. Regional variations in support for intermarriage were significant for whites, insignificant for Hispanics, and variable in significance for blacks and Asians. Being Christian increased the likelihood of support for intermarriage for blacks and Asians but had no significant impact for whites and Hispanics. Marital status had no effect on support for intermarriage across the board, with one exception, namely, currently married Asians were significantly less likely to support intermarriage with Hispanics than their non-currently married counterparts."
The study upon which the 2014 article is based looks at data from 2012 (compared to 2010 and 2000). Here's the link to the actual research paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24572833
I will address only the section on Trayvon Martin. There is an aspect which I have never seen discussed. The corruption at the trial. I use the term "corruption" because the judge violated basic judicial principles to make certain Zimmerman was found not guilty. Whether the judge behaved in this fashion was due to anti-Black prejudice is irrelevant. It is more likely because Zimmerman's father was a judge, but again her motives are not relevant.
At the time, I copied down her judge "charge to the jury," to which the prosecution never objected indicating collusion between prosecutor and judge, which is very common -- at least here in California. I apologize that my retrieval system is inadequate for me to quickly find her instructions to the jury, but I recall the gist.
The judge ignored the law on which the case was tried -- which did not include anything about stand your ground or Zimmerman's being in fear of his life. Hence, neither the prosecution nor the defense addressed these issues during the trial. Thus, including any refer to either defense was judicial malpractice. Because the violation was so egregious, I call be judicial corruption.
The judge's jury instructions started with the defense of stand your ground - fear of his (Zimmerman's) life. That is 100% backwards. To present the defense first pollutes the jurors' minds. Their first job as jurors was to decide whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, but when the jury is told to focus only on the defenses, which were not part of the trial, they are being told to acquit. The attorneys always have the right to object to jury instructions, but this prosecutor remained silent. That was either malpractice or collusion.
When one looks at the jury's composition, one sees that that prosecution and the judge seated a jury which lacked the mentality to exercise independent reasoning. The jurors were not anti-Black nor malicious as far as I could tell, but they lacked the backgrounds, training and education to think for themselves. Attorneys are seasoned in objecting to such jurors.
When the jury instructions discussed the law in favor of finding the defendant guilty, they were grossly inadequate and secreted in the middle of jury instructions. Those are the first instructions because the prosecution has the burden of proof.
The few facts which made it into the trial show that Zimmerman was guilty of at least manslaughter and perhaps second degree murder.
While I've never seen a public discussion how this corrupt judge and this prosecutor colluded to acquit Zimmerman, I seriously doubt the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo, would have become a cause celebre without Zimmerman's acquittal. Michael Brown was a thug. He was shot for three reasons: (1) Unlike his friend, he did not get on the sidewalk, (2) he was much larger than a kid his age, (3) he charged at the officer. We know the #3 for a fact since he was shot in the top of his head as his head was down as he charged at the officer. Brown's behavior and not his race was the actual and proximate cause of his death.
One may speculate with good cause about the nature of the Ferguson PD towards Blacks and whether it created a hostile situation in the community based on race so that those in the community with less internal behavior controls would make horrible decisions. I say that adolescence, which I think last under age 25, is a form of mental illness, but that changes nothing. Objectively, the officer was confronted with a large, hostile man charging at him.
A lasting social problem has resulted from the corrupt Florida trial of Zimmerman and BLM's response in Ferguson. Reasonable people could not conclude that Michael Brown was shot because he was Black. By objective standards, the officer did nothing wrong.
The same scenario repeated itself in Los Angeles, where Keenan Darnell Anderson likewise brought upon himself his death. I've viewed all the video tapes very closely and the police did nothing wrong. Unlike Michael Brown, Anderson did not die until hours later at the hospital and he died of an enlarged heart and cocaine use, according to an autopsy report. People equate the first degree murder of George Floyd with Anderson's death, although the police behavior in the two incidents was the opposite. In LA, the police were trying to protect Anderson from himself as he was running incoherently in the middle of an extremely busy intersection in West LA. Officer Derek Chauvin committed a slow 9 minute murder for the entire world to see while many people were telling him to stop. In addition, George Floyd died at the scene and whether he had taken any drugs was legally irrelevant. Also, it did not matter if he had been Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934), there was no legal justification for Chauvin's conduct. However, Mayor Karen Bass is a strong ally of BLM and refuses to cross them. Thus, she fails to stand for the truth that the LAPD not only did nothing wrong in the Anderson case, but the officers did everything right.
The fact, which Woke left refuses to admit, is that our institutions are predatory where power to harm is accepted and often promoted without regard to the race of the victim. The Woke left and the conservative right make it impossible to have the needed discussion of predatory abuse. Instead, both sides focus only on race which results in nonsense discussions since race is not the problem. Predation is the problem and naturally Blacks will be abused -- everyone is abused. As long as the Woke pretend that only Blacks are harmed, Whites who know that they are also horribly harmed will always be at odds with the Left. That is exactly how the head honchos want it -- extremists on the Left and extremists on the Right fighting with each other so that there is never an honest discussion of our predatory institutions.
My son was young when these things you mention were heating up, and we talked a lot about my view that left wing focusing on the racial component of police abuse of citizens virtually guaranteed that the problem of police abuse generally will never be seriously addressed. It’s much easier for the right to argue with the racism charge than with the charge that police are simply shooting too many citizens. I consider the centering of racism in this policy debate to be a giant strategic error at best. I used to say this on Facebook threads but the response from African-Americans was pretty hostile. Eventually I stopped bothering to make this point publicly.
The country was founded because people in general and governments in particular were predatory abusers. Hobbes thought that a totalitarian government would keep the abusers in check, but he was wrong. John Locke tried a different approach which Tommy J adopted and much of that view point made it into the Constitution. Men, however, continued to be predators and predators tend to attack weaker individuals and groups. (Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton 1887)
By not our focusing on the abusive nature of many of our institutions and falsely thinking that it was racism, the strategic error which you mention arose. Whites knew that they were abused, and thus, it was not racism.
In LA, BLM started out addressing generic predatory abuse when they had Black County DA Jackie Lacey removed and replaced by a elderly white guy. Little did we realize that Gascon was a far left wing, lunatic Woker. Now we are trying to get rid of him. His demeaning treatment of minorities along with Karen Bass' adopting the DSA woke mentality has seriously harmed the image of Blacks. The Woke make it worse when they try to conceal that many of the follow home robberies and smash an grab are done by Black youth.
Blacks are only 8% of Los Angeles. When society has told you for decades that you have been single out and cheated and there is nothing you can do about it, then lack of achievement and violence will affect a significant part of any community. In contrast, Yeshiva students in the Fairfax district do not attack the elderly and ransack stores. Why? Because they are taught Tikkun Olam -- to improve the world's defects -- and the negative reaction by their community would be swift and devastating. Also, some many anti-Semites seem to think that we Jews have some super human powers. Worldwide there are 15.7 Million Jews, which is 0.2% of the global population. Yet, these delusional idiots claim that we control everything?!?Although Jews suffer discrimination, no one other than the Woke is dumb enough to preach that we would just give up and victims.
BTW, Black married couples earn more money than White married couples. Blacks are America's #1 Group at Overcoming; yet Wokers classify them as helpless victims.
I saw Origin last week and had a discussion with some friends afterward.
My biggest complaint is about the ultimate utility of this idea. I have mixed feelings about the central thesis, but even if we were to accept the idea that we should think of America as having a caste problem instead of a race problem what would that change?
There are multiple scenes in the movie where Wilkerson lays out her argument and finishes by saying "see it's not race, it's caste!" and then everyone is impressed. I wanted someone to ask, "ok, what's next?" Was anyone supportive of Jim Crow and Dalit oppressions and Nazi-ism who now feels they are wrong thanks to this reframing?
Should we oppose affirmative action because it tends to only "lift up" the wealthiest black americans and/or foreign students who never experienced american structural racism? That's the first example I could think of of a policy that benefits specific races while entrenching class power. I think it's a reasonable extrapolation, but this would be a very different film and would be received very differently if it tried to make that argument.
Of course, what the white person in my group of friends said was that Wilkerson/DuVernay's point is that race in America is a SUBSTITUTE for caste. That is, we should still enact race-based policy, but understand that race is just a kind of caste.
Now, I think this is correct about their intent, but it just brings me back to my original question: So what? We just keep everything the same but silently understand that when we say race we mean caste?
One might respond to this that the idea is to just build global connections and see the struggles of the oppressed around the world as part of one unifying struggle. This is certainly implied by the ending of the film. But again, I don't really need this thesis to have sympathy for Jews, Dalits, Black Americans, or anyone else. Whether it is the same structure causing harm to them or three separate ones, my attitude does not really change.
I don't think the film is without merit. The individual anecdotes and historical scenes drawn from the book are quite moving and really could just stand on their own. But the actual argument felt lacking in a number of important ways.
Dalits are not two thirds of the population in India. Scheduled castes are about 25% and scheduled tribes, about 9%. While more than half the population does qualify for reservations, they do so under the Other Backward Caste category (OBC). And OBCs are not Dalits; they were never subjected to untouchability and did not work as manual scavengers.
Even though the term "Dalit" does refer to just 25% of the population, I see no reason to focus on just that subgroup in light of the fact that the Indian government deems all three subgroups as disadvantaged and therefore needing protection and special consideration in education (quotas, a more stringent form of affirmative action), government jobs, etc. So when all three subgroups are considered, they are indeed ~70% of the Indian population.
The problem with Wilkerson/DuVernay is that they have set up the struggle as being between Brahmins (4% of the Indian population) and Dalits (25%).
Indeed, I wrote to the Pew researcher some time back to ask for specific percentages of the other three non-Brahmin "in" caste groups within the 30%. I was shocked when the person responded that they DO NOT have those percentages.
Bottom line, yes, Dalits are 25% of the population, but they are NOT the only disadvantaged caste. And when people talk about the caste system, they are not generally talking about just the Dalits and Brahmins even though Wilkerson/Duvernay present it as such.
Right, and I agree with your description of marginalization in India. I haven't seen the movie yet so I'll reserve comment on that. Really, if the sentence read "65% of Indians belong to an underprivileged/marginalized caste," I'd have no issue with any part of it. Although even that can get complicated pretty quickly: take the Jats as just one example. Very powerful in some states and classified as OBC in others. And now we have Patels and Marathas lobbying for OBC classification. It's in danger of becoming a spoils system. None of which detracts from your larger point, of course.
It can be really difficult to get accurate data on the breakdown of various upper caste groups. Most surveys don't ask for it.
Data. Facts. Objectivity. Context. Comparison.
Wait, seems most people prefer pity party subjectivity, and an inane, insane obsession with 'racism' and 'slavery.' These ignoramuses on the Left will do us great harm. They will bring down civil society and democracy. They know not what they reap.
Thank you for this.
I wrote a longer post about this, but one of the things I found most confusing about the film is that in some sense it tries to move AWAY from obsession with 'racism' and 'slavery' as you put it, but then it sort of comes to the opposite conclusion.
Excellent challenge of the intellectual and emotional laziness plaguing far too much of modern-day analysis!
All of reality is never a single story. Thank you for perceiving the nuance and complexity in human life.
Just an incidental point about "Caste": Wilkerson cites the Gallup poll about how, in 1958, only 4% of Americans approved of black/white intermarriage. But she never cites any of the followup Gallup polls showing an extraordinary reversal of this attitude, so that by 2021, 94% of Americans approve of black/white marriage. Her book is published in 2020, so the 2021 statistic wasn't available to her, but all of the intervening polls were available--and she never references them. If caste is as determinative as she claims, if black Americans have indeed been tarred since the beginning with the brush of low-caste stigma, then surely this would show up as a continuing refusal of high-caste whites to marry black people. But the stigma dissolves. The black untouchables, in intermarriage terms, turn out not to be untouchable at all. This is merely one of the places where Wilkerson's explanatory schema simply doesn't work.
Thanks for pointing this out! Nandini found numerous other instances of this Wilkerson's book: finding the worst possible data point on a given issue and ignoring all the evidence that things have changed since.
I'd say the actual number of Black-White marriages along with poll results asking specifically about Black-White intermarriage of a close relative are more revealing statistics.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/08/11/americans-are-in-favor-of-interracial-marriage-until-they-are-asked-about-their-own-family/
Interesting. I hadn't seen that 2014 article. It sent me looking, and I quickly found countervailing evidence for the claims it makes: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/05/18/2-public-views-on-intermarriage/pst_2017-05-15-intermarriage-02-01/
The article from 2014 seems full of problems. They say, for example, that only 1% of marriages are interracial, and yet even wikipedia will tell you that that has not been true for many, many decades:
"The number of interracial marriages as a proportion of new marriages has increased from 3% in 1967 to 19% in 2019."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interracial_marriage_in_the_United_States#:~:text=The%20number%20of%20interracial%20marriages,1967%20to%2019%25%20in%202019.
The 1% figure is for Black-White intermarriage specifically. The quote from Wikipedia includes intermarriage across all racial groups.
A more recent study on racial intermarriage echoed the claim made by researchers in the work referenced in the 2014 article: "Our calculation using the data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that among all married couples, the rate of black–white intermarriage had slowly climbed from 0.15% in 1970 to 0.34% in 1980, 0.40% in 1990, 0.64% in 2000, and 0.92% in 2010. At no point, the black–white intermarriage rate was over 1%."
https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4698/11/1/21
For me, this was the most interesting takeaway from this research:
"The means for the white sample indicate that on average whites favored intermarriage with Hispanics the most (3.279), followed by Asians (3.260), and blacks (3.050). In descending order, blacks on average favored intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and Asians; Asians on average favored intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and blacks; and Hispanics on average favored intermarriage with whites, Asians, and blacks. Reading the table column by column, one can see that for support for intermarriage with blacks, Hispanics had the highest mean (3.437), and for support for intermarriage with whites, Hispanics, and Asians, blacks had the highest means...
Additionally, we find varying effects of the control variables on attitudes toward intermarriage across different racial or ethnic groups. Age is inversely correlated with support for intermarriage with all outgroups, albeit significantly only for whites, blacks and partly for Asians. Women were more likely to support intermarriage than their male counterparts among whites and blacks with regard to intermarriage with whites. Being Republican and level of political conservatism decreased the probability of support for intermarriage for whites but had no significant effect for minority groups. Education increased the probability of support for intermarriage significantly among whites, had varying effects for Asians and Hispanics, and had no effect for blacks. Regional variations in support for intermarriage were significant for whites, insignificant for Hispanics, and variable in significance for blacks and Asians. Being Christian increased the likelihood of support for intermarriage for blacks and Asians but had no significant impact for whites and Hispanics. Marital status had no effect on support for intermarriage across the board, with one exception, namely, currently married Asians were significantly less likely to support intermarriage with Hispanics than their non-currently married counterparts."
The study upon which the 2014 article is based looks at data from 2012 (compared to 2010 and 2000). Here's the link to the actual research paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24572833
I will address only the section on Trayvon Martin. There is an aspect which I have never seen discussed. The corruption at the trial. I use the term "corruption" because the judge violated basic judicial principles to make certain Zimmerman was found not guilty. Whether the judge behaved in this fashion was due to anti-Black prejudice is irrelevant. It is more likely because Zimmerman's father was a judge, but again her motives are not relevant.
At the time, I copied down her judge "charge to the jury," to which the prosecution never objected indicating collusion between prosecutor and judge, which is very common -- at least here in California. I apologize that my retrieval system is inadequate for me to quickly find her instructions to the jury, but I recall the gist.
The judge ignored the law on which the case was tried -- which did not include anything about stand your ground or Zimmerman's being in fear of his life. Hence, neither the prosecution nor the defense addressed these issues during the trial. Thus, including any refer to either defense was judicial malpractice. Because the violation was so egregious, I call be judicial corruption.
The judge's jury instructions started with the defense of stand your ground - fear of his (Zimmerman's) life. That is 100% backwards. To present the defense first pollutes the jurors' minds. Their first job as jurors was to decide whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, but when the jury is told to focus only on the defenses, which were not part of the trial, they are being told to acquit. The attorneys always have the right to object to jury instructions, but this prosecutor remained silent. That was either malpractice or collusion.
When one looks at the jury's composition, one sees that that prosecution and the judge seated a jury which lacked the mentality to exercise independent reasoning. The jurors were not anti-Black nor malicious as far as I could tell, but they lacked the backgrounds, training and education to think for themselves. Attorneys are seasoned in objecting to such jurors.
When the jury instructions discussed the law in favor of finding the defendant guilty, they were grossly inadequate and secreted in the middle of jury instructions. Those are the first instructions because the prosecution has the burden of proof.
The few facts which made it into the trial show that Zimmerman was guilty of at least manslaughter and perhaps second degree murder.
While I've never seen a public discussion how this corrupt judge and this prosecutor colluded to acquit Zimmerman, I seriously doubt the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo, would have become a cause celebre without Zimmerman's acquittal. Michael Brown was a thug. He was shot for three reasons: (1) Unlike his friend, he did not get on the sidewalk, (2) he was much larger than a kid his age, (3) he charged at the officer. We know the #3 for a fact since he was shot in the top of his head as his head was down as he charged at the officer. Brown's behavior and not his race was the actual and proximate cause of his death.
One may speculate with good cause about the nature of the Ferguson PD towards Blacks and whether it created a hostile situation in the community based on race so that those in the community with less internal behavior controls would make horrible decisions. I say that adolescence, which I think last under age 25, is a form of mental illness, but that changes nothing. Objectively, the officer was confronted with a large, hostile man charging at him.
A lasting social problem has resulted from the corrupt Florida trial of Zimmerman and BLM's response in Ferguson. Reasonable people could not conclude that Michael Brown was shot because he was Black. By objective standards, the officer did nothing wrong.
The same scenario repeated itself in Los Angeles, where Keenan Darnell Anderson likewise brought upon himself his death. I've viewed all the video tapes very closely and the police did nothing wrong. Unlike Michael Brown, Anderson did not die until hours later at the hospital and he died of an enlarged heart and cocaine use, according to an autopsy report. People equate the first degree murder of George Floyd with Anderson's death, although the police behavior in the two incidents was the opposite. In LA, the police were trying to protect Anderson from himself as he was running incoherently in the middle of an extremely busy intersection in West LA. Officer Derek Chauvin committed a slow 9 minute murder for the entire world to see while many people were telling him to stop. In addition, George Floyd died at the scene and whether he had taken any drugs was legally irrelevant. Also, it did not matter if he had been Pretty Boy Floyd (1904-1934), there was no legal justification for Chauvin's conduct. However, Mayor Karen Bass is a strong ally of BLM and refuses to cross them. Thus, she fails to stand for the truth that the LAPD not only did nothing wrong in the Anderson case, but the officers did everything right.
The fact, which Woke left refuses to admit, is that our institutions are predatory where power to harm is accepted and often promoted without regard to the race of the victim. The Woke left and the conservative right make it impossible to have the needed discussion of predatory abuse. Instead, both sides focus only on race which results in nonsense discussions since race is not the problem. Predation is the problem and naturally Blacks will be abused -- everyone is abused. As long as the Woke pretend that only Blacks are harmed, Whites who know that they are also horribly harmed will always be at odds with the Left. That is exactly how the head honchos want it -- extremists on the Left and extremists on the Right fighting with each other so that there is never an honest discussion of our predatory institutions.
My son was young when these things you mention were heating up, and we talked a lot about my view that left wing focusing on the racial component of police abuse of citizens virtually guaranteed that the problem of police abuse generally will never be seriously addressed. It’s much easier for the right to argue with the racism charge than with the charge that police are simply shooting too many citizens. I consider the centering of racism in this policy debate to be a giant strategic error at best. I used to say this on Facebook threads but the response from African-Americans was pretty hostile. Eventually I stopped bothering to make this point publicly.
I agree.
The country was founded because people in general and governments in particular were predatory abusers. Hobbes thought that a totalitarian government would keep the abusers in check, but he was wrong. John Locke tried a different approach which Tommy J adopted and much of that view point made it into the Constitution. Men, however, continued to be predators and predators tend to attack weaker individuals and groups. (Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Lord Acton 1887)
By not our focusing on the abusive nature of many of our institutions and falsely thinking that it was racism, the strategic error which you mention arose. Whites knew that they were abused, and thus, it was not racism.
In LA, BLM started out addressing generic predatory abuse when they had Black County DA Jackie Lacey removed and replaced by a elderly white guy. Little did we realize that Gascon was a far left wing, lunatic Woker. Now we are trying to get rid of him. His demeaning treatment of minorities along with Karen Bass' adopting the DSA woke mentality has seriously harmed the image of Blacks. The Woke make it worse when they try to conceal that many of the follow home robberies and smash an grab are done by Black youth.
Blacks are only 8% of Los Angeles. When society has told you for decades that you have been single out and cheated and there is nothing you can do about it, then lack of achievement and violence will affect a significant part of any community. In contrast, Yeshiva students in the Fairfax district do not attack the elderly and ransack stores. Why? Because they are taught Tikkun Olam -- to improve the world's defects -- and the negative reaction by their community would be swift and devastating. Also, some many anti-Semites seem to think that we Jews have some super human powers. Worldwide there are 15.7 Million Jews, which is 0.2% of the global population. Yet, these delusional idiots claim that we control everything?!?Although Jews suffer discrimination, no one other than the Woke is dumb enough to preach that we would just give up and victims.
BTW, Black married couples earn more money than White married couples. Blacks are America's #1 Group at Overcoming; yet Wokers classify them as helpless victims.
I saw Origin last week and had a discussion with some friends afterward.
My biggest complaint is about the ultimate utility of this idea. I have mixed feelings about the central thesis, but even if we were to accept the idea that we should think of America as having a caste problem instead of a race problem what would that change?
There are multiple scenes in the movie where Wilkerson lays out her argument and finishes by saying "see it's not race, it's caste!" and then everyone is impressed. I wanted someone to ask, "ok, what's next?" Was anyone supportive of Jim Crow and Dalit oppressions and Nazi-ism who now feels they are wrong thanks to this reframing?
Should we oppose affirmative action because it tends to only "lift up" the wealthiest black americans and/or foreign students who never experienced american structural racism? That's the first example I could think of of a policy that benefits specific races while entrenching class power. I think it's a reasonable extrapolation, but this would be a very different film and would be received very differently if it tried to make that argument.
Of course, what the white person in my group of friends said was that Wilkerson/DuVernay's point is that race in America is a SUBSTITUTE for caste. That is, we should still enact race-based policy, but understand that race is just a kind of caste.
Now, I think this is correct about their intent, but it just brings me back to my original question: So what? We just keep everything the same but silently understand that when we say race we mean caste?
One might respond to this that the idea is to just build global connections and see the struggles of the oppressed around the world as part of one unifying struggle. This is certainly implied by the ending of the film. But again, I don't really need this thesis to have sympathy for Jews, Dalits, Black Americans, or anyone else. Whether it is the same structure causing harm to them or three separate ones, my attitude does not really change.
I don't think the film is without merit. The individual anecdotes and historical scenes drawn from the book are quite moving and really could just stand on their own. But the actual argument felt lacking in a number of important ways.
Dalits are not two thirds of the population in India. Scheduled castes are about 25% and scheduled tribes, about 9%. While more than half the population does qualify for reservations, they do so under the Other Backward Caste category (OBC). And OBCs are not Dalits; they were never subjected to untouchability and did not work as manual scavengers.
https://www.pewresearch.org/decoded/2021/06/29/measuring-caste-in-india/
@Wafa1024, thank you for your comment. It gives me an opportunity to provide additional clarification/context.
According to the Pew report on religion in India (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religion-in-india-tolerance-and-segregation/): "Overall, the majority of Indian adults say they are a member of a Scheduled Caste (SC) – often referred to as Dalits (25%) – Scheduled Tribe (ST) (9%) or Other Backward Class (OBC) (35%)."
Even though the term "Dalit" does refer to just 25% of the population, I see no reason to focus on just that subgroup in light of the fact that the Indian government deems all three subgroups as disadvantaged and therefore needing protection and special consideration in education (quotas, a more stringent form of affirmative action), government jobs, etc. So when all three subgroups are considered, they are indeed ~70% of the Indian population.
The problem with Wilkerson/DuVernay is that they have set up the struggle as being between Brahmins (4% of the Indian population) and Dalits (25%).
Indeed, I wrote to the Pew researcher some time back to ask for specific percentages of the other three non-Brahmin "in" caste groups within the 30%. I was shocked when the person responded that they DO NOT have those percentages.
Bottom line, yes, Dalits are 25% of the population, but they are NOT the only disadvantaged caste. And when people talk about the caste system, they are not generally talking about just the Dalits and Brahmins even though Wilkerson/Duvernay present it as such.
Right, and I agree with your description of marginalization in India. I haven't seen the movie yet so I'll reserve comment on that. Really, if the sentence read "65% of Indians belong to an underprivileged/marginalized caste," I'd have no issue with any part of it. Although even that can get complicated pretty quickly: take the Jats as just one example. Very powerful in some states and classified as OBC in others. And now we have Patels and Marathas lobbying for OBC classification. It's in danger of becoming a spoils system. None of which detracts from your larger point, of course.
It can be really difficult to get accurate data on the breakdown of various upper caste groups. Most surveys don't ask for it.
I ought to be clearer; Scheduled Caste refers to Dalits in Indian bureaucratese.
Thanks for this. In consultation with the author of the piece, we have lightly amended the language and added a supporting link.