AMERICA
Race = Caste (part 1)
DuBois’ ‘Black Reconstruction’ in America explains
The late, great poet, Amiri Baraka was once asked what was the greatest book he had ever read. He didn’t hesitate. It was Black Reconstruction in America by one of the world’s greatest intellectuals, W.E.B. DuBois. The book’s full title, “An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880” summarizes America’s race and class problems today nearly 100 years after the book’s publication.
The short message of DuBois’ book is race = class (or caste) in America. Race and the racial caste system constructed to keep the country’s African population in their place is an artificial construct that affects the life outcomes and opportunities of blacks and whites (and everyone else) on some level) everywhere. Whites are uplifted in social privilege and opportunity in this caste system, but this hardly means they will advance in America economically, politically, or socially.
Blacks, on the other hand, are subject to the caste system as well. They can still advance economically and politically, but they are never out of their place in that system. Disproportionately, they don’t advance as much as a group.
