How Kamala Harris’s Candidacy Illuminates Issues of Caste in America | |
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“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
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Illustration by the Big Fat Bao.
Bao (she/they) is an independent illustrator and researcher whose work focuses on redefining Indian design education from the anticaste perspective. Published in https://futuress.org/stories/on-caste/
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On race, caste and Kamala Harris
By: Somava Saha, WE in the World
Photo Credits: Stacey Wegley
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This has been a historic month in our nation. Kamala Harris’s candidacy generated a strong and polarizing response, with some going calling her the “DEI Candidate” and questioning whether she is truly Black to a Black crowd. Her career, which career as an attorney general and policymaker with plenty of track record to debate, became immediately rooted in an attack on her identities, illuminates the power of caste as an underlying operating system in our nation. What is caste and how is it relevant? Let’s break it down together.
Isabel Wilkerson, in her book Caste traces Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s journey to India and discovering that the “untouchables” in India are equivalent to Black people in the US–and that both are at the lowest rung of a false hierarchy of human value. Embedded in the idea of race and caste is that idea that some groups of people are de facto “more deserving” or “better” than others–and that the role of those who are “less deserving” or “less than” in this false hierarchy of human value is to serve and those who are born with more (who have the right to concentrate wealth and power and have those who are lower caste organized societally to work for them).
In this WIN Digest, we explore what caste is and how caste–a cross-cutting way to understand these false hierarchies of human value–affects us all.
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“I will speak, although I really know not how to look you in the face, or in what words to utter the audacious fiction...They [the citizens] are to be told that their youth was a dream, and the education and training which they received from us, an appearance only; in reality during all that time they were being formed and fed in the womb of the earth...Citizens, we shall say to them in our tale, you are brothers, yet God has framed you differently. Some of you have the power of command, and in
the composition of these he has mingled gold, wherefore also they have the greatest honor; others he has made of silver, to be auxiliaries; others again who are to be husbandmen and craftsmen he has composed of brass and iron; and the species will generally be preserved in the children. An oracle says that when a man of brass or iron guards the State, it will be destroyed. Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?”
—Socrates
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Changemaker Spotlight
A nationally known speaker, equity evangelist, and public health leader, Natalie S. Burke is President and CEO of CommonHealth ACTION, a national public health entity that develops people and organizations to produce health through equitable policies, programs, and practices.
For more than 25 years, Natalie has held leadership positions focused on creating opportunities for health through community, institutional, and systemic change. This has included providing capacity-building support for community-based, multi-sector collaboratives; developing organizational boards to implement equitable policies; designing and implementing community-based strategies to improve the social determinants of health; providing training and strategic counsel to local, regional, and national foundations focused on equitable grantmaking; developing and delivering curricula and learning experiences for the public health and healthcare workforces; serving as an executive coach for C-level leaders and teams; and, designing programs to develop leaders across communities, sectors, and disciplines who commit to building healthy communities.
In addition to serving as the primary architect of CommonHealth ACTION’s Foundations of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and Health Equity courses and certifications -- Natalie served as co-Director for the Robert Wood Johnson-funded Culture of Health Leaders Program and Director for Kaiser Permanente’s Institute for Equitable Leadership in Baltimore. Natalie believes that to alter our collective health destiny we must change our language; challenge deeply held beliefs about equity, power, and identity in our society; create constructive discomfort to spark perspective transformation; and accept the role we each play in the production of the public’s health.
#ChangemakerSpotlight #WE4Equity #WEWINTogether #Equity #Change #realchange #betterancestor
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BEACON For Equity Assessment
Is your community ready to assess where they are on the journey to racial equity? Over the next six months, we will be exploring the 6 modules in the BEACON assessment. When your community collaboration completes the first module, you will examine the progress the collaboration is making towards sharing leadership and power. You can learn more about BEACON and take the assessment here. What are you doing to share power in your community or collaboration?
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"The Eight Pillars of Caste" Summary
Wilkerson argues that even after emancipation, legally sanctioned violence, harassment, and displacement of African Americans remained—and still remains—an existential threat...Her research demonstrates that all caste systems have the eight essential characteristics in common.
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Caste Lives On and On
Caste is no static pyramid. It’s a dynamic social organisation, both hierarchy and segmentation. The revered Dalit scholar and leader B R Ambedkar likened the jati system to ‘a string of tennis balls hanging one above the other’, the string twining about, separating each caste from the other. This image helps us understand how, within a hierarchy, castes can shift in status
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Inside The Movement to Ban Caste Discrimination Across The US
On May 11, the California state Senate passed SB 403 which would make caste a protected category in California's anti-discrimination laws. The law is working its way through the state Assembly.
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"Caste operates as an engine of social hierarchy and as a form of political and economic inequality,."
– Anupama Rao,
Professor of history
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Secure Funding
The Office of Infectious Disease and HIV/AIDS Policy
Type: Grant
Due Date: 08/21/2024
Match Required: No Cost Share
Overview: OIDP anticipates the availability of approximately $1,000,000 for this funding opportunity to support four awards ranging from $250,000 to $115,000 per year for up to three years. OIDP and ORHO will support activities by public health departments, community organizations, academic institutions, professional or trade organizations, and immunization coalitions, among others, that work with populations with low vaccination rates.
Leonard-Litz LGBTQ Foundation: LGBTQ+ Community Grants (New Hampshire)
Type: Foundation
Due Date: Rolling
Match Required: No Cost Share
Overview: The purpose of this program is to help LGBTQ+ people fulfill their potential by funding nonprofit organizations that advance the interests and well-being of the LGBTQ+ community through advocacy and with programs and services that meet the needs of LGBTQ+ people. Funding will be provided for life-affirming services that address one or more of the following focus areas:
- Health and wellness
- Crisis intervention
- Racial justice
- Advocacy and community engagement
- Social assistance and programming
Huntington National Bank: Charitable Grant Program (Wisconsin)
Type: Foundation
Due Date: Rolling
Match Required: No Cost Share
Overview: The purpose of this program is to contribute to the development of healthy, vibrant communities. Funding will support projects that improve self-sufficiency and quality of life, as well as advance social and economic equality, in communities served by the funding agency.
Support will be provided for projects in the following focus areas:
- Community revitalization and stabilization
- Community services
- Affordable housing
- Economic and community development
- Racial/social equity
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