Isabel Wilkerson describes caste as, “an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups.” (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, p. 17). Like Race in the United States, the ancient caste system in India creates a hierarchy by using artificial constructions such as occupation to create and maintain the supremacy of one caste over others. Caste in India is perpetual, this means that the occupation of ancestors is used to continually define and discriminate against people over generations. Thus, while skin color becomes the focus of race in the US, caste sets the supremacy of one group above the rest by ranking human life to the artificial concept of one’s occupation. Furthermore, there is a permanence that one experiences in both these systems that warrants a feeling of inescapability, entrapment, and doom. In fact, it is often said that death is the only source of liberation that permits a low caste person to escape inhuman system of caste discrimination. Unfortunately, a slew of recent incidents in the United States around race also echo similar feelings of imprisonment and the inexorableness to escape. In many ways there is a resonance with Wilkerson’s work around race and caste. As an Indian immigrant who has spent equal amounts of time in both contexts, my experiences place me in a position to take Wilkerson’s work further by illustrating connections between caste and race.
My experiences in the United States around Whiteness and White centered experiences enabled me to come up with the concept of White Incredulity. I argued that White Incredulity nuances conversations of race by de-centering Whiteness and capturing aspects of Black and Brown experiences that had not yet been explored. White Incredulity refers to the inability and/or the unwillingness to accept the experiences of People of Color at face value. The intersection of race and caste sees a transformation where White Incredulity mutates itself into a Caste Incredulity, a system that is put in place to view low caste people through a lens of suspicion, distrust, and disbelief. Although, White Incredulity draws attention to Whiteness, it moves beyond skin color and exposes the ways in which both caste and race continuously use supremacist tropes to maintain their dominant positions within systems of hierarchies. Both race and caste hold onto elements of Whiteness which may or may not be connected to color but maintains a continuous connection to an ideology of supremacy and privilege. Explaining the connection between race and caste, Wilkerson writes, “Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.” (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, p. 19). Pushing this analogy further, if caste is the bones and race the skin, White/caste Incredulity is the sinew that holds these systems and the people in them firmly in place.
On May 25, 2020 the world witnessed the murder of yet another black man George Floyd. A 46-year-old Black man, Floyd was killed in Minneapolis during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. Killing of Black men and women by the hands of police has unfortunately, become an all too familiar story that keeps repeating in the United States every few months. However, what made this case stand out and brought our attention to conversations of police brutality was the way in which George Floyd was killed. In the 8 minute 46 second video that captured the final moments of this man, Floyd repeatedly told the white police officer whose knee was pressed into his neck that he could not breath. As one report noted, Floyd repeated the phrase “I Can’t Breathe” to Derick Chauvin, the white police officer at least 20 times during the encounter, but the pressure on his neck remained in place. Chauvin’s inability to respond to Floyd’s repeated pleas, to take his pain, suffering, suffocation at face value demonstrates the sinister ways in which White Incredulity operates in system of race in the US. The blank expression on Chauvin’s face in response to the appeals by George Floyd exemplifies the ways in which Whiteness continues to be unable to believe its own ears and moved by its own heart to even acknowledge the humanity of the Black person.
January 17 2016, Rohith Vemula a Ph.D student at the University of Hyderabad was found hanging from a ceiling fan, his death was the stark reminder of the disturbing reality of caste discrimination that continues to be practiced in India. People belonging to the echelons of the upper caste treated Vemula’s death as a tragedy rather than a death that symbolized the inhumane system of caste oppression and caste discrimination. In fact, many in the university, the government, and even the Indian media raised questions about Vemula’s caste suggesting that Vemula was not a Dalit in the first place. These accusations cropped up even after Vemula’s mother Radhika Vemula submitted a government document, a certificate stating the proof that they belonged to a Scheduled Caste and they were indeed Dalits. The suspicious gaze of the upper caste followed Rohith Vemula not only in his life but also in his death. The unwillingness to accept Rohith as a Dalit and an aspiring scholar whose life had strategically and systematically suffocated him to death is illustrative of a Caste Incredulity.
Both George Floyd and Rohith Vemula are two different individuals separated by time zones, borders, ages, and citizenship. And yet, they are connected in their deaths. In other words, the deaths of Floyd and Vemula are reflective of the ways in which systemic racism and caste discrimination in India continue to choke the life out of Black, Brown, and Dalit bodies. In addition to this, the words spoken by both these men were met with stark incredulity by people who thought of themselves to be superior with regards to their race and caste. Many newspapers and television channels reported that Rohith Vemula committed suicide because of personal frustrations rather than harassment and humiliation by upper caste members of the student body. Just before Vemula took his own life, he wrote a suicide note which said, “The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of star dust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living.” Although, the words written by Vemula and the circumstances through which the Dalit students were humiliated by the University were all but apparent, the reluctance to take his words at face value, the skepticism levied at his caste, is a painful reminder that words of pain and suffering spoken by Black and Dalit men and women continue to be seen an incredulous and are never taken seriously even at face value. The words spoken by Vemula and Floyd also illuminate the harsh reality of race and caste that continuous to imprison bodies and hinders them from being able to rise above their skin color or their caste no matter how hard they try. In other words, race and caste reduces the value of a human being to artificial constructs such as skin color and occupations as opposed to a person’s mind, their abilities, or their talents.
Race and Caste are like a shadow that never leaves a person’s side no matter how high up they ascend in society. The inability to move beyond one’s caste and race no matter their education or their status in society is indicative of the toxicity of these systems. White Incredulity displays the permanence of race and caste by constantly questioning and doubting the successes of People of Color and Low Caste peoples. Thus, the constant gaze of suspicion and doubt become a thick cloud, a barrier that at times feels inescapable. In 2009, Barack Obama become the 44th President of the United States. Almost immediately, the success of President Obama’s election was mired with controversies that questioned his citizenship, his education, and even his religion. On the same token, candidate for Vice President Kamala Harris the first ever African Indian woman is also facing similar attacks that continue to question her success in a direct and incredulous way.
The lure of moving away from the Indian context and getting lost in a foreign country to get away from one’s caste is tempting and could offer one solace. However, as we seen time and again caste transgresses boundaries and travels with the person even as he/she attempts to take on a new identity. Suraj Yengde scholar at Harvard and author of the book Caste Matters says “”You have to understand that. Being at Harvard or being at the Kennedy School or being anywhere in the world, my primary identity for some reason is not going away.” Recently a lawsuit was filed against the company Cisco claiming caste discrimination. In the case of Cisco, an engineer’s promotion and bonuses were denied and stalled by his manager when his caste was discovered. The success of a person continues to be defined through the prism of race and caste thereby coloring their success with skepticism, suspicion, and incredulity.
Wilkerson writes, “To dehumanize another human being is not merely to declare that someone is not human, and it does not happen by accident. It is a process, a programming. It takes energy and reinforcement to deny what is self-evident in another member of one’s own species.” (142). The dehumanization of a person in caste and race is embedded so deep into our bloodstream that injustices have become second nature and normalized. The suspicion of a person’s success is written off as healthy skepticism and yet, this skepticism is not levied towards White people or Upper Caste people. Meanwhile, the words of pain and suffering are met with a lack of empathy that stare blankly at faces repeatedly crying out in pain. Vemula expresses this pain writing in his suicide note, “ It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt.” Responding to the shooting of Jacob Blake last month, Clippers coach Doc Rivers said, “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.” The pain echoed in the words of Vemula and Rivers are a stark reminder of the ways in which as a society we have lost our capacity to love our Black/Brown and Dalit brothers and sisters back. And while, we want to hold onto the hope that one day our humanity will be recognized, our dignity will be restored, and we will be loved back, the wait seems to be long and sometimes feels like a never ending struggle. The question is will we ever reach a moment where our births are no longer viewed as setbacks, as tragic accidents of fate that can only be liberated by deaths? Or can we hope for a life free of fear and discrimination, a life filled with hope and promise. A life worth living!
