In a pattern similar to my previous post, here are my Top 5 favorite quotes from The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. It's so hard to narrow it down to just 5, but here it goes: "I cannot find those mild and gracious words to clothe the carnage. . . . . Reword our specific discontent into some plaintive melody, a little whine, a little whimper, not too much--and no rebellion!" - To the Pale Poets by Ray Durem (pg. 5) "we a hambone people we a gumbo gulosh we a gospel feast of rhythm and rice bibles and dice fire and ice we dark we black" - A Hambone Gospel by Lamont B. Steptoe (pg. 54) "They'll let you play anybody but you, that's pretty much what they will do." - A Poem for Players by Al Young (pg. 119) "The golden days are gone. Why do we wait So long upon the marble steps, blood Falling from our open wounds? and why Do our black faces search the empty sky? Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing We have lost, wandering in strange lands?" - Nocturne at Bethesda by Arna Bontemps (pg. 297) "Lift ev'ry voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list'ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won." -Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, the Black National Anthem, by James Weldon Johnson (pg. 357) Any other poems or quotes that touched people?

I thought it would be fun to revisit The Water Dancer since we barely scratched the surface when we discussed it so long ago. I also thought a fun way to revisit this book would be to scour my notes and underlines and pick out my top 5 favorite quotes: "I remember how these young couples would hold one another, each morning before going to their separate tasks, how they would clasp hands at night, sitting on the steps of their quarters, how they would fight and draw knives, kill each other, before being without each other, kill each other, because Natchez-way was worse than death, was living death, an agony of knowing that somewhere in the vastness of America, the one whom you lived most was parted from you, never again to meet in this shackled, fallen world." Pgs. 45-46. "For it is not simply by slavery that you are captured, but by a kind of fraud, which paints its executors as guardians at the gate, staving off African savagery, when it is they themselves who are savages, who are Mordred , who are the Dragon, in Camelot's clothes." Pg. 100. "But I will like you a heap less if your plan is for us to get to this Underground and for you to make yourself up as another Nathaniel. That ain't freedom to me, do you understand? Ain't no freedom for a woman in trading a white man for a colored." Pg. 111. "Slavery was the root of all struggle. For it was said that the factories enslaved the hands of children, and that child-bearing enslaved the bodies of women, and that rum enslaved the souls of men. In that moment I understood, from that whirlwind of ideas, that this secret war was waged against something more than the Taskmasters of Virginia, that we sought not merely to improve the world, but to remake it." Pgs. 251-52. "All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. . . They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave." Pg. 370-71. I would love to hear other people's favorite quotes or if any of these quotes stir other points of interest.

I want to put forward a critique of Wilkerson’s Caste and hope to generate a dialogue about this critique in this forum post. I want to acknowledge that much of this criticism relies on Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly’s review of Caste on Boston Review which is well-worth reading in whole. I want to start by pointing out the stark contrast between solutions offered in last month’s book, Chancellor Williams’ The Destruction of Black Civilization and Wilkerson’s Caste. Whereas Williams rejects the idea of white people playing a role in the liberation of Black people instead asserting a need to center working-class Black Americans in this effort, Wilkerson from the beginning seems to argue that changing the attitudes of (elite) white people is the solution to the cruelties of the caste system, an appeal to “radical empathy.” Indicative of this goal, Wilkerson begins the text, she describes “The Man in the Crowd,” August Landmesser who was captured in an image keeping his arms crossed in a sea of Nazi sympathizers heiling Hitler, asking the reader to imagine what it would look like to follow Landmesser’s lead today. She also opens the book with an Albert Einstein quote, “If the majority knew of the root of this evil, then the road to its cure would not be long.” From the beginning it seems like this is a white audience oriented book. This appeal to white people, particularly the affluent New York Times readers who have made her book a best seller, though necessary, seems insufficient to address system of racial oppression in this country. Even Wilkerson’s description of the country’s race problem, through the concept of caste, seems sanitized for the white audience whose hearts and minds she hopes to change, without demanding any redistribution of white wealth and power. While she acknowledges the economic motivations of the slave trade which initiated the divisions she describes, she shies away from further analysis of the U.S. capitalist system, and how it historically perpetuated and to this day perpetuates racial antagonism. In dealing with one of the stanchest critics of applying the caste concept to U.S. race relations (254–55), she dismisses Oliver Cromwell Cox, the marxist sociologist who wrote Caste, Class & Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948). Racial antagonism, according to Cox, is rooted in economic exploitation. Cox was critical of the emerging “caste school” of race relations, which seemed devoid of economic analysis. Cox explains that our social system emerged from the necessities of the United States’ slaveocracy, to legally and socially demean enslaved Black laborers for the purpose of perpetuating their economic exploitation. If we lose sight of this origin, then the path of liberation from the social system it has created becomes obscured. Unfortunately, I think Wilkerson’s description of caste, while helpful in articulating the systemic cruelties and indignities regardless of any individual Black American’s educational and economic achievements, does little to assist a multiracial class struggle. I find that a multiracial class struggle (like the Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon warehouse unionizing effort) is necessary to transform a system of entrenched white supremacy and racialized exploitation. Thus, I find that an political economic analysis of racial capitalism is more important for our historical moment than an analysis of racial caste.

As I reflect on Caste and think about the foundations of our Republic, the latter was built on the former. Is America damned to always be defined by its original sin, or can it ever overcome its history of slavery and racism that persists to this day. And what would that look like? America? I think not. An egalitarian society is anathema to American values of individualism, bootstrap work ethic, and personal accomplishment. America is built on its history of class stratifications, racism, xenophobia, and many other things we would like to sweep under the rug, and I fear that trying to build a better America may result in it not being America. But is this such a bad thing?

The definition of racism I subscribe to is one offered by the Center for Racial Justice in Education which defines racism as a system of social structures that provides or denies access, safety, resources and power based on race categories and produces and reproduces race-based inequities. It affects us individually, is built into our institutions, and is woven into the fabric of our culture. In short racism = structural/historical power + prejudice I think Black people can most definitely perpetuate racism, however, I’m hesitant to say Black people can be racist. The idea of calling Black people racist strikes me as odd when I think of the structural/historical power required for racism (based on the definition above). Whether we think Black people can be racist or not... if we’re in agreement that racism is evil and should be dismantled, does it matter whether we say Black people perpetuate racism or straight up call Black people racist? I think the more important conversation is how to dismantle the entire system while simultaneously building new ones.