Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (42 page)
Read Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents Online
Authors: Isabel Wilkerson
“even during benign social”
:
Elizabeth Page-Gould, “The Unhealthy Racist,” in Marsh, Mendoza-Denton, and Smith,
Are We Born Racist?,
p. 41.
“require cooperation to”
:
Susan T. Fiske, “Are We Born Racist?” ibid., pp. 7–15.
premature aging of the cells
:
Arline T. Geronimus et al., “Race-Ethnicity, Poverty, Urban Stressors, and Telomere Length in a Detroit Community-based Sample,”
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
56 (June 2015): 199–224. See also Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn, “Arline Geronimus: Q&A About Weathering, or How Chronic Stress Prematurely Ages Your Body,”
Everyday Health,
October 16, 2018,
https://www.everydayhealth.com/wellness/united-states-of-stress/advisory-board/arline-t-geronimus-q-a/
.
“Middle class African American”
:
Lipsitz,
Possessive Investment in Whiteness,
p. 111.
“High levels of everyday”
:
David R. Williams, interview by author, Providence, R.I., May 29, 2013.
The average white American
:
“Disparities within racial and ethnic groups persist even at the highest level of education. The same highly educated black men and women who live longer than less educated whites still live about 4.2 years less than comparably educated whites and 6.1 years less than comparably educated Hispanics.” S. Jay Olshansky et al., “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, And Many May Not Catch Up,”
Health Affairs
31, no. 8.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2011.0746
.
“the out-of-place principle”
:
Graves,
Race Myth,
p. 133.
“buy protection from the”
:
Hacker,
Two Nations,
p. 42.
B
ACKLASH
Chapter Twenty-Five: A Change in the Script
the Great Recession
:
Paul Solman, “How the 2008 Financial Crisis Crashed the Economy and Changed the World,”
PBS NewsHour,
September 13, 2018,
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-the-2008-financial-crisis-crashed-the-economy-and-changed-the-world
.
“You’ve got the first sort”
:
David Gregory, “Sen. Biden Apologizes for Remarks on Obama,” NBC News, January 31, 2007,
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/16911044/ns/nbc_nightly_news_with_brian_williams/t/sen-biden-apologizes-remarks-obama/#.Xkr895E8KhA
.
the majority of white Americans did not vote
:
In 2008, 57 percent of whites voted against the Democrat. In 2012, 61 percent voted against him. Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 218. For in-depth analysis of the role of race in Barack Obama’s campaign and presidency, see Gillespie,
Race and the Obama Administration.
“The cultural divides of the”
:
Patrick Fisher, “Economic Performance and Presidential Vote for Obama: The Underappreciated Influence of Race,”
Politics, Groups, and Identities
4, no. 1 (2015): 30–46.
https://doi.org/10.1080/21565503.2015.1050413
.
Lyndon Johnson was the last
:
Democrats won the following percentages of the white vote in presidential elections since 1976: Carter, 48 percent in 1976; Carter, 36 percent in 1980; Mondale, 41 percent in 1984; Dukakis, 40 percent in 1988; Clinton, 39 percent in 1992; Clinton, 44 percent in 1996; Gore 42 percent in 2000; Kerry, 41 percent in 2004; Obama, 43 percent in 2008, and 39 percent in 2012; Hillary Clinton, 37 percent in 2016. “How Groups Voted in 1976,” Roper Center, n.d.,
https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1976
. The shadow of the Civil War seemed to hang over the 2008 election. Obama carried every state that Abraham Lincoln had won in 1860, an election with an almost entirely white electorate but one that became a proxy for the future of slavery and of the Republic, according to Fisher, “Economic Performance and Presidential Vote for Obama,” pp. 30–46, esp. 38. See also Timothy J. Hoffman, “The Civil Rights Realignment: How Race Dominates Presidential Elections,”
Political Analysis
17, article 1 (2015),
https://scholarship.shu.edu/pa/vol17/iss1/1
.
“The symbolism of Obama’s election”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 227.
“the ability of a black person”
:
Gillespie,
Race and the Obama Administration,
p. 194.
“The single most important”
:
“Top GOP Priority: Make Obama a One-Term President,”
National Journal,
October 23, 2010,
https://www.nationaljournal.com/member/magazine/top-gop-priority-make-obama-a-one-term-president-20101023/
.
“no place for it”
:
David Batty, “ ‘You Lie’: Republican Joe Wilson’s Outburst at Obama Health Speech,”
Guardian,
September 10, 2009,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/10/you-lie-joe-wilson-obama-speech
.
She jabbed her finger
:
Tommy Christopher, “Drama Clubbed: Jan Brewer Says ‘I Felt a Little Bit Threatened’ by President Obama,”
Mediaite,
January 26, 2012,
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/drama-clubbed-jan-brewer-says-i-felt-a-little-bit-threatened-by-president-obama/
; Brittney Cooper, “White Women’s Rage: Five Reasons Jan Brewer Should Keep Her Fingers to Herself,”
Ms.,
January 31, 2012,
https://msmagazine.com/2012/01/31/5-thoughts-on-why-jan-brewer-should-keep-her-fingers-to-herself/
.
a radiology technician
:
Reed Karaim, “America’s Most Puzzling Governor,”
Politico,
March 6, 2014,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/03/jan-brewer-americas-most-puzzling-governor-104384
. Brewer rose from secretary of state to governor when President Obama named Gov. Janet Napolitano to his cabinet. Arizona has no lieutenant governor. Brewer as secretary of state was next in line.
“thought he could lecture me”
:
Donovan Slack, “Jan Brewer: Obama ‘Didn’t Feel I Treated Him Cordially,’ ”
Politico44 Blog,
January 25, 2012,
https://www.politico.com/blogs/politico44/2012/01/jan-brewer-obama-didnt-feel-i-treated-him-cordially-112328
.
“You have ONE more”
:
Howard Fischer, “Brewer Using Tiff with Obama to Raise Money,”
Arizona Daily Star,
January 30, 2012,
https://tucson.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/brewer-using-tiff-with-obama-to-raise-money/article_105ecbfa-4b79-11e1-8fa7-0019bb2963f4.html
.
An entire machinery had moved
:
Jonathan Chait, “The Color of His Presidency,”
New York,
April 4, 2014,
http://nymag.com/news/features/obama-presidency-race-2014-4/
.
purges that accelerated
:
Kevin Morris et al., “Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote,” Brennan Center for Justice, July 20, 2018,
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/purges-growing-threat-right-vote
.
”A paper found that states”
:
Chait, “Color of His Presidency.”
the number of hate groups
:
Mark Potok, “The Year in Hate and Extremism,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 4, 2013,
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2013/year-hate-and-extremism
.
explicit anti-black attitudes
:
“AP Poll: U.S. Majority Have Prejudice Against Blacks,”
USA Today,
October 27, 2012,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/10/27/poll-black-prejudice-america/1662067/
.
police were killing unarmed African-Americans
:
“Police Killed More Than 100 Unarmed Black People in 2015,” Mapping Police Violence, n.d.,
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed
.
at a rate of 1 in 1,000
:
Amin Khan, “Getting Killed by Police Is a Leading Cause of Death for Young Black Men in America,”
Los Angeles Times,
August 16, 2019.
“most whites in the United States”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 226.
“Any upheaval in the universe”
:
Baldwin,
Fire Next Time,
p. 9.
“masked an undercurrent of anxiety”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 273.
“I went to bed last night”
:
Thomas B. Edsall, “Is Rush Limbaugh’s Country Gone?”
New York Times,
November 18, 2012,
https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/is-rush-limbaughs-country-gone/
.
“If Barack gets reelected”
:
Meena Hart Duerson, “Florida Man Who Warned He Wouldn’t ‘Be Around’ If Barack Obama Was Reelected Kills Himself After the Election,”
New York Daily News,
November 14, 2012,
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-article-1.1201911
; Dan Amira, “Overreactions: Florida Man Commits Suicide Over Obama Win,”
New York,
November 14, 2012,
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2012/11/florida-man-commits-suicide-over-obama-win.html
.
“White voters’ preference”
:
John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck,
Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), pp. 28–30, 175, 176.
“Whites’ racial attitudes are”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 7.
“are seeking to reassert”
:
Ibid., p. 5.
53 percent
:
The Roper Center at Cornell University put Donald Trump’s 2016 share of the white vote at 57 percent, 1 percent less than CNN’s number.
“Trump was ushered into office”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
pp. 272, 267.
priorities of white evangelicals
:
Seth Dowland, “American Evangelicalism and the Politics of Whiteness,”
Christian Century,
June 19, 2018,
https://www.christianCentury.org/article/critical-essay/american-evangelicalism-and-politics-whiteness
.
“Even though white Americans”
:
Robert Tsai, “Specter of a White Minority,”
Los Angeles Review of Books,
September 3, 2018,
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/specter-of-a-white-minority/
.
“These aggrieved whites are”
:
Jardina,
White Identity,
p. 278.
“In many ways, a sense”
:
Diana C. Mutz, “Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
115 (May 8, 2018): 4330–39,
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718155115
.
“Whether out of personal animus”
:
Peter Baker, “Can Trump Destroy Obama’s Legacy?,”
New York Times,
June 23, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/sunday-review/donald-trump-barack-obama.html
.
“dominant group status threat”
:
Mutz, “Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship.”
sculpture of Robert E. Lee
:
Brendan Wolfe, “Robert Edward Lee Sculpture,”
Encyclopedia Virginia,
March 20, 2019,
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Robert_Edward_Lee_Sculpture#start_entry
.
more than seventeen hundred monuments
:
“Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy,” Southern Poverty Law Center,
https://www.splcenter.org/20190201/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy
. The dataset, map, and online report are updated as of February 1, 2019. The original report was published on April 21, 2016. It was written by Booth Gunter and Jamie Kizzire, with contributions from Cindy Kent.
“Its foundations are laid”
:
Alexander H. Stephens, vice president of the Confederate States of America, “Cornerstone Speech,” March 21, 1861, in Henry Cleveland,
Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private: With Letters and Speeches, Before, During, and Since the War
(Philadelphia, 1886), pp. 717–29, available at
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/
.
Gone with the Wind
:
Leonard J. Leff, “
Gone With the Wind
and Hollywood’s Racial Politics,”
Atlantic,
December 1999,
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/12/gone-with-the-wind-and-hollywoods-racial-politics/377919/
.
“The blacks are immeasurably”
:
Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee, December 27, 1856, in
Encyclopedia Virginia,
https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Letter_from_Robert_E_Lee_to_Mary_Randolph_Custis_Lee_December_27_1856
.
“he would teach us a lesson”
:
“Testimony of Wesley Norris,”
National Anti-Slavery Standard,
April 14, 1866, available at
http://fair-use.org/wesley-norris/testimony-of-wesley-norris
. See also Sean Kane, “Myths & Misunderstandings | Lee as a Slaveholder,” American Civil War Museum, n.d.,
https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder
.
Arlington National Cemetery
:
Robert M. Poole, “How Arlington National Cemetery Came to Be,”
Smithsonian Magazine,
November 2009,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-arlington-national-cemetery-came-to-be-145147007/
.
“there was a right side”
:
Frederick Douglass, speech delivered in Madison Square, New York, May 30, 1878, p. 13,
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mfd.23011
.
remove the Confederate flag
:
Nathaniel Cary and Doug Stanglin, “South Carolina Takes Down Confederate Flag,”
USA Today
via
Greenville
(S.C.)
News,
July 10, 2015,
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/10/south-carolina-confederate-flag/29952953/
.
Landrieu was moved
:
Rachel Brown, “How New Orleans’ Mayor Was Inspired by a Jazz Great to Take Down Confederate Monuments,”
National Geographic,
March 11, 2018,
https://nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/confederate-monuments-robert-lee-new-orleans-mitch-landrieu-katie-couric-video-documentary/
; Britt McCandless Farmer, “Behind the Decision to Remove a Statue of Robert E. Lee,” CBS News, March 11, 2018,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/behind-the-decision-to-remove-a-statue-of-robert-e-lee/
.
a fairly straightforward process
:
Landrieu,
Shadow of Statues,
p. 186.
“They are ashamed”
:
Germany underwent a physical denazification after the Allies’ victory in 1945. Statues of Nazi leaders are illegal, and the country has more restrictive speech and anti-hate laws than does America. There are several German military bases named after Third Reich generals, including the Field Marshal Erwin Rommel Barracks in Augustdorf, Germany. There was a movement to change these names in 2017. Justin Huggler, “German Army to Drop Nazi Names from Barracks More than 70 Years After the End of World War Two,”
Telegraph
(UK), May 14, 2017,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/german-army-drop-nazi-names-barracks-70-years-end-world-war/
. Rommel is a widely debated figure, ambiguous and controversial to this day. In addition to his reputation on the field, he was implicated in a plot to overthrow Hitler and thereafter was forced to commit suicide. That may have been a factor in the naming of several military buildings after him, including the barracks. Rommel’s burial site at Herrlingen Cemetery in Blaustein includes a tomb, a headstone, and signage. Generally, Rommel’s role both in Hitler’s war machine and in the assassination attempt is disputed.
not one construction company
:
Landrieu,
Shadow of Statues,
p. 187.
“any company that dared”
:
Mitch Landrieu, “What I Learned from My Fight to Remove Confederate Monuments,”
Guardian,
March 24, 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2018/mar/24/new-orleans-mayor-louisiana-confederate-statues-removal-never-stop-confronting-racial-injustice
.
“I’ll get run out”
:
Landrieu,
Shadow of Statues,
p. 189.
“People who had served”
:
Ibid., pp. 188, 190, 191, 192.
a construction company willing
:
Ibid., p. 192.
His figure dangled from a crane
:
Campbell Robertson, “From Lofty Perch, New Orleans Monument to the Confederacy Comes Down,”
New York Times,
May 19, 2017,
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/us/confederate-monument-new-orleans-lee.html
; Tegan Wendland, “With Lee’s Statue Removal, Another Battle of New Orleans Coming to a Close,” National Public Radio, May 20, 2017,
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/20/529232823/with-lee-statues-removal-another-battle-of-new-orleans-comes-to-a-close
.
“These monuments celebrate”
:
Rachel Brown, “How New Orleans’ Mayor Was Inspired by a Jazz Great to Take Down Confederate Monuments,”
National Geographic,
March 11, 2018,
https://nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/confederate-monuments-robert-lee-new-orleans-mitch-landrieu-katie-couric-video-documentary/
.
“They were created as political”
:
Landrieu, “What I Learned from My Fight.”
fighting to keep monuments
:
Howard Koplowitz, “Legislature Passes Monuments Preservation Bill,”
Alabama Live,
May 19, 2017,
https://www.al.com/news/2017/05/house_passes_monuments_preserv.html
.
“I wanted people to have”
:
Peter Eisenman, in “How Long Does One Feel Guilty?”
Der Spiegel,
May 9, 2005,
https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel-interview-with-holocaust-monument-architect-peter-eisenman-how-long-does-one-feel-guilty-a-355252.html
.
This is where Hitler spent
:
Joachim Fest,
Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the Third Reich
(New York: Picador, 2002), p. 116.
“To which I respond”
:
Susan Neiman, “There Are No Nostalgic Nazi Memorials,”
Atlantic,
September 14, 2019,
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/germany-has-no-nazi-memorials/597937/
.
Germany chose quite literally
:
Joshua Zeitz, “Why There Are No Nazi Statues in Germany,”
Politico,
August 20, 2017,
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/20/why-there-are-no-nazi-statues-in-germany-215510
.
In Germany, displaying the swastika
:
German Strafgesetzbuch (criminal code) section 86a, outlining the illegality of disseminating Nazi symbols and propaganda,
https://germanlawarchive.iuscomp.org/?p=752#86a
.
the rebel flag is incorporated
:
Erin McClam, “Flags of Some Southern States Still Include Confederate Symbols,” NBC News, June 23, 2015,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/flags-some-southern-states-still-include-confederate-symbols-n380161
; “Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Appeal of Mississippi Flag Case,” WLOX, January 12, 2004,
https://www.wlox.com/story/1597564/supreme-court-refuses-to-hear-appeal-of-mississippi-flag-case/
.
all currently have the death penalty
:
“The State of Capital Punishment,” National Conference of State Legislatures, July 30, 2019,
https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/the-state-of-capital-punishment.aspx
. See also “State by State,” Death Penalty Information Center, n.d.,
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state
.
“Not even members of”
:
Neiman, “There Are No Nostalgic Nazi Memorials.”
“privately mourn for family members”
:
Neiman,
Learning from Germans,
p. 267.