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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Caste, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Caste, Race, and Social Division in the U.S.
Caste as a Global Problem
How Caste Sustains Itself
The Costs of Caste
Summary
Analysis
In 1933, a Black couple traveled to Natchez, Mississippi. Their names were Allison and Elizabeth Davis, and they were married academics. Having fled their studies at the University of Berlin when Hitler took power, the pair of Harvard anthropologists had decided to put their very lives on the line to study caste in the Jim Crow South. Along with white couple Burleigh and Mary Gardner, who were also anthropologists at Harvard, they planned to embed themselves in the community of Natchez and study how race, class, and caste worked there.
While many people living in the U.S. today may be surprised or offended by the idea that the country revolves around a caste system, Black and white scholars alike were using the term “caste” to describe the U.S.’s social hierarchy in the early 20th century. Caste sustains itself by hiding in plain sight—so even though many have recognized caste’s existence in the U.S. for decades, some people still balk at the terminology because they don’t want to see the ugly truth.
Themes
Because the laws in the South were so restrictive, the Davises had to claim that they were there to study the church. They also had to find bizarre, secretive ways to meet up with the Gardners to share their research, as Black and white people in Natchez did not socialize or even interact. A fifth researcher, a Black man named St. Clair Drake, traveled to Natchez to embed himself in the lower-class Black community, ensuring that the team would have access to all levels of Natchez society. Though the teams knew they were being constantly surveilled, they nevertheless conducted their research, determined to do the work they’d set out to do.
This passage shows how caste forced the Davises to downplay their intelligence, their authority, and their friendship with a white couple in order to survive in the Jim Crow South. Caste ruled every aspect of life in places like Natchez in the early 20th century—and anyone who traveled to those places was forced to abide by caste’s unfair, arbitrary rules.
Themes
By 1941, Davis and Gardner emerged with a 538-page manuscript entitled Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. It was a comprehensive look into the caste system of Natchez, and how the town’s caste system and economic system enforced each other. But a white anthropologist from Yale, John Dollard, had published a similar study of Indianola, Mississippi in 1937, and yet another academic published a similar book in 1939. Davis and Gardner’s research was overshadowed. Some leading Black social scientists even objected to their findings, perhaps not wanting to believe that the American caste system was as rigid, fixed, and insidious as the one in India.
Even when a pair of Black researchers led a comprehensive investigation into caste in the South—a topic that had defined their very lives—white scholars were still rewarded earlier and more enthusiastically for their research on the subject. This example illustrates how difficult it is for even the most intelligent, successful members of the subordinate caste to compete with the dominant caste, because the system is rigged to prioritize dominant-caste people no matter the situation.
Themes
Even though Davis and Gardner’s research struggled to find an audience, as the middle of the century approached, more and more sociologists began studying the concept of caste in the U.S. The argument as to whether the U.S. truly had a caste system was a contentious one, but the debate had arrived nonetheless—all because of Davis and Gardner’s bravery.
Like Onesimus, the Davises were not properly lauded or credited for their impact on society. Members of the subordinate caste, this passage shows, have historically had to struggle for even a fraction of the recognition freely awarded to dominant-caste people.
Themes
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