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Eugenics
The Jim Crow era (which lasted from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century) and its attendant Jim Crow laws created a violent atmosphere of racial segregation throughout the American South. Jim Crow laws were aimed at disenfranchising and humiliating free Black men and women by mandating segregation, insisting that “separate but equal” facilities would be provided for them. But Jim Crow ran deeper than mere segregation—the atmosphere of Jim Crow allowed white people to harass, disparage, attack, and publicly lynch their Black neighbors with impunity.
Jim Crow Quotes in Caste
The Caste quotes below are all either spoken by Jim Crow or refer to Jim Crow. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8
Quotes
The Nazis needed no outsiders to plant the seeds of hatred within them. But in the early years of the regime, when they still had a stake in the appearance of legitimacy and the hope of foreign investment, they were seeking legal prototypes for the caste system they were building. They were looking to move quickly with their plans for racial separation and purity, and knew that the United States was centuries ahead of them with its anti-miscegenation statutes and race-based immigration bans.
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Chapter 29
Quotes
Compared to our counterparts in the developed world, America can be a harsh landscape, a less benevolent society than other wealthy nations. It is the price we pay for our caste system. In places with a different history and hierarchy, it is not necessarily seen as taking away from one's own prosperity if the system looks out for the needs of everyone.
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Jim Crow Term Timeline in Caste
The timeline below shows where the term Jim Crow appears in Caste. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter Three: An American Untouchable
White supremacists and eugenicists in the 20th-century U.S. proudly compared the Jim Crow laws of the Southern states, which dictated what Black people could do and where they...
(full context)
Pillar Number Eight: Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority
...it seem absurd—even criminal—to question the inferiority assigned to them. For instance, laws in the Jim Crow South forced Black people to walk in the gutter rather than on the sidewalk, and...
(full context)
Brown Eyes versus Blue Eyes
After essentially ascribing Jim Crow law to the brown-eyed students in her classroom, Mrs. Elliott noted that those children performed...
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Chapter Sixteen: Last Place Anxiety: Packed in a Flooding Basement
The modern-day criminal justice system—which descends from the criminal codes of slavery and Jim Crow —is perhaps the most potent example of how the caste system teaches people which lives...
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Chapter Seventeen: On the Early Front Lines of Caste
...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,...
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Chapter Eighteen: Satchel Paige and the Illogic of Caste
...in baseball—but because he was Black, and because began his career at the height of Jim Crow , he never rose to the fame or success he could have. He could throw...
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