America’s Intersectional Caste System
2nd September 2021
India, a country whose history, language, religion, and culture are synonymous with its caste system,?divides its?1.4 billion people?into rigid hierarchical groups. The Indian caste system assigns everyone a rung on a socially-constructed ladder. Today, more than?200 million Indians?find themselves on the bottom rung. These people, the Dalits, cruelly referred to as the “untouchables,” are regularly denied access to basic necessities like education and healthcare. Furthermore, social mobility is all but impossible. For the “untouchables,” ridiculed and persecuted, life is a miserable existence.
In the United States, a similar caste system has sprung up. Though it is only a few years rather than millennia old, the American caste system, like the Indian one, rewards some and demonizes others. The American caste system is the product of?intersectionality, a framework that uses race, class, and gender to classify individuals. At the bottom of this shaky ladder you will find whites. More specifically, white men. To be even more specific,?“cisgender” white men.