The Caste System of North America

I

THE purpose of this article is to demonstrate that a caste system already exists in North America, and to consider the possibility that the system may, in the future, be extended and organized.

Caste is very frequently used as a synonym for class — usually the class of which the writer disapproves. Properly the word indicates an organization of society based solely on birth; and the most complete example of such an organization is that found to-day in Hindustan.

Hindu society is classified by innumerable divisions and subdivisions, into one or the other of which every Hindu must be born, and out of which he cannot escape. He may, it is true, become ‘outcaste,’ but in that case he has lost his place in society altogether; socially he has ceased to exist.

A Brahman who looses caste does not become a Kshatriya; he does not fall to a lower caste. He becomes casteless, though he may, by appropriate rites and purifications, regain his old caste. So that even an outcaste does not lose caste entirely. His original caste, and no other, is still latent in him and can be restored.

There are four main castes — the Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas, and Sudras, corresponding traditionally to the occupations of priest, warrior, trader, and artisan. But, though this would suggest that caste was at one time a class-distinction, yet at the

present day a caste may include all classes, save that of priest, which is reserved to the Brahmans. Caste is no bar to any occupation. A rajah may be a Sudra; his cook may be a Brahman. The rajah is of a higher class than his cook, though of a very much lower caste; and though the Brahman will cook the rajah’s dinner, he will not eat it with him, or permit his daughter to marry the rajah.

As it is easier for men of similar habits to work together, there will naturally be some tendency in the castes to monopolize particular employments; but every caste may have members in all classes, and of all degrees of distinction in society.

Though it is not looked upon with approval, marriage is possible between castes which are not widely separated. In particular, a legal marriage can take place between two contiguous castes. But in all such mixed marriages the children belong entirely to the lower caste. If, for instance, a Brahman marry a Kshatriya wife, the children will all be Kshatriyas. The blood of the higher castes may thus permeate downward into the lower, but that of the lower can never contaminate the higher. It is a valve-system, and works one way only. A Brahman can have no trace of Kshatriya, or any but Brahman blood. The least trace of any other would make him simply a member of the lower caste. But a Vaisya, or even a Sudra, might conceivably be one-half, threequarters, seven-eighths, or any other fraction, Brahman. He remains entirely of the lower caste.

As a result, while the Brahman blood remains pure, there must be a slow but constant tendency in all other castes to approximate to it.

Many authorities hold that the caste system arose from racial differences, long since obliterated by the gradual downward mixture of blood, — and, no doubt, by some upward mixture too, — and by long-continued similarity of life and environment. It is quite significant that the Hindu word for caste, Varna, means color, and that the castes are distinguished by color names — white, red, yellow, and black. To the Brahman the Sudra isa ‘black man.’ Experts, indeed, maintain that a difference in appearance can be seen between the fine-boned, light-skinned Brahman and the darker, coarser Sudra.

Certainly there are good grounds for regarding Hindu castes as color-distinctions.

I believe this to be a fair, though very incomplete, statement of caste, correct in its main outlines.

Such a system has never existed in Europe, because there has never been a race-competition sufficiently acute to justify it. Aristocracies have, from time to time, attempted to establish castes for the purpose of maintaining hereditary privilege; but the attempts have invariably failed. The races living in any one part of Europe have always been so similar as to amalgamate easily. Race in Europe is really homogenous, and, though a great deal is said about Teuton and Saxon and Celt, yet, in the first place, the terms are usually misapplied, and, in the second place, Teuton and Celt are first cousins at widest remove. The Huns, the only real aliens who ever invaded Europe, were beaten back and utterly destroyed.

All European aristocracies have been constantly renewed from below. In Saxon times the ceorl who owned five hides of land was compelled to become a thegn. A thegn who became sufficiently powerful became an earl. His descendants were noble.

Very, very few of the titled families of England can trace a descent of five hundred years, and all have received constant influxes of plebeian blood. Any artisan may become a brewer; a wealthy brewer frequently becomes a peer of the realm; in a generation, his children are indistinguishable from the scions of the oldest families. The reason for this is, of course, that there is no blood-distinction between classes in Europe and accordingly mixture in any direction not only is possible, but is constantly taking place.

In European society there are classes, but no castes; for no hereditary element is distinct enough to be able to isolate itself.

II

But from the earliest times of European settlement a different condition has prevailed in America. We need not spend much time on the American Indian, for he has never been a part of the European culture of North America. He has been segregated and is dying out. He has never constituted a caste, because he has never been a fellow citizen.

But a second race was imported, with whom amalgamation was even less possible than with the Red Man. As they were required for labor, the Negroes could not be segregated; no geographical separation was possible between the farmer and his labor, as it was between the settler and the Indian. So the Negro became at once an inferior class, separated from the white by his color. The Red Indian has always remained outside the American polity; the Negro slave was from the beginning inside it. His native culture was weak and easily destroyed, though it is said that to it we owe Jazz, and certain forms of the dance. In place of his native culture, he was given the usual culture of the American settler. He adopted a European language, religion, dress, and civilization, so far as he was capable—and was permitted. The American Negro is less African than the American white is European. Fie cannot be absorbed by the European; he cannot amalgamate, and he will not disappear.

The Negro, in fact, forms a true caste. This caste conforms in a curiously accurate way to the rules of Hindu caste. Marriage from below upward is forbidden, under penalty of the most cruel death devised by man. Intermixture of blood downward is, however, permitted, and is continually taking place without penalty. The child of mixed parentage belongs to the lower caste. He is Negro through and through, and the smallest trace of Negro blood is sufficient to constitute full negrohood. As a steady admixture of white blood is being introduced among the Negroes, while no fresh Negro blood can ever be introduced, the Negro is bound to approximate ever closer and closer to the white man. Even now there are many Negroes who can be detected as such only by one very intimately acquainted with the caste marks. But no matter how like a white man he may look, a Negro remains a Negro. He belongs to an inferior caste, contact with which contaminates. He may not occupy the same carriage, or sit at the same table. Certain occupations, such as sleeping-car attendant, are reserved to him. These are castedistinctions.

But, you may object, the distinction between white man and Negro is a racial distinction. The white man must protect his race from degradation in the presence of a large inferior race. This, you may say, is not Hindu caste. Hindu caste is an artificial division between members of the same race. And so we send missionaries to India to abolish caste.

We are apt to despise and ridicule what we are not familiar with. From the Hindu point of view, the Brahman is as far separated from the Sudra as the white man is from the Negro. The Brahman must protect the purity of his race from degradation by the inferior race of the Sudra. To the Brahman, the Sudra is a ‘colored man,’ and he protects his race by caste. What should we think if the Brahmans sent missionaries to abolish the distinction between a white man and some very white Negroes?

Caste is the natural protection of a higher race in the presence of a lower, and occurs whenever two races are compelled to live intermingled.

So there are already two castes in North America, the Negro and the white man. There are signs of more.

A very great number of books have been written on the ’New Immigration,’ or the ‘Alien Immigration.’ Under these names is considered the recent large immigration into North America of Orientals, and of natives of eastern and southeastern Europe.

American writers have pointed out the anomaly of calling these immigrants ‘aliens,’ seeing that all inhabitants of North America, excepting the Red Indians, were originally aliens. But the word corresponds to a very real fact. The tradition of American civilization in the North is English, and any body of immigrants who are felt to be alien to that tradition are felt to be ‘aliens.’

If the immigration had been entirely of English-speaking people we should never have heard of the alien. If it had included only Germans, French, Norwegians, and Northern Europeans, of substantially the same breed and culture as the English, we should have heard very little of aliens.

It is precisely because he is felt to represent a race and a culture foreign to the English tradition, and difficult of assimilation, that the new immigrant is an alien.

III

There are three quite different kinds of aliens — the Oriental, the Eastern European, and the Jew. Of these the Oriental presents the simplest problem and may be considered first.

Orientals — Chinese, Japanese, and Indian — have settled in North America in considerable numbers. There are in the United States 426,574 by the last census, and the proportion in Canada must be about the same. They are naturally most numerous on the Pacific coast — in British Columbia and California. They concentrate in the cities, so that there is not a considerable city on the continent which has not its Oriental colony. They do not intermarry with the white population, since, on one side at any rate, intermarriage is regarded as degrading. They have appropriated the vocation of laundryman and, in some degree, that of market-gardener.

The Japanese take on Americanization very easily; and, although the Chinese are more tenacious of their national culture, yet they too are being naturalized, so that a few generations will produce Oriental-American citizens, who will be fully American, but who cannot be absorbed by the older American stock, since absorption can take place only through intermarriage.

In those parts of the country where Orientals are most numerous, the usual efforts for separation are already being made, and the next generation of Oriental-Americans will constitute a small caste. Its small size will not, however, give any hopes of its extinction; for abundant fresh white blood will be poured into it, without, according to the invariable rule of caste, in the slightest affecting its Oriental nature. A half ‘Chink’ is a full Chink.

One point in Americanization should perhaps be emphasized here. So long as an alien remains alien; so long as he remains a possible citizen of his country of origin, he and his fellows will not form a caste. Caste appears with Americanization; for that process produces, in the case of a race which cannot be assimilated, American citizens who cannot be absorbed into the traditional American race-type. Like the Negro who has ceased to be African, the Oriental will cease to be Chinese or Japanese, and become American, but never Anglo-, or even Europeo-American.

The two remaining types of aliens, though very different, yet have one apparent point of resemblance. They are conceivably capable of being assimilated. We should not feel the same objection to our daughter marrying a Bulgar or a Jew, that we should feel to her marrying a Chinaman or a Negro.

But this is not the whole story. The Anglo-Saxon stock, as it is called, still constitutes fully two thirds of the population, and almost the whole of the rural population. This stock is quite certain that it intends to remain dominant, and to remain Anglo-Saxon. But, if it absorbs the present thirty-per-centalien population, it will certainly cease to be Anglo-Saxon. It is hardly possible for the present Americans to absorb the mass of Poles, Lithuanians, Russians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Italians, Hungarians, and Jews, and to emerge unchanged. These peoples have a strong culture of their own. They have their own ideals of politics and government, and they are very strongly attached to them. Though they may learn to speak English, and to use electric toasters, that will not make them New Englanders. Do the Americanizers fully realize that they are not merely Americanizing the alien — they are also on the road to alienize the American, or to institute caste?

There are abundant signs that the older American stock does not want to absorb these aliens, and that even the aliens are strangely blind to the advantages of absorption. The American workingman is refusing to work beside ‘Dagoes’; and in every industrial city of America there is an unabsorbed body of American citizens who are not Anglo-Saxons, and who do not wish to become so.

On the other hand, it has been said that some of the universities are attempting to limit their students on racial lines. The rumors may be false, and indeed have been denied; but the fact that they are current shows the trend of opinion. The old stock of America is beginning to realize that, if it wishes to preserve itself, it can do so only by forming a caste. Caste is the protection of one race against another which it regards as inferior.

A great deal of confusion has been brought into the question by this idea of Americanization. It has already been mentioned, but, even at the risk of repetition, it is necessary to describe the process and its ideals clearly.

We have numerous excellent societies devoted to the Americanization of the new immigrant. Here he is to be taught the English language, the accepted code of morals, the accepted culture of his adopted country, and is to be made in every way into a good American or Canadian citizen.

Once this is achieved, it is assumed that he will at once amalgamate with the older stock.

Now he does assimilate superficially. in about two generations he becomes externally an American, and would feel himself a foreigner in the home of his ancestors. But it is not sufficient to assume the externals of the old stock, in order to become identical with it in culture. The Americanization of the alien does not mean, to the average American, that he, or his children, are to become partially alien, or that a blend is to be produced; it means that the alien is to be totally absorbed, to abandon his own culture in favor of the English culture of America. This the alien cannot do. He is what he is, because of his blood, his race, and he can no more change that than the leopard can change his spots. Even the Negro, whose native culture was very weak, and who for generations has been exposed to the American culture, is still mentally and culturally distinct from the white man. He has not become an inferior kind of white; he remains a Negro, with the peculiar mind of a Negro. He thinks and feels differently. And if the Negro cannot entirely lose his racial culture, how shall we suppose that vigorous races like the Slavs or the Jews will lose theirs? Americanization is possible, but it does not mean absorption. It means throwing into the melting pot the whole constitution and ideals of historic America.

Now we must consider the most interesting of all our new immigrants — the Jews. Although they have no geographical home, yet they constitute a distinct nation, an international nation, as it were. They are a proud, tenacious race, with an ancient and highly developed culture. They are fully the equals of the European in many respects; they, indeed, consider themselves the superior of the European in all respects; and they have not the slightest intention of losing their culture, or of allowing it to be contaminated, as they would consider it, by what is to them, the inferior culture of the European.

This attitude of superiority is fully reciprocated by the European. He thinks of the Jew very much as the Jew thinks of him. Under these conditions there may be mutual respect, mutual admiration even, but absorption — never.

A lady of Anglo-American descent was, by chance, staying at a hotel frequented by Jews of position. Two Jewish ladies near her were discussing a pleasure resort at which one of them had been staying. ’But, my dear,’ said the other, ‘were not a great many Gentiles there?’

‘Oh, yes! there were a few. Just enough to be disagreeable.’

This is a perfectly natural attitude. The opposite of it is equally natural and equally common. But it is the spirit of caste.

For Judah is more than a religion — it is a nationality, with a national pride. The Jews at present constitute more than a quarter of the population of New York. They are segregating themselves in all the great cities. They neither convert nor are converted. If you are a Jew, you remain one, with all the great traditions of your race. If you are not

— you can never be one. So that the Jew is constituting a caste, and, what makes it difficult for the European, he will consent to constitute no caste excepting the highest. Accordingly, the American caste system in its present condition has two highest castes: one, the European, has numbers: the other, the Jewish, has the greatest racial tenacity in history.

IV

The races, then, which appear to be tending toward a caste organization in North America are the Old Anglo-Saxon American, the Jewish, the Eastern European, the Oriental, and the Negro. There remains one nationality which should not be forgotten, because it illustrates from the opposite side the factors which go to form a caste: I mean the French population in Quebec and in Louisiana.

The French Canadians of Quebec are a virile and flourishing race, with a wellpreserved French culture. They keep themselves separate from the English; but the two nationalities live side by side on very excellent terms, only emphasized by occasional little squabbles. But the French Canadian does not constitute a caste, and never will. He preserves his national characteristics by strict segregation, and without this artificial aid would lose them in a very short time. Members of the French community who settle in nonFrench parts of the country tend to be absorbed by the English stock with which they live. Members of the English community who settle in Quebec tend to become French. Quebec is full of French MacDonalds and Rosses, descendants of Scottish soldiers who settled there at the English occupation.

In Quebec we have a culture which is national and local, but not founded on any distinction of race. So it cannot form a caste.

In Nova Scotia, where the French are in a minority, they have been absorbed in great numbers by the English population, without in any way interfering with the prevailing English culture. The few Negroes in Nova Scotia, although they have been there for generations, have never been absorbed. They constitute a caste, and a caste which is very rapidly getting whiter, without of course getting any less Negro.

Owing probably to the wide misuse of the word, caste, there is in this country a strong prejudice against anything supposed to resemble it. It is supposed to be undemocratic, although caste has nothing to do with political or religious freedom and equality. Caste is not in itself necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, disinterested students of Hindu society claim that caste has given stability and tranquillity to the mixed races of Hindustan as no other institution could have done. They assert that Hindu culture is quite inconceivable without it. Under its rules the various races of India have attained nationhood. They made caste for themselves, as a remedy for their own difficulties; and we have no right to proclaim it bad because Europe, under entirely different circumstances, did something entirely different.

So, when we find a social system, closely resembling the Hindu caste system, growing up in North America, not as the result of legislation or reforms imposed from above, but apparently in spite of opposing legislation, and as the natural expression of the popular will, is it not best to realize that caste may after all have some good in it? Of course, you may not like the word. If so, call it by some other name, — purity of race, or what you will, — but do not pretend that it is not there.

At present we are living under an unregulated and unrecognized caste system, in which the caste rules are administered by lynch law, and in which the duties and obligations of the castes arc undefined. We go about explaining what an undemocratic thing caste is, especially in Europe, where if does not exist; and then we enforce caste rules of unexampled ferocity on the Negro. We tell him one thing, and we do to him another.

Law is, we are told, the expression of the people’s will. At present the people’s will is caste. We do not call it by that name, but we have got the thing; and, if the races of North America are to preserve their traditions and culture, combining them into one great national culture, to which each may contribute its full quota without fear of destruction or of contamination, it is difficult to see what organization is better than that which is at present being elaborated — the organization of caste.

But please take particular note that this is not a plea for more legislation. It is all coming of itself.