Comparing Caste and Race: A Terrible Idea

Abstract

Isabel Wilkerson's recent publication has sparked an academic debate regarding the true nature of social hierarchies in South Asia and the West. This article conducts a comparative historical sociology of caste in South Asia, and race in the US, to demonstrate structural differences between these two modes of social stratification. Although caste groups in South Asia had greater possibilities of social mobility and intermarriages, interracial sex and marriage were legally prevented between Whites and non-Whites in the United States. This was because most castes in South Asia were thought to have common origins in the Brahmin caste, whereas most races were thought to have emerged from different species. Furthermore, caste hierarchies often depended on the discretion and power of locally dominant castes, whereas racial hierarchies were legally established through pseudo-scientific theories and enforced in the United States through state authorities. These divergences in their respective trajectories of development and endurance present to us, a more comprehensive understanding of how caste and race were different in their respective configurations. This is also why sweeping generalizations on such forms of social stratification were discouraged by social scientists such as Cox and Ambedkar.