One of the aspects emphasized in this study of the role of religion in society is the importance of the general social situation, that is, the nature of the social structure and the culture of a particular historical period. For the response of religion is not to society in the abstract, but to society as it presents itself in particular social situations.
It is therefore appropriate that an examination of religion and race in An American life should begin with an analysis of the major structural and cultural dimensions of race relations.
For all practical purposes, this means an exploration of the structural realities of racial caste and the cultural meaning and functions of the ideology of racism.
It should be noted that in this analysis the focus is really upon the USA and its historical experience. While 4 the document follows the common practice of referring to this ‘ experience as the “American” experience, I acknowledge a certain discomfort in doing so.
NATURE & MEANING OF CASTE
While there has been considerable debate concerning the appropriateness of using the term “caste” to characterize the relationships between Whites and non-Whites in American life, few students of American stratification will argue that there are not many caste-like relationships between the races in America.
A well-known anthropologist, A. L. Kroeber, has defined caste as:
“Endogenous and hereditary subdivision of an ethnic unit occupying a position of superior or inferior rank or social esteem in comparison with other subdivisions.” (Davie, 424-432).
Such a system involves at least the following major elements:
AMERICAN BLACKS
(1) A hierarchy of social rank.
(2) A restriction of social mobility from one -rank to another.
(3) A prohibition of intermarriage between members of various ranks and
(4) A set of rules designed to keep the various ethnic subdivisions at appropriate social distance.
In American race relations all these elements are present. Blacks have been systematically held in a subordinate status position in virtually every area of life. They have been denied the political rights of citizenship; systematically limited to low-status occupations; and restricted to inferior schools, poor housing, and separate and unequal public accommodations.
Beyond these manifestations of inequality of status, the fact that they are based upon color and race, rather than achievement, makes these relationships hereditary. The African American is born into the status and is severely restricted in terms of social mobility. And, of course, laws and taboos against interracial marriage persist with the expectation that the system of racial caste should remain permanent.
Finally, a systematic separation of the races established by Jim Crow legislation/ housing discrimination, and segregated institutions has resulted in deepening the alienation and antagonisms between races and in creating a caste-like dual social order made up of a “White society” and a “Black society.” Relationships between these two parts of a racially split American life have been carefully restrained and guided through an elaborate etiquette of race relations which meticulously preserves the fact of caste-like inferiority of the subordinate race. Any violations of caste rules are severely punished, often in an extralegal manner.
IDEOLOGICAL COUNTERPART OF CASTE
Even though these facts have been altered by recent events in many parts of the country, a reading of J. Griffin’s book, Black Like Me, serves to document the persistence of caste in American life. Although this caste-like system of race relations has found its fullest development in the South, it has left its mark upon every social institution throughout America. (Rose)
An important counterpart of the emergence of caste in America was the development of an ideology of racism which served to justify the system of caste-like inequality. This convergence of caste and racismis relatively rare in human history. There has been caste without racism in India, and there has been racism without an elaborate system of caste as in Germany. The mingling of the two was most strikingly developed in the United States up to 1940 and in South Africa’s apartheid government.
MAJOR ELEMENTS: OF RACISM
Major elements of racism which have become a part of the White American’s belief system include the following:
Inequality of the races: Races are basically unequal having either been created so by God or having emerged from the evolutionary tree at different stages of evolution. The latter is the evolutionary theory of polygenesis, as against the generally accepted theory of monogenesis.
Biological source of cultures: The development of culture and civilization is a product of the biological endowments of each race.
White race = high culture: The development of the “high culture” of Western civilization is the natural product of a superior Anglo-Saxon race. The non-White races can only produce low cultures. This is the point of the White supremacy arguments.
Nonwhite = low status roles: Since the non-White races are by nature inferior it is appropriate that they should be limited to low status functions and be satisfied with low status rewards.
Race mixing=decay: Amalgamation of the races will inevitably lead to a deterioration of the culture of the higher race.
Race & purity: For this reason, racial purity must be vigorously preserved, and the White race be maintained in the position of dominance.
RACIAL MYTHS
Since these assumptions of racism find little or no support in scientific scholarship, they have come to be identified as racial myths which continue to serve the function of justifying the system of caste that emerged in American history. (Rose).
The development of the inter- functional system of caste and racism in American life is an important if disappointing chapter in American history.
One of the most striking revelations of the history of racismis its relative recency. Most writers who have traced the history of racism have insisted that it first came into being during the colonial period of the 16th century. As one writer put it: “It was when imperialism began to explore and exploit the colored people of Africa, Asia, and America that segregation and discrimination based on color and race was initiated. It was then that color was first associated with ‘inferiority’ and white with ‘superiority.” (Mays, 48- 49).
SLAVERY
When the Africans arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619, they were not perceived through the norms of racism. Contrary to popular notions they were not bought as slaves, but as indentured servants like those immigrants who came from England. There was no legal foundation in Anglo-Saxon law for slavery. Several decades passed before Blacks were subjected to servitude in perpetuity.
Not until 1661 did Virginia pass the first law permitting permanent servitude in colonial America. And even though the number of Black slaves had grown considerably in the colonies by 1776, there was widespread opposition to slavery, and its status was based on economic and legal considerations, rather than upon race. Many hoped and confidently expected that the institution of slavery would be short- lived and that all in America would become free men and women. (Handlin).
IDEOLOGY OF RACISM
Toward the end of the 19th century, several forces led America to embrace a combination of caste and racism exceeded only by the apartheid system of South Africa. In his brilliant account of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, C.V. Woodward documented America’s capitulation to racism at that time.
DISENFRANCHISED BLACKS
Before the end of the century, the Negro became the common sectional scapegoat of the South, reconciling the dissident White classes and restoring the unity of the solid South. [t was in this context that the southern states enacted the famous Jim Crow laws which disfranchised blacks, segregated the trains and streetcars; hotels and restaurants, theaters and public parks, and virtually every social institution in the South. And again, the ideology of racism was appealed to for the defense of the segregation and subordination of black Americans. (Woodward).
But the ideology of racism now had some new dimensions. Partly influenced by a pseudo-scientific concern about racial difference and partly prompted by the literature on racism that was developing in Europe, books were published which carried such titles as Dictionary of Races, The Passing of the Great Race, and The Rising Tide of Color Against World Supremacy.
Racism was becoming a national ideology to keep non-Nordics out of the US, Blacks and other non- Whites in subordination, and to justify the country’s new ventures in imperialism.
The importance of the US imperialistic encounter in 1898 (when it took possession of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines from Spain for 20 million dollars) to the spreading of racism throughout the country can hardly be exaggerated. With this venture the US brought under its dominion more than 8 million brown-skinned peoples from the Caribbean to the Philippines. U S dozens, both from the North and the South, were aroused to a combined concern for the destiny of the nation and its White race. National magazines. such as Nation and The Atlantic Monthly editorialized that the inferior-colored races were unfit for self-government.
Racism had been conjoined with jingoistic imperialism. People in the northern part of the US who had half a century earlier chastised the South for its unwillingness to extend the principles of liberty and equality to Blacks, now subscribed to the same fundamental presupposition that the inferior-colored people were unsuited for full participation in political life. The New York Times on May 10,1900 reported editorially that “northern men no longer denounce the suppression of Negro votes in the South as it used to do.”
A southern senator publicly thanked a northern senator for his “complete announcement of the divine right of the Caucasian to govern the inferior races.” This most amply vindicated the South. (Woodward) Southern racism had not only gotten a new lease on life, but it had become a part of a new national wave of the future, which was not to ebb until World War if.
