Last updated on January 31, 2021
Damianne is not like other black people.
Teacher, West Carleton Secondary School
I moved to Canada in August 1992, at the age of 12 (almost 13). We initially lived in an apartment on Merivale Road in Canada but my dad and stepmother were building a house in Carp and we moved into it a few months later.
West Carleton Secondary School is in the countryside, in Dunrobin. When I entered grade 9 there in September 1992, I was the only black student at the school. There were some Asians, mostly of Indian and Chinese ancestry. A few years later, two younger black students joined the school. I felt very visible and was out of my depth after having a tight-knit group of friends in St. Lucia.
I loved learning and have always been curious. School was a necessity for the credentials to get the job I wanted. Although I was frustrated that teachers made no effort to understand my accent. I was polite, did my school work, volunteered in extracurricular activities. I knew a lot of people like me growing up in the Caribbean. What does it mean when a white teacher says that a black student is not like other black people?
There Are No Racists in Canada
I was attending the University of Ottawa at the time, sitting at the kitchen table. My sister sat on the floor playing with a white and a black doll. As I tuned in to her play, I heard the white doll telling the black one that she would not play with her because she was black.
My stepmother went to the school, in Carp, ON, to talk to the head of school. Her suggestion was for my stepmother to donate a black doll to the school. The ministry’s response was no better. In the end, my sister changed schools. She was in grade 2 or 3. Since the school was in a different district, her attendance required special paperwork each year and she was not allowed to take the school bus, even if one drove nearby. For years, my parents drove her to school. I even did one year on my way to University.
We had some friends who lived in Carp, a white nuclear family of two parents and two children. I sometimes babysat the kids and my sister would play with them. When we told them of the situation, they responded that there is no racism in Canada. They gradually ghosted us.
Are You a Christian
I lived in India from 2003 to 2005, working at Canadian International School in Bangalore. The first question that local staff, rickshaw drivers, taxi drivers would ask was, “What is your good name, ma’am”? Then, if I told them my name, they would say “Oh, so you are Christian, right?”
People stared and men propositioned my colleagues or exhibited their private parts to them. A man once grabbed me as I walked to a friend’s home after dark. I did not feel Untouchable but I sometimes felt invisible, watching staff fall over themselves to help my blond friend. Where did I fit in that society?
May I Have My Package
In September 2019, I attended w company gathering at a Hilton Hotel in Orlando. The year before, we’d stayed at the hotel across the street. Accidentally, I had a package sent there instead of to my hotel.
One evening, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, my hair combed in a natural style, I went over to the other hotel to get my package. There were two white women at the front desk and no one at the luggage desk. I walked up to the front desk where one of the two women was on the phone. After explaining my situation to the other woman, I asked her what process I needed to follow to get my package.
I can’t remember the last time I felt so small. The woman looked at me with disgust and said something about she didn’t know who my friend was and what I was doing there. I explained that there was some mistake in understanding and I wasn’t there to meet anyone but rather to pick up a package that was accidentally mailed to the wrong hotel. Her facial expression did not change. By the time, a man appeared at the luggage storage desk. I walked away from the unhelpful woman and went to talk to him. He had no trouble understanding my story and helping me confirm my identity to pick up the package.
Feedback to Hilton Staff
I walked back to the front desk and paid the delivery fee but I felt upset. As I started to leave the hotel, I went back to the front desk and spoke to the other lady. Her name tag identified her as a supervisor. I told her about my experience with the other lady. I explained that when I approach a reception desk, I expect to be treated with dignity, not contempt and that I found colleague’s behavior unacceptable. She apologized. I started to leave once more before turning back to the other lady.
I value getting feedback directly from the source. Also, I didn’t trust that the supervisor would say anything to the lady. I wanted her to know my experience of the interaction with her. There were tears in my eyes as I told her that it is hurtful to have people judge me so that they can’t even hear my story. I told her that she did a poor job of representing the Hilton brand in our interaction and I wanted her to think about her behavior so that she could change it before the next person who looks like me or sounds like me comes to her desk for help. Then I left.
Caste: The Lies that Divide Us
These are just some of the stories that have come to mind recently and that I’ve shared with friends in Europe who struggle to understand racism and caste. I always attributed these experiences to racism, but Isabel Wilkerson has changed my thinking in her book, Caste. (Notice that the subtitle is different in Europe versus the US – see the featured image at the top of this post).
You can act yourself out of your race but you can’t act yourself out of your caste.
This conceptualization by Wilkerson highlights my brushes with caste systems. While race canhelp codify caste, they are not the same thing.
Reading Caste
In Caste, Wilkerson does a deep dive into the parallels between structures of the Nazi, Indian and American societies. In addition to uncovering the pillars that support these structures, she also highlights the impact on the people in those societies. She demonstrates how entrenched the impact; caste drives the behaviors of the people inside those hierarchies and in what they accept from themselves and each other. It is difficult to transcend caste because it means fighting not just individuals, but the very system which is built to hold you in a particular box.
The Years 2022 and 2111
It is a measure of how long enslavement lasted in the United States that the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil. No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaved. That will not come until the year 2111.
p. 47-48, Caste
Think about that for a moment! In case, like me (who is not American), you need to look up the dates, America became independent from Great Britain in 1776, and slavery ended in 1865. Slavery officially lasted in America for 246 years.
Surprises and Information Learned in Caste
Milestones that I knew nothing about and found interesting in American history include the draft riots of 1863, the Polish and Italian backlash against black people in Cicero, Il in 1951, endogamy in Alabama until 2000 even though it was overturned federally in 1967. There are so many points from recent history. When people talk about slavery being in the past, they are missing the reality of its impact on the present. The year 2000 was not so long ago; I was 21 years then.
In their search for prototypes, the Nazis had looked into white-dominated countries such as Australia and South America, but “there were no other models of miscegenation law that the Nazis could find in the world,” Whitman wrote. “Their overwhelming interest was in the ‘classic example,’ the United States of America.”
p. 82, Caste
Can you imagine being ill and not being able to get an ambulance to help you (p. 117) or experiencing swimming as life-threatening (p. 120)?
Caste Book Club
My book club spent two sessions discussing this book. But if you don’t have a book club, you can listen to the podcast where Oprah discusses the book with Isabel Wilkerson as well as participants in her book club. In the podcast, you’ll hear people in the audience speaking about their own experience with caste and exploring their role in the American caste system. Wilkerson also shares part of her journey in researching and writing the book and she retells some of her own experiences with caste.
If you are interested in anti-racism, in learning about the experience of others who may or may not look like you, and in considering your place in building a more just world, I recommend that you read Caste. I think it’s important to discuss the concepts that you are reading with others, particularly if they are new ideas to you. We each have a place to play in reflecting on our ways of being in the world and recognizing the places where we can make an impact in creating the world that we want for ourselves and for future generations.
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