Gender, Race, and Class in Today’s America

Part II: Perspectives on Belonging and Exclusion

This unit takes a close look at the social classifications that we often take for granted, everything from broad categorizations of race, ethnicity, and nationality, to smaller social groups of the extended family, the street gang, the “cool kids,” the able-bodied, or the friend group. How are these groups created? How is inclusion or exclusion reinforced through systems of power? To which groups or identities do you belong? Historically, how have people been excluded or included based on racial, ethnic, national, religious, or other identities? What can we do when we see exclusion? How can we create belonging? Before we can discuss these with students and help them generate their own inquiry, we need to know what scholars have already said on these issues. The following is a (very) short sampling of the sociological, anthropological, and theoretical perspectives on belonging and exclusion. A more exhaustive survey would take entire tomes; this is just a few thought-provoking approaches inspired by the seminar on “Race, Gender, and Class in Today’s America” in which I participated.

One of the most pertinent contemporary perspectives on the human tendency to exclude is that of Isabel Wilkerson in her book Caste: The Origin of our Discontents. She argues that we can understand systemic racism in the United States through the lens of caste, just as we can understand the Indian caste system or the caste system of Nazi Germany. Wilkerson makes several crucial points. First, she points out that “the hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality, it is about power--which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources--which groups are seen as worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire them and who does not. It is about respect, authority and assumptions of competence.”¹¹ In the United States, African Americans are the lower caste that has historically been deprived of power, resources, respect, and authority. Students need to understand that racism is not just about feelings of hatred, but systems of oppression with real-world, material effects.

Wilkerson’s second important point is that “caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive.”¹² This is where I think Wilkerson is particularly helpful to an anthropology course: she identifies the significance of race, but complicates it through the framing of caste and compares it with other forms of social exclusion based on ethnic heritage or religion. Our students need to understand that the United States’ system of exclusion based on race has parallels in other countries but is fundamentally different from caste systems elsewhere. We need to help them “make the familiar strange,” as a common anthropology aphorism states, not only for the sake of social science, but to show the absolute absurdity of racism.

In a particularly powerful anecdote, Wilkerson describes a conversation with a Nigerian woman who tells her that “there are no black people in Africa,” but rather that it is “only when they come to America that they become black.”¹³ The racial caste system with which our students are most familiar, which serves a backdrop to the struggles of Eastwood residents in Renegade Dreams—and very likely is a backdrop to our students’ lives too—is not immutable nor even common among human societies.

The opposite of exclusion is inclusion or belonging. Belonging can be created and reinforced in a great many ways, including food, clothing, religion, and communication practices. Here I would like to focus on how ritual and relationships with land can create belonging. These are both important to indigenous people, as described by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Ritual, or ceremony, “focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable.”¹⁴ Kimmerer is describing the role of ritual for indigenous people, specifically the Thanksgiving Address recited by Native peoples of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, but her statement holds in many contexts. In Renegade Dreams, the Divine Knights recite ritual statements to demonstrate their loyalty to the gang and reinforce their belonging.¹⁵ Birthdays, graduations, pep rallies, weddings, and church are among the rituals our students may be familiar with, providing openings to discuss how these rituals reinforce their feelings of belonging.

Relationships with land, which often overlap with ritual, are also critical to belonging. Braiding Sweetgrass describes how, for indigenous people, this relationship with land has been especially important as the basis for their worldview and way of life. Because of that, removing native people from the land, by sending them to residential schools or confining them to reservations, has operated as a mode of social exclusion. In the chapter, “Putting Down Roots,” Kimmerer describes a group of Mohawk people trying to reclaim and replant their land and, in the process, heal from the process of dislocation that occurred when their forebears were sent to the infamous Carlisle Indian School.¹⁶ Thus, legacies of social exclusion are combated by laying claim, declaring belonging to the land. While I would contend that indigenous people have a particularly important and deep relationship with land, this also applies to other social groups. In Renegade Dreams, the Divine Knights reinforce their sense of belonging to the gang through contestations over their territory. Other residents of Eastwood declare that they belong by building a museum and trying to protect homes from being destroyed by gentrification. Belonging can be contested, even demanded.

Anthropology as a discipline has long studied belonging and exclusion, though it has not always been discussed in those terms. Early 20th century anthropologists often engaged with how social bonds are constructed through kinship, religion, and economics. To provide just one example, the founding anthropologists Bronislaw Malinowski and Marcel Mauss discussed the role of the “kula ring” gift exchange in parts of Papua New Guinea. The trade of gifts of special value between communities cemented social bonds and created systems of reciprocity.¹⁷ This exchange was a form of creating social belonging. Note that the flip side of social belonging is that some people may be reduced in status, excluded, if they fail to participate in the kula ring or similar practice.

Indeed, social groupings are constructed through the delineation of who belongs and who is excluded. This applies to ethnicities, families, gangs, or any other social category. It would not make sense to say “I am a woman” if there were not the possibility of being another gender. It would not make sense to say, “I am American,” if there were not the possibility of being German or Chinese or Mexican. It would not make sense to say, as in Renegade Dreams, “I am a Divine Knight,” if it were not possible to belong to a different gang or be unaffiliated. In anthropological or philosophical terms, we would say that the “I” takes on meaning through “the other.” This is all so obvious as to not be obvious, and that is exactly what anthropology studies.

One additional theory may help students and teachers explore these concepts: the twin ideas of social and cultural capital, most famously articulated by French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu in his book Distinction. Cultural capital, in contrast to economic capital, or money, is the immaterial assets that allow certain people to navigate certain spaces.¹⁸ For example, as a college graduate, I have the cultural capital necessary for participating in the Yale National Initiative: I know how to send effective emails, behave appropriately in seminar, and access resources.  Likewise, social capital is the network of people that one knows that enables them to achieve their goals. I was able to participate in this program because I have a network of colleagues who introduced me to the program and encouraged me to apply.

Although social and cultural capital are often discussed with reference to the assets of the elite, it can be applied to any social grouping. In Renegade Dreams, Eastwood residents may not always have the cultural or social capital to comfortably navigate higher education, but they have the cultural and social capital to know how to make demands of city government and how to work with local pastors to achieve their goals. The Divine Knights members work hard to acquire the trendy sneakers that give them cultural capital and status within the gang, and consciously maintain their relationships with community and gang members in order to gain social capital.

The relation here to belonging and exclusion is that social and political capital can be markers of belonging and vehicles to inclusion, while the lack of social and political capital results in one being excluded or being an outsider. This theory concretizes how humans delineate between the in-group and the out-group. For students, this can be very helpful in understanding their own lives and overcoming the teenage sensation that “everyone knows something I don’t.” Why doesn’t the freshman feel like she fits in on the basketball team? Perhaps she doesn’t have the cultural capital, the knowledge of basketball tactics and NBA players and cool shoes, to be able to feel a part of the group. There is good news for the freshman, though: social and cultural capital can, in many cases, be acquired. This is a very important point to mention to students: who belongs and who is excluded changes. Social categories are not set in stone. This is exactly why we can and should hope for class-, race-, and gender-based exclusions to be eradicated from our society.

Social theory is challenging for college students, let alone high schoolers. However, concepts like caste, reciprocity, and social and cultural capital are within reach if we do our jobs as educators to translate them and make them real. Theory should not be the central part of teaching anthropology or sociology to teenagers, but in digestible bites, it can be empowering.