Session 3:
Prompts

Note: below are included some quotes from Dr. Ambedkar about caste which are relevant to our exploration this week. This does not imply that we are conflating the caste system in India, which has its specificities, with issues of race in very different times and places. Dr. Ambedkar is simply a helpful thought partner, as we begin to reflect the complexities of systems of “graded inequality.”

1) The Deep North

• What struck you the most about this documentary?

• What was most painful? Most uplifting?

• What does this story mean for you?

2) Causes & Conditions

“Race is the child of racism, not the father.” - Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World And Me, 2015

“Caste is not just a division of labor, it is a division of laborers.” - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste, 1935

• What are some of the crucial historical causes and conditions in which the modern construction of race came to be?

• In what ways does race exist? In what ways does race not exist?

• How might dependent co-arising and the doctrine of Two Truths help us illuminate the workings of race through history?

3) Dipping our toes: race, class, gender

“A caste is an enclosed class.” - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, 1916

• What gets reinforced and obscured when either class or race are held up as “more important” than the other?

• How are class and race inter-related in the example of the Virginia colonies in the late 1600s? And how about now?

“I regard endogamy as a key to the mystery of the caste system.” - Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development, 1916

• What does patriarchy have to do with the modern construction of race? And hetero-normativity?

• What does any of this mean for you in your life?