Caste School of Race Relations
Caste School of Race RelationsThe label sometimes attached to those authors who applied the term caste to the separation between Whites and Blacks in the United States. The most notable publications in this mould are W. Lloyd Warner's ‘American Caste and Class’ (American Journal of Sociology, 1936), Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944), and John Dollard's Caste and Class in a Southern Town (1937).
This interpretation of American race relations provoked a furious (though fairly short-lived) controversy. Myrdal defended his analysis by claiming that ‘the scientifically important difference between the terms “caste” and “class”…is…a relatively large difference in freedom of movement between groups’. He also disputed whether (as critics of the School tended to claim) the Hindu caste system was characterized by less fluidity and less conflict than relations between Whites and Blacks in the United...
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