This Old House
In a grandly extended metaphor that serves to help explain the exact meaning of caste as applied to American society, the country is situated metaphorically as a house. Allusively spread across several pages, the metaphor begins directly enough:
“America is an old house. We can never declare the work over. Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation.”
What Is Caste?
Having situated the metaphor within the structure of America as a house, the author introduces a vast array of metaphorical images that underscore this connection. The array is also spread across several pages as the author constructs a complex—though not complicated—metaphorical portrait that brings what is perhaps a difficult concept to fully understand into sharp relief that is made easier to comprehend:
“Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a four-hundred-year-old social order.”
You Can't Just Turn the Page
The system of caste in American history cannot be told without referencing the corruption of slavery. After all, it was as a result of this lack of foresight among the Founding Fathers that led to the house that is America becoming divided against itself. Some people simply cannot face the truth of American’s greatest abomination even today, centuries after it was instituted and force the facts to be treated as metaphor:
“Slavery is commonly dismissed as a `sad, dark chapter' in the country’s history. It is as if the greater the distance we can create between slavery and ourselves, the better to stave off the guilt or shame it induces.”
Satchel: Man and Myth
An entire chapter is devoted to how the caste system hurt not just one of the greatest baseball pitchers to ever play the game, but the Major League Baseball teams of his day who refused to cross the color line and sign him to a contract. Paige arguably the most fascinating baseball player of all time because he was, beyond question, gifted beyond the right of any single human being. But also because of the legendary stories that arose around just how gifted he was. It is probably impossible to determine where reality ends and metaphor begins and it is telling that the chapter opens with metaphorical imagery;
“His fastball shot toward home plate like a pistol bullet, once was clocked at 103 miles an hour, fast enough to `tear the glove off the catcher’”
On a Dark November Day
One need not recount the history of Donald Trump somehow overcoming polls on the day he announced his candidacy for President that showed his unfavorable ratings among Republican voters at 50% to take advantage of America’s electoral system for electing its Chief Executive. Nor does one need a recounting of the subsequent four years in order to fully understand the author’s single, simple, elegant metaphorical encapsulation of that era:
“The earth had shifted overnight, or so it appeared.”
