caste, class, and minority

Caste, Class, and MinorityAuthor(s): Marvin HarrisSource: Social Forces, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Mar., 1959), pp. 248-254Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2572971 .

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248 SOCIAL FORCES

tionial membership, which involve relationships of a more generalized or impersonal variety and which emphasize to a somewhat greater degree the actual display of status. It will be remembered that it was these particular pairs of variables which were positively interrelated. An emphasis on proper behavior may involve both interpersonal relations and more secondary relationships, thus accounting for the fact that this dimension was highly related to three of these other dimensions and weakly related to the fourth. If subsequent research shows the same patterns as those found in this study,

this third type of explanation would seem to be the most valid.

The present exploratory study has obviously raised many more questions than have been answered. It is hoped, however, that results will be suggestive for further research. Once the various dimensions of status consciousness have been refined anid data collected on other popula- tions, we will be in a much better position to develop specific theories accounting for the inter- relationships among the different kinds of attitudes concerning social status.

CASTE, CLASS, AND MINORITY* MARVIN HARRIS

Columbia University

INORITY is one of those terms widely used by laymen and social scientists, but of whose precise meaning no one is

certain. It seems to be agreed, however, that a minority is a subgroup within a larger society and that its members are subject to disabilities in the form of prejudices, discrimination, segrega- tion, or persecution at the hands of another kind of subgroup, usually called a majority. It is also generally recognized among sociologists and an- thropologists that the terms majority and minority need not have numerical connotation.' The minority population may actually dwarf that of the majority, as is the case throughout colonial areas, and in the Union of South Africa. The relationship of super-ordination and sub-ordination which characterizes the majority vis a vis the minority, stems not from superior numbers (which, however, may be a contributing factor), but from differential control over the economic, political, and ideological mechanisms of social stratification. In brief, the basic model for a majority-minority situation is commonly understood to be that in which a dominant social subgroup prevents or restrains a lower ranking subgroup from achieving comparable status.

This formulation is appropriate as far as it goes, but it does not distinguish minorities and majorities from a host of other social subgroups which also present super-ordinate and sub-ordinate characteristics vis a vis each other. To solve this difficulty, it is usually said that minorities are characterized by special cultural or physical features. Louis Wirth, for example, has defined a minority as "a group of people who, because of their physical or cultural features are singled out from others in the society in which they live for differential or unequal treatment, and who therefore consider themselves as objects of collective discrimination. 7f2

The importance of cultural and physical differences is stressed by most students: "The mere fact of being generally hated because of religious, racial, or nationality background is what defines a minority group."3 "Minorities are sub-groups within a culture which are distinguishable from the dominant group by reasons of differences in physiology, language, customs, or culture patterns (including aniy combination of these factors). Such sub-groups are regarded as inherently different and not belonging to the dominant groups; for this reason they are consciously or unconsciously

* This article represents in part a development of views first presented in C. Wagley and M. Harris, Minorities in the New World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958).

1 G. Simpson and J. Yinger, Racial and Cultural Minorities (New York: Harper, 1953), p. 21.

2 Louis Wirth, "The Problem of Minority Groups" in Ralph Linton (ed.), The Science of Man in the World Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945), p. 47.

3A. Rose and C. Rose, America Divided (New York: Knopf, 1948), p. 3.



CASTE, CLASS, AND MINORITY 249

excluded from full participation in the life of the culture."4

If we follow the logic of these definitions, there is no taxonomic reason why lower and upper social classes cannot be regarded as minorities and majorities. Social classes are ranked subgroups. The rich, well educated, and powerful elite of any nation maintain a way of life with respect to dress, speech, diet, housing, etiquette, entertain- ment, courtship, marriage, family, sexual behavior, and many other cultural items, which is quite distinct from that of the lower class. Indeed, the distinction is sufficiently marked in most countries to warrant the treatment of social classes as carriers of separate subcultures.5 It is obvious that a way out of this dilemma cannot be achieved simply by stressing a combination of cultural and physical differences. Some minorities are physically different but culturally similar with respect to the majority (e.g., Negro in the United States); others are culturally different but physically similar (e.g., French and English Canadians); and still others are both culturally and physically different (e. g., Negroes in South Africa).

Furthermore, although some order of cultural and/or physical contrasts is usually associated with minority and majority subgroups, this need not always be the case. The cultural and/or physical differences between majority and minority actually may be so minute as to make it impossible to detect by simple observation who is a member of the minority and who a member of the majority. A clear case in point is that of the Jews in Nazi Germany. Here the majority was forced to consult genealogical records in order to identify some of the members of the Jewish "race." If these genealogical records had not been available, many "Aryans" as well as Jews would have been fed to the cremating plants. It was to no avail that a "Jew" looked like thousands of other German non-Jews, had converted to Christianity, and had taken a Christian spouse; he was according to Hitler, still a "Jew." For another example of this mysterious lack of special features associated with minority members, we may point to certain legally-defined members of the Negro

minority in the United States who are physically caucasoid in appearance and indistinguishable from the white majority. Such "Negroes" can "pass" as whites when they associate with whites and live in a white milieu, and are recognized as "Negroes" only when they associate with Negroes and live in a Negro milieu.

It is clear that in order to conceptualize ade- quately minority-majority subgroups additional criteria are necessary. These criteria must be appli- cable to subgroups which exhibit degrees of cultural and physical differences ranging from nearly total contrast to nearly perfect identity. The most im- portant clue to the nature of one of the missing taxonomic principles is precisely the fact that in certain limiting cases, membership in a minority or majority can be determined wholly independ- ently of contrasting cultural or physical features. In such cases the actual mechanism for deter- mining subgroup affiliation depends upon the reckoning of ancestral provenience, or as it is known in anthropological parlance, a principle of "descent." Since the latter is one of the two basic mechanisms for establishing kinship relations, the other being marriage, minorities and majorities clearly constitute a special type of kinship group.

To sustain this viewpoint, it must be shown that descent is an active affiliating principle not only in the absence of physical and cultural differences, but also in their presence. In the case of minorities which display special cultural features we need merely to point out that group affiliation is fixed long before the individual acquires the minority subculture. Furthermore, it frequently remains fixed long after he rids himself of that subculture. The individual becomes a member of the minority or the majority the moment he is born. The infant American Jew is reckoned as an American Jew; the infant Catholic is an Irish Catholic; the infant French Canadian is a French Canadian. Minorities and majorities do not consult their newborn as to whether or not they want to be associated with the parental subgroup. Such affiliation is automatic, since it is the rule of descent and not the will or behavior of the individual which the society consults.

Throughout the individual's life, the affiliation may be then sustained at the behest of the minority itself; in other cases, the affiliation is imposed by the majority upon an unwilling minority, and in still others, it is sustained and accepted by both minority and majority. Under any of these circum-

4 Richard Schermerhorn, These Our People (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1949), p. 5.

5 C. Wagley and M. Harris, "A Typology of Latin American Subcultures," American Anthropologist, 57 (June 1955), pp. 428-451.



250 SOCIAL FORCES

stances, the logic of group-affiliation by descent is such that an individual can never fully escape the consequences of the group-affiliation of his parents. The individual inherits his status as a minority member, and he can change that status only by ultimately denying the validity of the descent rule.

If the minority itself accepts the descent rule, as, for example, among French Canadians and American Jews, defection is accompanied by feelings of guilt and heated assertions that a man cannot deny his parentage. The descent rule in such cases is surrounded with a sacred aura, and it is frequently believed that the acceptance of this affiliation is demanded by both divine and natural law. On the other hand, if it is the majority which is responsible for maintaining the descent rule, the deviant individual's main concern is to avoid detection as a minority member. The deviant then changes his name, religion, and any other behavioral indications of his descent affiliationi. He tries to "pass" and is success- ful according to the degree to which the majority has perfected an apparatus for tracing genealogical connections. If the apparatus for tracing descent is sufficiently well-developed, the individual may rid himself of all behavioral stigmata and yet still be reckoned as a minority member.

In the case of minorities which present "racial" contrasts, the social descent rule may be partially based upon actual biological processes. Here the logic of the descent rule is in a gross fashion confirmed by the observed transmission of physical traits. Phenotypically Negro parents usually have phenotypically Negro children, and the individual truly cannot escape his parentage. A social, artificially created, principle of descent, is nonetheless present. It can be extracted from the biological matrix in which it lies embedded whenever physically intermediate types are pro- duced by mixed marriages. Intermediate physical types are affiliated with a minority not on the basis of the phenotype but on the basis of a folk approximation of the concept of genotype. Thus in the United States, a man may look white, but if it can be shown that he has Negro "blood," he is affiliated with the Negro descent group.

The very concept of "race" as it is entertained in the popular mind rests not upon a classification of observable physical types, but upon the pre- scientific equivalent of genetic affiliation. Pheno- typical differences are significant only because

they are supposed to furnish a reliable basis for ascertaining "blood" descent. It is a man's "blood," that is, his ancestral biological endow- ment, with which fanatical racists are in the last analysis concerned. If this were not so, a deeply sun-tanned white might be mistaken for a "Negro" without any serious misgivings. But a "Negro" is defined as one who has "Negro" ancestors; without evidence of descent from such ancestors, the classification is meaningless as far as the members of the majority are concerned. That a sociological descent rule, as well as physical similarity, is an affiliating principle behind racial minorities is clearly shown in the classic reaction to the phenotypically caucasoid "Negro": "I never would have guessed it if you hadn't told me."

At this juncture we must caution that only in the extreme, polar case, is minority affiliation determined solely by a rule of descent. In most cases, affiliation is signaled by a combination of cultural and/or physical features plus a descent rule.

Like most of the principal types of kinship groups, minorities and majorities are marriage regulating groups. In any minority-majority- situation, one or both of the two groups concerned discourages or flatly prohibits marital relationships between minority and majority members. This endogamous tendency constitutes a second feature of supreme importance not only for taxonomic purposes but for the theory of minority-majority relations.

Endogamy is a characteristic of the boundary between societies. Among people who do not have sharp contrasts in material wealth or other forms of marked social stratification, the limits of the marriageable population usually coincide with the limits of the society. Primitive egalitarian societies frequently consist of many subgroups, but marriage within these subgroups, as in the case of the most widespread form of the clan, is strictly prohibited. The salient feature of primitive marriage systems is that an individual is forced to seek a mate outside of the societal segment to which he owes primary al- legiance.

The prevalence of exogamy among egalitarian primitive subgroups is simply an aspect of the fact that kinship is the primary affiliating and binding ingredient of primitive society. Primitive peoples live in a world populated by relatives;



CASTE, CLASS, AND MfINORITY 251

all who are not relatives tend to be strangers. Exogamy widens the circle of kinsmen and frequently binds what for lack of marriage ties would be separate societies into larger units capable of stable economic and social exchanges. Primitive subgroup exogamy reflects the fact that social rank among the simpler peoples is not associated with large scale differentials in control over vital resources and property. Ex- ogamy is a leveling influence and is usually accompanied by a reciprocal flow of goods and services as well as by an exchange of spouses.

Endogamy, on the other hand, is anything but a leveling influence. Far from providing for a reciprocal flow of marriage partners, goods, and services, endogamy tends to perpetuate inequalities. According to Professor Claude Levi-Strauss: "It is only in the exceptional case of highly stratified societies that endogamy can be expressed in a positive fashion, namely, as a calculated attempt to confine certain social or economic privileges within a group."6 Very strong restraints of a political nature are needed to keep a society composed of endogamous subgroups from flying apart. Endogamous subgroups therefore flourish only within stratified societies where the ability of the total group to engage in vital social and economic intercourse is not dependent upon kinship ties for the validation of authority and the exercise of coercive restraints.

The endogamous barrier between minority and majority is thus a sure sign of hostile relations. The prohibition of marriage represents the abandonment of one of the most ancient ways of promoting friendly relations among social groups. At the very least, a rule of endogamy reveals the existence of powerful prejudices and in most cases it forms part of an attempt to bring into being or to perpetuate political, social, and economic inequalities.

It remains to be shown that the criteria of descent and endogamy distinguish minorities and majorities from social classes. Social class, in the most common meaning of the term, would seem to be excluded by definition from the cate- gory of descent groups. Classes are defined as stratified subgroups based upon differential access to wealth, power, and prestige. In theory, class membership is fluid, does not depend upon

ancestral provenience, and constantly demands reaffirmation of affiliation through validating activities. Unfortunately, this definition is merely a polar concept, an extreme limiting case. In reality, class affiliation exhibits a rather wide range of dependence upon descent principles. This range starts from zero and extends to some indefinite point where it overlaps with the range characteristic of minority and majority. Full acceptance into the highest ranking strata of many capitalist and socialist countries still depends upon belonging to a rather restricted number of elite families. Community studies in the United States and elsewhere show that family affiliation is by no means an unimportant diagnostic of membership in local upper-class elites.7

By the rule of descent an infant born to an upper-class family is affiliated with the upper class and this affiliation is capable of some degree of persistence even when the wealth or special opportunities fail to be transmitted. The inheritance of wealth merely provides the individual with the means of validating this affiliation; if the wealth usually derived through inheritance is not in fact transmitted, the affiliation with the descent group may still be preserved. This is analogous to the acquisition of distinctive behavioral traits by the members of a minority or majority. If the transmission of distinctive minority or majority traits is imperfect, the rule of descent may still act to affiliate the "accultur- ated" and/or physically undifferentiated individual with his descent group.

Affiliation with both minority and majority and class subgroups may thus be dependent upon behavioral traits as well as a rule of descent. At one extreme, however, there are class systems which depend theoretically entirely upon the acquisition of the special traits and there are minorities and majorities at the other extreme which theoretically depend exclusively upon the tracing of descent. In between there is a gradual shading from the range covered by class subgroups to the range covered by minority-majority subgroups.

In the prevailing concept, class is a subgroup which is neither strictly endogamous nor strictly

6 C. Levi-Strauss, Les Striuctufres Elemnentaires de la Parente (Paris, 1948).

I J. West, Plainville, U. S. A. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1945); M. Harris, Tozwn and Coun- try in Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956).



252 SOCIAL FORCES

exogamous, and hence is not usually regarded as a marriage-regulating group. The concept of nonmarriage-regulating social classes is again a statement of an extreme, limiting case. Classes actually have a tendency to be endogamous. Marriage between members of upper and lower classes typically take place only after the behavioral traits-wealth, power, and prestige- which are specific to the upper class have been acquired by the upward-mobile individual. The greater the ease of upward mobility, the less pronounced will be the endogamous tendency. Conceptually, we may imagine a class system which is so fluid that in each generation as many marriage partners are chosen from among those born outside the class as among those born within it. However, despite a general world-wide decrease in the importance of descent for reckoning class affiliation and despite a related broad trend toward easier upward mobility, such a class system probably does not exist anywhere. We may therefore conceive of classes as denoting subgroups which at one theoretical extreme are neither endogamous nor exogamous, but which normally maintain some degree of endogamy. The range covered by the frequency of endogamous unions, starts at 50 percent of all marriages (neither endogamy nor exogamy) and extends in the direction of 100 percent of all marriages.

Minority endogamy, on the other hand, starts at a point where 100 percent of all marriages with respect to the majority are endogamous. Again this is merely a theoretical limit, since all known cases admit some irregularities and there is considerable variation in the frequency of intermarriage from one minority-majority situation to another. From the theoretical maxi- mum of 100 percent endogamy the frequency of endogamous unions among minorities dimin- ishes toward some essentially arbitrary point where it overlaps with that characteristic of classes.

The recognition of endogamy and descent rules as basic criteria of minorities thus enables us to distinguish, in polar terms at least, between minorities and classes. At the polar extreme, a minority and/or majority is a ranked, endogamous, descent group, while a class is neither a descent group nor endogamous.

Our task of distinguishing minorities and majorities from other ranked subgroups is by no means concluded. Castes, for example, are also ranked

endogamous subgroups. Moreover, caste is usually distinguished from class in exactly the manner by which we have attempted to distinguish between class and minority; i.e., by stressing the occurrence of endogamy and a rule of descent. In fact, a preliminary definition of minority as ranked, endogamous descent group could serve with equal facility as the definition of caste. This should not come as too great a surprise since the frequency with which certain minorities are actually called a caste in the literature suggests that the two concepts denote closely related phenomena.8

If some minorities are castes, why bother to call them minorities? Furthermore, are minorities a type of caste or are castes a type of minority? These questions are readily resolved if one additional factor is incorporated into the formal definition of minority. While both castes and minorities are ranked subgroups, the nature of the social hierarchy in which they are embedded is radically different in both cases. Speaking again in polar terms, high and low-ranking castes do not compete for status, whereas minority and majority are locked in a struggle for status. The members of low-ranking castes accept the status accorded them by the high-ranking castes; the members of a minority reject the status which the majority seeks to impose upon them.

When the term caste is brought up, one logi- cally turns to India for examples. Hindu castes at one time appear to have comprised a ranking system in which high and low ranking groups for the most part accepted their statuses as the result of unalterable sacred processes. Recent studies, however, show that many contemporary Indian "castes," far from accepting an unalterable sacred social hierarchy, are actively and often violently engaged in attempts to improve their social standing. The Kammalans (Smiths), for example, are reckoned by most castes to be among the lowest groups in the Indian hierarchy, yet by their own reckoning they are not inferior to the Brahmins.

Discrimination against the Smiths occurs everywhere in peninsular India, possibly as a result of their attempts in the past to rise high in the caste hierarchy.. .. The Madras Census of 1871 notes that the Kammalans have always maintained a struggle for

8 Cf. John Dollard, Class and Caste in a Southern Town (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937).



CASTE, CLASS, AND MINORITY 253

a higher place in the social scale than that allowed to them by Brahminical authority. . . . There is no doubt as to the fact that the members of this great caste dispute the supremacy of the Brahmins, and that they hold themselves to be equal in rank with them.9

In Uttar Pradesh, the Camars are engaged in a similar attempt to overthrow the domination of the Thakurs, their traditional landlords, and political and social superiors. This struggle has involved political maneuvering, litigation, and physical violence."0 Similar attempts at upward mobility are reported for Bhar, Ahir, Noniya, and Lohar castes of Uttar Pradesh.

Indian subgroups such as the contemporary Kammalans and Camar will probably continue to be labeled castes by generations of social scientists to come. The strength of this habit need not deter us from pressing for a recognition of the fundamental similarity between competi- tive, upward-mobile "castes" and minorities. A "caste" which has ceased to accept the validity of its inferior social status, ceases to be a caste in any sense but that of a misnomer. Such a "caste" is conceptually indistinguishable from a minority, and deference to terminological custom in this case is the equivalent of taxonomic suicide. Castes and minorities are endogamous, they are descent groups, and they are ranked. Whether or not the rank is passively accepted or actively contested is a classificatory feature of considerable significance, both from a structural and subjective point of view. If we fail to make use of this feature there is no way to distinguish caste as a concept from a minority as a concept. Breaking the terminological habit would seem to be the lesser of the two evils, supposing such a revision to be inherently undesirable. We are led to the conclusion, therefore, that Hindu (or non-Hindu) "castes" which are engaged in a struggle for upward mobility ought in all con- science to be redassified and conceptually equated with minorities.

Indian social structure with its myriad castes has always been regarded as a kind of oriental enigma. The fact that caste and minority are so

closely related conceptually and that many former Indian castes are better regarded as minorities, brings the Indian situation into clearer focus. Both the Western World and India have had their share of endogamous descent groups; castes and minorities. In feudal Europe, the hierarchy of lords, serfs and slaves constituted a restricted but bona fide caste system. The subsequent commercial and industrial revolution re- duced the significance of descent rule, promoted exogamy, and gave rise to a class rather than a caste hierarchy. Numerous descent groups in the form of minorities continue, however, to be inter- larded among the major social strata. These minorities owe their existence to no single forma- tive factor, but rather as in the case of Indian castes, to a multiplicity of circumstances. Some are the result of conquest, others owe their existence to religious tradition, others to broad cultural contrasts, still others to racial characteristics.

Even the greatly overemphasized interpreta- tion of Indian castes as occupational groups does not tax the analogy with Western minorities." The Chinese in the United States specialize in laundries and restaurants, the Jews do not farm, the Mohawk Indian today specializes in structural steel work, the Negro was once primarily a farm laborer. Low-ranking minorities, like low-ranking castes, tend to have menial, dirty, unremunera- tive or otherwise undesirable economic specialties.

Indian castes have the distinction of being organized, in theory at least, into a general system wherein a specific, frozen, rank order is provided for by a uniform religious doctrine. Caste systems in Polynesia, ancient Peru, and Egypt also appear to have been enjoined by uniform religious doc- trines. Furthermore, when castes were conspic- uous within the European ranking system, European religion also sanctioned and enjoined an extensive frozen hierarchy. On the other hand, ranking systems which stress minority and majority types of cleavages characteristically lack such generally accepted rationales of status posi- tions. Nonetheless, minorities and majorities invariably appeal to supernatural precepts for the justification of their respective aspirations within the social order.

What is most unusual about the Indian caste 9 M. N. Srinivas, "The Social System of a Mysore Village," in McKim Mariott (ed.), Village India, A.A.A. Memoir No. 83 (June 1955), p. 24.

10 Bernard S. Cohn, "The Changing Station of a Depressed Caste," in M. Mariott, op. cit.

11 Castes which have but one occupation are unusual, since agriculture is a common occupation (cf. Srinivas, op. cit., p. 16-17).



254 SOCIAL FORCES

structure, is not that it has a religious rationale, but that it seems to contain such a uniquely vast proliferation of subgroups.'2 If we think of caste as one variety of endogamous descent group, this impression is dispelled. As a network of endogamous descent groups, the Indian caste system is closely paralleled by the minority- majority systems of most Western state societies, especially those of the New World. The total number of endogamous descent groups in the United States today probably reaches well into the hundreds. These groups embrace a bewildering variety of racial types, "nationalities," languages, and religions. As in India, some of these groups are found in every corner of the country, while others flourish only in restricted areas; some number in the tens of millions, while others consist of only a few thousand members. When it is borne in mind that at least some of the Indian "castes" have always been engaged in disputing their position in the hierarchy (i.e., have always been minorities) and that urbanization and in- dustrialization have enormously expanded the probability of such contests, it is clear that the castes of India and the minorities and majorities of the United States are different species but genera of the same family. This is not the place to furnish a catalogue of American minorities and majorities, but for those who wish to make their own count some procedural suggestions may be offered. The problem of identifying minorities and majorities in the United States is made difficult by the fact that defection from many of the smaller groups is encouraged by the values and socio-economic structure of the larger society. It is this fact which accounts for Will Herberg's recent greatly oversimplified picture of American society as basically divided into only three groups-Protestant, Catholic, and Jew-plus a partially cross-cutting white and nonwhite dichot- omy.'3 But many additional subdivisions analogous to subcastes still exist in the United States.

Thus Catholics are divided into Puerto Ricans, French Canadian, Mexican, Irish, Polish, etc.; Jews are Sephardim, Conservatives, Orthodox, etc.; and Protestants separate out into many sects and "nationalities." Many of these secondary and tertiary subgroups, it must be admitted are undergoing extensive assimilation in the sense that with every generation a larger number of descendants practice exogamy and ignore the micro-group's descent rule in favor of broader affiliations or no descent affiliation at all. The large percentage of defectors characteristic of submajorities and subminorities ought not to blind us, however, to the existence of a permanent membership core which is lingering across the generations, remaining constant or even increasing in absolute numbers, despite formidable accul- turative and assimilative pressures. It is clear that for comparative purposes it is the complexity rather than the simplicity of the minority-majority system in the United States which requires emphasis.

SUMMARY

The conceptual distinction between minorities, classes, and castes derives from the variable expression of three taxonomic polarities: affiliation by descent versus affiliation by validating behavior; endogamy versus exogamy; passive acceptance of the group's locus in the social hierarchy versus active struggle for upward mobility. Minority and majority as abstract categories embrace subgroups which depend largely upon descent for affiliation, are largely endogamous by choice or necessity, and actively contest their position in the hierarchy. Castes are endogamous descent groups which constitute a frozen, un- contested social hierarchy. Classes are neither endogamous nor descent groups and constitute a hierarchy based upon behavioral validation and the sometimes individualized, sometimes group- oriented, but always active struggle for upward mobility. Due to the continuous, intergrading nature of the three diagnostic variables it is to be expected that there will arise many intractable classificatory problems whose resolution can only depend upon conventionalized opinion.

12 It must be remembered that formal, pan-Indian Hinduism accounts for only four great caste divisions; the local proliferation of castes and subcastes depends upon ad-hoc modifications of religious theory.

13 Will Herberg, Prolestant-Catholic-Jew (New York: Doubleday, 1955).



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