About this book:

"Caste, Color, and Class: Race, Ethnicity, and the Historical Roots of Poverty" comprehensively examines how systems of social hierarchy, specifically caste and race, have been institutionalized across India, the Americas, and Africa to create and perpetuate poverty. The book argues that these hierarchies are not merely social labels but deliberate architectures of power embedded in legal codes, spatial arrangements, labor regimes, cultural economies, and access to productive assets. It highlights how states and empires actively codified existing distinctions, transforming fluid social differences into rigid stratification systems that dictated access to land, credit, education, health, and justice, thereby entrenching group-based poverty as a structural inheritance rather than individual misfortune.

The study delves into specific mechanisms through which inequality was maintained, such as the racialized legal frameworks of slavery and Jim Crow in the Americas, the colonial census and the Criminal Tribes Act in India, and apartheid's pass laws and Bantustans in South Africa. It demonstrates how these institutions were designed to extract value from marginalized groups while denying them mobility, dignity, and a path to wealth accumulation. The book also explores the "cultural economies of privilege," revealing how non-monetary benefits of whiteness and purity reinforced material hierarchies, making inequality feel natural and justified to those at the top.

While detailing the systematic nature of oppression, the book also emphasizes the constant resistance and reform efforts mounted by marginalized communities—from slave revolts and anti-caste movements to civil rights struggles and anti-apartheid campaigns. It analyzes how abolition and decolonization, though monumental, often left intact the underlying institutional infrastructures of exclusion, leading to "afterlives" of old hierarchies in new forms, such as ongoing landlessness, wealth gaps, and biased criminal justice systems. The text concludes by proposing policy pathways focused on redistribution, recognition, and representation as essential, interconnected strategies for dismantling these historical structures.

Ultimately, "Caste, Color, and Class" asserts that poverty is a product of institutional design and can only be unbuilt through a comprehensive and multi-faceted redesign of those institutions. It calls for a move towards inclusive institutions rooted in solidarity, rights-based approaches, and accountability, recognizing that confronting historical injustice is a continuous, intergenerational project. The book provides a critical framework for understanding how the past continues to shape present-day inequality and offers a vision for building societies that prioritize equality in the conditions of life for all.

What You'll Find Inside:

• Comparative analysis of how caste, race, and ethnic hierarchies were institutionalized across India, the Americas, and Africa to create structured group-based poverty
• Examination of key mechanisms that convert social hierarchies into economic disadvantage: legal systems, spatial segregation, labor coercion, asset exclusion, and cultural economies of privilege
• Historical tracing of how colonial powers systematized difference through censuses, land policies, and labor controls that created enduring patterns of inequality
• Analysis of intersectional burdens showing how gender, religion, and other axes of power intensify deprivation for marginalized groups
• Policy framework for addressing historical injustice through redistribution, recognition, and representation, with critical evaluation of interventions from reparations to inclusive institutions

Who's It For:

This book would be most beneficial for students and scholars in sociology, history, political science, economics, and ethnic studies who are interested in understanding the structural roots of racial and caste-based inequality. It would also be valuable for policymakers, social justice advocates, and development practitioners working on issues of poverty, discrimination, and institutional reform who need a comparative, evidence-based framework for designing effective interventions. The historical-institutional approach makes it particularly useful for those seeking to move beyond individual explanations of poverty to understand how systems create and maintain group-based disadvantage.