The Loss of Diverse Collective Empowerment

The Artist's Academic Statement

The following article is very different from the other pieces of work you'd probably find on my website. It, however, is the base thesis for my approach and understanding of all my other works. I wrote this analytical paper for my Creative Economics course from Adam Kingsmith. This passion project bloomed into a culmination of a combination of studies from my Diaspora: Identity & Migration class with Camille Issacs, to the lecture halls with Howard Munroe on The History of Métis, and starting an inevitable journey at the movies that introduced caste systems studies with Isabel Wilkerson.

The contents of this paper aren't inherently new. They are thought-provoking, radical, challenging, and modernly known as "controversial." I am putting to words the connections that have been iterated by scholars, artists, journalists, teachers, freedom fighters and parents throughout the decades. These connections are just the charting of transitions that persist to this day. So, ultimately it defines the goal of what I want to do as an independent artist. To travel through transitions with art and writing.

The Thesis

When we look at the empowerment depicted in our world it comes from an individual or individual community that seeks to rise from oppression. It is rarely shown, however, to see a diverse collective seek empowerment. Somehow, we are progressively divided and we are left to deal with individual problems in our communities. So, how did diverse collective empowerment get lost? This loss is due to the radical spread of colonial capitalism. The latest version of capitalism operates as a modern version of colonization due to its discriminatory patterns that have reached beyond economic systems. Its oppression continues to expand through a globalized caste system that has affected some of the key areas of identity formation: art and culture. Thus, stunting the progress of identity and any meaningful level of diverse empowerment. This is evident in the goals of capitalism as it is fixated on monetary expansion by any means necessary even at the cost of eliminating room for healing and recognition of identity outside of consumerism. The impact is most evident in the lowest caste of the colonial capitalist system, displaced minorities.  The strongest evidence of this effect in these communities can be understood with the lack of study and consideration of these communities on any level of economics. So, to overcome this limitation we need to study this broken system with consideration of the once invisible individuals and collectives in it. This interconnectedness of colonial capitalism, identity, and discrimination can only be understood as caste when we look at the correlations of the past and present.

Colonization Never Left

To consider modern capitalism as colonial capitalism, one must consider the similarities of capitalism and colonialism by analyzing their origins, current definitions, and clear present consequences. Colonialism has had many typologies to explain how its practice operates to benefit a higher benefactor. Overall, we can understand its origins and current definition by its relationship with Indigenous people. These were the first contacts that experienced firsthand the brokenness of colonialism. Scholars like Lorenzo Veracini or Patrick Wolfe would classify this event of contact as settler colonialism. (2013; 2006) This typical branch term covers several iterations such as planter, extractive, trade, transport, or imperial power colonialism. (Shoemaker, 2015) All these practices boil down to a negative relationship with Indigenous people as the colonizers move to either occupy or strip the Indigenous people’s land of its resources. The end goal places the colonizers on top in the majority while the minority with Indigenous people, Black slaves, imported labour, and immigrants are meant to come in to fuel the labour. That ultimately sustains and returns resources to a metropole that will turn the labour and raw materials into manufactured items. The consequences set up a clear class divide among any inhabitants of the occupied land of the colonial system that has presented this competition of oppression as almost natural repetition.

Wolfe (2006) points to this repetition between settler colonialism with the erasure of Indigenous peoples across the globe. All incidents of these kinds of contacts with Indigenous people deal with loss of land and consequently face elimination in different forms. From the most extreme cases of genocide to the long painful wait of assimilation since settler colonialism persists over extended periods. This extension has continued into the modern system of capitalism.

Capitalism is an economic system that emerged in the 16th century. (Heilbroner et al., 2024) It developed rapidly and differently from its original conceptions. Some scholars like Elaine Sternberg and Geert Noels classify it as a falsified iteration of capitalism motivated by capital. (2015; 2023) A system that neither denies its intrinsic ties to multitudes of oppression beyond economic reason. Sternberg tries to define capitalism as what it should be as a pure economy definition “an economic system characterized by comprehensive private property, free-market pricing, and the absence of coercion.” (p. 385) She does this to imagine capitalism as separate from social and political definitions. Instead, she views the present version of capitalism as a broken system that takes on capital as a condition that allows negative outcomes that stem from the favour of competition. By defining it as an economic system with this description it shows the gap in how far the current iteration of capitalism is from the present one. However, if this is the definition of capitalism it still has holes that are marred by colonial motivation to be individualistic and delusional in occupying a space privately. We can’t negate the social impact it has. To lack critique will stop all progress. By defining it as a social system that has social oppression it will press the urgency for radical change from the current broken economic system. Lois Weiner (2023) sees the necessity to view the present capitalist system as a social system that will allow us to recognize how it breaks solidarity from potential meaningful movements from unions and social justice. To have this recognition brings clarity to what consequences are brought about by the present goals.

In both practices the goals are simple: occupy a new space to eventually bring about the most capital that benefits the majority that live in the space. The consequences of both? A caste system with the majority of the colonizers benefiting at the top while the minority or labourers drowning at the bottom. Like colonization, capitalism is fixated on constant growth that is not sustainable and operates on the same ever-evolving capital colonialism was motivated by. This fixation on the new capital known as money reinforces this caste system due to money making raw materials invisible. Where individuals can no longer barter a weight of value or trade when a shiny slip of green is in their face. Technology will put the distance farther as we’ll fail to grasp any sense of value beyond numbers on a screen. So, the actual goal will no longer be about what money will get you. It will be about monetary expansion. Thus, leaving everyone in this caste system stuck in an identity crisis based on the shaky ground of consumerism stripped down to the gray mass of an individualistic collective.

The Global Caste System Perpetuated

However, this identity crisis isn’t limited to the North American victims of the colonized version of capitalism. This caste system does not arise due to the nature of having a colonial past on the land. With globalization and the pursuit of unified economic practices, this caste system has spread on a global scale. Where the economic-social system transition has allowed consequences of oppression that develop as a justification for discrimination on the boxes people were placed in. Geert Noels notes this in Capitalism XXL (2023) coining the term “Gigantism” as the definition for how capitalism has not only gone global but has also become far too oversized. The events of the COVID-19 crisis boosted elements that maximize this caste system such as technology, giving more power to governments, giving more power to big companies, and reducing the ability for human connection.

This expansion has fully defined Adam Smith’s (1776-1759) version of bad capitalism:

1. The formation of monopolies or oligopolies.

2. The reduction of good competition and the formation of cartels.

3. The distance between government and business shortened.

This gigantism expansion is not a new piece of evidence of capitalist expansion. If we look at the historical evidence of a global caste system. It will bring to light that the perpetrator of all these events has not been based on a social creation of superiority and inferiority. Its justifications will always line up with the pursuits of colonial capitalism.

Isabel Wilkerson (2023) set out to put the vocabulary and understanding of oppression that could not fit the justification of the definition of racism. By doing so she uncovered a global interconnectedness from the Indian caste system to the Jewish genocide by the Nazis and the Black slave trade that didn’t require identity to be the factor for oppression. Her framework of pillars proposed instead that inferiority and superiority were artificial. The true reason for oppression instead was to promote a caste system to benefit a single group of people. Like colonialism, it always followed a certain set of pillars that began with the occupation of space. This is not to say a new land was taken over, it could also mean a new space was created within the old one that utilized the pillars to make everyone follow.

1. Divine will and the laws of nature

2. Heritability

3. Endogamy and the control of marriage and mating

4. Purity versus pollution

5. Occupational hierarchy

6. Dehumanization and stigma

7. Terror as enforcement, cruelty as a means of control

8. Inherent superiority versus inherent inferiority

With Wilkerson’s framework, we can see this end goal most clearly as all incidents of hate or oppression are built on the origin to reach the satisfaction of wealth for the stockholders or benefactors. Whether it be the labour of Black slaves used to progress colonized farmlands in North America or the elimination of Jews by the Nazis to secure top capital in the world hierarchy. Even in India, their caste system is run by a focus on capital with the highest of the caste benefiting the most economically. (Shroff, 2022) In the present these countries, communities, and systems are still focused on the same thing: to expand exponentially on a monetary level that benefits the highest caste on every level. It is rare to go anywhere that has a different focus and that is most evident when we are looking at the lowest caste. Their existence shows how colonial capitalism is global and perpetuates the global caste system to this day. They also present the place of most hope.

The Lowest Caste

When defining this caste system, we must start from the bottom. We can’t associate disability, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or religion as clear hallmarks of the levels of the caste systems. They are indeed factors that slot in levels differently but are used to make the middle caste a divisive tool. The individuality of these identities is meant to create an illusion that somehow if you were a straight Asian man, you were higher on the caste level than a Black trans woman. So, the main area will be based on income or lack thereof in these communities. For caste does not require any of these facts and truths to incur oppression.

If we were to consider the lowest caste being displaced minorities. This will be groups of people who are financially unstable or minimal at best. These would be the refugees from wartorn countries, they would be unhoused in democratized cities, they would be your runaways, they would be the youth in the rising crime rates, the elderly that are hidden away, and they would be your Indigenous communities impacted in so many ways by displacement. The list would go on, but all these international groups would be the same. Their displacement occurred due to a lack of financial support or a superior’s money motivation.

Those of the lowest caste are impacted the most since the existence of caste isn’t limited to rank. It is a state of mind that holds everyone captive. From the illusion of entitlement to the subordinate trapped in purgatory. (Wilkerson, 2020, p. 290) This mindset often has everyone judged by superficial differences that have nothing to do with who we are inside. Since the emphasis on the outside is always appearance-based level. It limits what identity can be for everyone. These displaced individuals and groups have little to tie their identity to. No land, no culture, no community, no space that allows any comfort to consider identity. However, some have found ways to rise above this identity crisis. At the lowest levels of any caste system, they rise faster than any other. One example is that of the Métis people, an Indigenous post-contact tribe that originated from colonialism, participated in colonized capitalism and survived through caste but have preserved much of their identity to the present and the future.

The Métis Case Study

The Métis are a seminomadic, post-contact, Indigenous people that live in Canada and the United States. (Fiola, 2021) They originated as a unique Indigenous tribe because of intermarriages during the trade colonization period of the 18th century. However, much of their displacement occurred due to government legislation in the 19th century that removed them from their lands with the Dominion of Canada’s Scrip System. (Robinson, 2019) Although this is only one example of the reason for their displacement there are other cases of government involvement from both Canada and the United States that contributed to the Métis displacement. All of this was done to maintain settler superiority over Métis and Indigenous peoples. This superiority, of course, was done to secure capital. Yet, Métis maintained their identity and indigeneity through practices of art and culture to this day.

Many Métis and Indigenous scholars believe that there is a necessity to learn or relearn art and cultural practices. By doing so it results in an identity formation framework separate from colonial capitalism. This framework is done specifically in reaction to the nature of displacement since to be a diasporic people there is always a notion to return to the homestead. To do so would start with art and culture. Art and culture create a space that allows everyone to engage in. By engaging in that space one can reconnect with the land and have a metaphorical return. This return is ultimately back to their ethnic communities to find the final space that allows identity formation. It ends a cycle of displacement and allows future thinking beyond present trauma or generational pain. Ken Derry, a Métis scholar, notes that modern Indigenous art in writing has allowed the shame felt with the past and the present loss and suffering. The characters of these writings help readers regain both a sense of self-worth and a sense of home with their larger community. (Derry, 2021) This is also found in Katherine Boyer’s (2019) work in Water Meets Body where she has a metaphorical and somewhat physical return to her Métis homestead. In this art exhibit, she takes on traditional Indigenous practices and merges them with contemporary art practices through sculptural pieces and video footage. Her video footage documents her paddling to the part of the Rafferty Dam where her family’s homestead was submerged. This video surrounds the art exhibit with sculptural pieces that have layers of Métis religion. Which is a merger of Catholicism and Wahkootwin. This exhibit creates a physical space to have a spiritual connection to return for the viewer as well.

This practice of utilizing art to facilitate a return for people in displacement isn’t just limited to Métis. Many from African American descendants of slaves to Vietnamese refugees of the Vietnam War and many more turned to art and cultural practices to maintain their ethnic identities no matter where they go. From authors like Dionne Brand and Kim Thuy. Their writings show a consistent connection to art, culture, and identity. This insinuates preserving the aura of art provides more than an aesthetic experience. It provides a spiritual and healing element that one can’t find anywhere else.

Colonial Capitalism's Co-opting of Art and Culture

However, there is a problem when art and culture exist under colonial capitalism. The problem is indeed caste because identity is prioritized on monetary expansion. The solution would seem plausible that identity needs to be formed outside of it to resist it. But repeatedly colonization and capitalism have shown the necessity to expand and grow often comes at the cost of appropriation and exploitation of all things.

In terms of the Métis, there becomes an issue with how intrinsically their identity has become tied to capital. Early iterations of Métis arts preservation were accomplished by using their art to survive. Métis art was well preserved into the present rarely by generational care it was often due to the desire of colonizers' pockets that view Métis art of practical and ornamental sewing as valuable. (Racette, 2005, pp. 22) Métis women especially had to commodify their work as the fur trade wore out for the Métis. When hunting became even more restricted the value of sewing and beading for Métis to commodify rose. They would take on long laborious habits that made it a necessity to participate in an ever-growing capitalist system. This isn’t to say that art doesn’t allow a space for any displaced individual to have a return. However, it becomes difficult for art to exist to facilitate it when it is held back by centuries of oppression, paywalls, museums, and sub-par superstition that describes the Indigenous experience all too well of being lost without their culture.

To monetize art, especially one of representation, the aura and spiritual connection are lost. (Kuspit, 2007) The space that it would’ve created is now only enjoyed by a select few or rung out of any cultural meaning. Whether it was taken as a resource for the metropole or placed into a new space, losing its context. At the end of the day, it could be boiled down into the mass production of tourist trinkets. It plays into the narrative of segregation of caste and that money is the only access to potential healing. This points us to the manufactured ideology that plagues all these topics when we consider how co-opted art is now used as a form of individual empowerment.

The Individual

Under the colonial capitalist social system, many have arisen to the task of combating social oppression. From notable movements of inclusion in contradictory spaces like museums. To blockbuster movies featuring more disabled, ethnic, or sexual identities. There is an odd tension and emphasis that somehow representation is placed solely on the individual to carry. It is not to say all this effort of representation is fruitless and hasn’t been working. However, it is difficult to break away from these things under the ideology of colonial capitalism. For in essence for someone to rise the emphasis is on the self. Not a shared diverse collective beyond the individual community.

This is done to maintain the class divide as problems of representation are segregated into different communities. Never truly intersecting on collective problems. If we were to look back to the Métis the scrip system worked to purposefully individualize them. Scrip wasn’t allowed to be accepted as a community but only done on an individual basis. It limited community input and ensured that if a Métis member did accept it, they would potentially be ostracized by the rest of their community. (Library and Archives Canada, 2012) Métis were made individuals not just from other minorities and Indigenous tribes but also within their communities. Individualism then isn’t just a capitalist notion it is a colonial notion as well. Done from the practice of colonialism and repackaged in the individualistic empowerment of capitalist social culture.

The idea of empowerment has always been tied to capitalism as capitalism rose as an alternative meant to separate the distance between discriminatory government legislation and pass that power to independent businesses instead. However, by doing that it creates a demand that responsibility is no longer done together it is meant to be done alone. Sure, money may be run by the state but if a business fails it will have to hold itself up. An influencer may seek to make monetary gain but if they support a business that was "cancelable," they will have to compensate. If you were to go after the state it would not matter when production was outsourced to international companies. The illusion is almost broken especially when you see Shein getting women of colour, that is plus size, and sometimes queer to represent them. (Benchetrit, 2023) It circles back especially when we see individual creators in media with films or television. They try to push the narrative of the empowerment of their communities but sometimes fall short of what the story means. Since again, the responsibility is on the creator, the director, the business, or the state to ensure ways to secure capital to bring empowerment. Collective empowerment does not matter when we are so divided with our own problems.

Free Together

The narrative is clear here. Capitalism is the modern version of colonialism. It may have just been an economic system, but it is now a social system that perpetuates multitudes of oppression that can only be described as a global caste system. All goals of colonial capitalism point to the necessity of taking up space and turning its resources over to the superior in the equation. Its expansion is ever-growing and not at all stopping. Movements to resist have always existed but they fall short. It's why so many new economic systems never replace capitalism since capitalism never replaced colonialism. The emphasis is still on fulfilling a means to satisfy the top and neglecting the bottom. Often where the middle is meant to divide, and it will have to be the lowest caste to find empowerment to survive. However, this empowerment is falsified under this ideology. The solution then, is found in collective diverse empowerment if the problem is a broken social system rather than just a broken economic system.

Throughout history, it has shown oppression again and again, but it has also shown profound diverse collective empowerment. When the full embrace of humanity manages to work together the standard of any human endeavour rises. (Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 385) Social movements that worked together beyond their sole community issues raised the standard of life. Such as the American Black civil rights movement. A movement that sparked a collaborative social movement that consistently raised the standard for all people to have the right to vote, to ownership, to work safely, and to love. In India, the feminist Dalit movement proved the economic disparity far more than any other movement in the 1980s. (Onvedt, 1988, pp. 2551) With collective empowerment, many of these social movements moved towards the same conclusion that the issues they all truly faced were economic ones much like the ending of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy with the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968. (King Institute) These social issues are tied to a broken economic system. Only when they worked together did meaningful change occur for everyone. Even at the top of the highest caste, they will never truly be satisfied when an identity is found in money and consumerism. For there is no human identity under caste. Identity is founded on a broken system that has always pitted everyone against one another. It is not impossible to break down a broken system as much as it wasn’t impossible to topple the Nazi regime. Only together could we begin to unveil and deconstruct colonial capitalism for its artificial origins. Then we can imagine and use new economic and social systems. Ones that care about sustainable growth and compassion to rediscover diverse collective empowerment.

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