| Image by Elaine J.E. Degale
When Donald Trump descended that golden escalator in 2015, he didn’t just launch a campaign; he lifted the red velvet curtain on America’s most enduring illusion: that we are a classless, post-racial meritocratic society. In truth, Trump’s America has revealed what few political movements have managed in recent decades: making America’s caste system not only visible but violently defending its production and reproduction for centuries to come.
The great news about this week’s events is that one of the greatest institutions that gave birth to the dreams of black women like me saw Mohsen Madawi released from ICE detention just in time to attend his graduation. His crime? Leading pro-Palestinian protests on Columbia University’s campus in the early months of the Israel-Hamas war, despite this being his First Amendment right as a green card holder.
What is also interesting is that New York University (NYU) has decided to withhold the diploma of student Logan Rozos because he used his graduation speech as a platform to condemn the atrocities currently happening to Palestinians.
What’s wrong with believing in human rights?
Perhaps if Mr. Rozos was of a higher caste in this bastion of democracy we call America, and if only a few more billions allowed for his name to be stamped across the New York skyline, then perhaps the question of him receiving a diploma for doing his own work in college wouldn’t be a point of contention.
Perhaps he would even be deemed presidential.
Alas, there is no such justice in Trump’s America unless you can pay your way up the social ladder. In the American context, a caste system is not simply about race or income. As Isabel Wilkerson wrote in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, it is an unseen hierarchy that predetermines who is allowed to rise, who must remain invisible, and who can break the law without consequence. It is not just about who has money—it’s about who is protected, who is believed, and who is always suspect.
“While poor and working-class Black, Indigenous, and Brown Americans are criminalized for protest, punished for poverty, and abandoned during public health disasters, Trump has walked through multiple bankruptcies, lawsuits, sexual assault accusations, and multiple felony convictions without reprisal.”
This goes back to the country’s founding. The propertied white man always wins!
To be fair, Trump did not invent this American caste hierarchy. He inherited it—along with his wealth—and became one of the caste’s most effective enforcers. His entire persona is built on the myth of self-made success, while his real power lies in inherited privilege, a luxurious brand of Whiteness, and media access. From birtherism attacks on Obama, to the Muslim ban, it has been very clear which side of history the great MAGA movement lands on – a movement obsessed with resetting America back to a time when people could be bought and enslaved to uphold white supremacy.
It is the greatest irony that the most blatantly racist presidency has exposed a core truth about the American human: that some would rather keep their place above someone else as opposed to building a system where everyone thrives.
Because then that would be socialism. Or worse, communism. And we certainly don’t want that because capitalism works!
Much of Trump’s base consists of working-class, white voters in middle America who are economically vulnerable but culturally dominant. Trump offers them a buffet of scapegoats: immigrants, Muslims, Black protestors, coastal elites, queer and trans kids. He fed them a dangerous diet of grievance and supremacy; “you may not be rich, but at least you’re not black —or worse, muslim.”
That’s how caste works.
While poor and working-class Black, Indigenous, and Brown Americans are criminalized for protest, punished for poverty, and abandoned during public health disasters, Trump has walked through multiple bankruptcies, lawsuits, sexual assault accusations, and multiple felony convictions without reprisal. That is caste immunity in action, maybe even P at this rate. Diddy will become president someday if Dr. Belo visits him!
Even the Supreme Court has become a caste tool, rolling back reproductive rights and civil liberties under the guise of “originalism.”
Trump didn’t invent America’s caste system, but he branded it, glamorized it, and sold it as patriotism. The question now is whether America will finally stop pretending the emperor is clothed. Will we dismantle the house the plantation built, or redecorate it every four years?
And what a strange thing that Nottoway looks just like the house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – a nation on fire.
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Editor’s Note: The Philippine Daily Mirror welcomes Elaine J.E.. Degale as a columnist. Ms. Degale’s column, The Dreamweaver, will appear every Thursday. Her articles will be in the guest column as her handle is being prepared. Her initial column, We Are Sub-Saharan, was published on March 23, 2025.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Elaine Joy Edaya Degale is a Black-Filipina writer and lecturer at community colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY) and has an Ed.M. and M.A. from Teachers College, Columbia University.
She graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, where she studied International Relations and Development, and continues to support literacy and food programming efforts in Indigenous communities through her Community-Based organization, OperationMerienda.org.
