In the spring of 1986 I was experiencing my second year teaching high school science on the Omaha Indian Reservation in northeast Nebraska. That particular year, a gentlemen from India was hired to teach math and physics to this same group of Native American kids. His name was Sukbar Sadhia. He was a Sikh, from an area in northwest India known as “the Punjab”. He used to joke with me about how “On the Punjab we can triple crop each year. How many crops can be produced in Nebraska?” Of course I would remind him that the Punjab was located in a tropical climate with a year round growing season.

The staff at this school was tight, and frequently someone threw a party at their home. At one such party in the spring of 1986 I was enjoying a lively conversation with Mr. Sadhia when I changed the tone of our conversation and asked him point blank “Mr. Sadhia, I have heard about people in India called Untouchables. What are they?” Instantly, his demeanor changed. His ubiquitous smile vanished and he blurted “We don’t talk about Untouchability! WE DON’T TALK ABOUT UNTOUCHABILITY!!” I immediately backed off, having clearly broached a subject that was never to be acknowledged, let alone discussed.

Fast forward to the summer of 2005. Hurricane Katrina is ravaging the central gulf coast including the city of New Orleans. Watching the ongoing and escalating tragedy on the twenty-four hour cable news networks, I see desperate people in New Orleans, mostly African Americans, wading through waist deep water, often carrying children. At another point in the coverage I see a deceased individual in a wheelchair on a curb, while dozens of others mill about around him, seemingly unfazed by the presence of death in such close proximity. At other times the coverage is of people stranded on rooftops or highway overpasses that remained above water level. Then I had a most bizarre thought: “I hope  these images are not being sent to Europe”. Almost immediately I then had to ask myself “Why do I feel this way? What difference does it make if Europeans see this footage?” Clear answers weren’t immediately forthcoming. After ruminating periodically for a few months, an answer gradually appeared: America now has untouchables, and I didn’t want Europe to know it.

America, like any other “Western” or first-world country, has and always has had poor people. The proportion of the population classified as poor has fluctuated as America has gone through times of prosperity and recession. But something more ominous and threatening has emerged in recent decades, and is quite likely an outgrowth of how the poor are now viewed in modern society.

Once upon a time, the poor were viewed as a subset of the population deprived of the suite of opportunities that made others successful. The poor were the downtrodden, the oppressed. Their station was largely fixed. But in late nineteenth century America, a new narrative emerged; the Horatio Alger narrative of pulling oneself up by ones own bootstraps. Success was now increasingly viewed as the result of ones determined resolve to escape the former trappings. America, the land of limitless horizons for those sufficiently astute to marshal the resources at their disposal, and achieve greatness. The narrative appeared true as national prosperity increased and America entered what we can now bookend as “the golden age of the American middle class”, 1946-1980. However, a watershed was reached at which time a slow methodical erosion of the once vast middle class began. Though punctuated by episodes of prosperity and recession, the overall trajectory was evident to anyone with a sufficiently long time horizon. But as the middle class declined, the old narrative of limitless upward economic mobility remained tenacious. A serious disconnect between the narrative and reality now pervades the economic landscape; the narrative unmoored from reality. The belief persists that economic loss is due to ones own shortcomings.

Those at the bottom of the economic ladder have experienced not only the physical deprivation resulting from greater inequality and the methodical shredding of the social safety net, but in addition must contend with societal ostracism; contempt for failure as the mythology of success persist. Thus arises untouchability. These people are beyond the poor, beyond the underclass. Mostly black and brown, they are expected to stay out of sight, out of mind, like the hurricane victims in New Orleans. They are expected to remain hidden in the woodwork. They are never to articulate their needs. They are never to complain. They are never to compete for the jobs of the chosen ones. They are never to vote, and if they try, obstacles will restrict their access. They live in America, but are not part of America. They are not to venture out of their neighborhoods. They will be incarcerated at far higher rates than “real” Americans, to effectively take them “out” of America.  Like the Untouchables of Sukbar Sadhia’s India, they are non-persons. They are not so much despised as forgotten, ignored, and treated with apathy.

Untouchability in America as in India is a human construct. If we don’t want it to persist, we first must acknowledge that it exists. Only then can we design and implement an agenda that can eradicate this purely American development among western nations: the sin of untouchability.