The insularity of the caste—maintained by an internal uniformity no less strict than its exclusion of outsiders—seems to inhibit the development of what one has to call a more universal humanity, which is what makes relationships between racial aliens possible.

QUESTION: Is universal humanity a normative ideal or an empirical outcome? Worth probing what conditions actually enable cross-racial relationships.

QUESTION: This suggests that breaking internal homogeneity could enable cross-racial connection—worth exploring what praxis this implies. XREF: Echoes Toni Morrison's emphasis on how whiteness's internal uniformity forecloses intimacy with Blackness, and du Bois's double-consciousness passages.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 604