User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
The superlatives people use to describe Caste are all accurate. This is an astonishing book with a bold premise—that race in America is a caste system like those in India and Nazi Germany. Well-written, well argued and provocative. Wilkerson made me think and taught me so much. You think you know the history of racism and then a book like this reveals that it’s so much worse than you could have also imagined. Also she quotes me in the book! I dropped it when I saw that. So unexpected. A lil ego boost. But really that’s just a small vanity. The book is amazing for what it accomplished and how.
Rating: really liked it
The Warmth of Other Suns was one of the most important books I’ve read. So, I was really looking forward to Caste. When I previously thought of castes, I thought only of India. Wilkerson posits that the Third Reich was also a caste system. And, of course, the US. In fact, the Nazis used American race laws to design their own system. Unlike the Indian caste system, which had hundreds if not hundreds of separate castes, we basically have two. White and Black, as the poorest white is still above a Black person.
Wilkerson uses the first section to set out her premise. By Part Two, she gets down to the history, spelling out how it came to be and evolved through time. From 1619 until 1865, the slaves were the obvious lowest caste. But even after Emancipation, the country found ways to keep the Blacks in the lowest segment of society. The surprise is how current this book is. She not only covers the Obama presidency, but also the Trump election and his first three years. Even the corona virus is covered.
One of the most important points she makes is that racism is not just the personal hatred by one person, but a systematic abuse, often so deeply ingrained in society as to be oblivious to those in the upper caste. And that the upper caste will do everything to keep their privilege intact.
Wilkerson uses a blend of historical research, individual examples and even personal history to flesh out her theory. Some of the stories are gruesome in the extreme. It’s a hard truth to realize that there’s scant difference between a Nazi labor camp and a southern plantation, both using multiple means to dehumanize the targeted segment . And she rightly points out that brutality actually worsened after the Civil War, as the whites no longer had a monetary investment in the black population. By 1933, there was a black person lynched every four days in the south.
Wilkerson is not shy about talking about current US affairs, post 2016. She makes an important point about the narcissism of a group. “A group whipped into narcissistic fervor is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify...The right kind of leader can inspire a symbiotic connection that supplants logic. The susceptible group sees itself in the narcissistic leader, becomes one with the leader, sees his fortunes and his fate as their own.”
This isn’t an easy book, but it’s extremely important, especially in light of current times. It’s one of my best of 2020. Towards the end of the book, Taylor Branch is quoted as asking, “So the real question would be, if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?”
My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.
Rating: really liked it
Those in the dominant caste who found themselves lagging behind those seen as inherently inferior potentially faced an epic existential crisis. To stand on the same rung as those perceived to be of a lower caste is seen as lowering one's status. In the zero-sum stakes of a caste system upheld by perceived scarcity, if a lower-caste person goes up a rung, an upper-caste person comes down. The elevation of others amounts to a demotion of oneself, thus equality feels like a demotion.
Coming across the passage above was a eureka moment, a lightning strike going off in my head. It immediately made me think of the now-famous quote that showed up around the time of Trump: "Equal rights for others does not mean less rights for you. It's not pie." I had long puzzled over the necessity of stating this obvious fact, and why it was that a significant portion of the American population did not seem to agree with it. And the paragraph above, along with this entire book, has finally given me the answer, a comprehensive explanation for all that has confused me for so long.
Going into
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, I had never thought about racism as a form of a caste system. Yet, the book makes an articulate and thoughtful argument for why one is really a manifestation of the other. It refers to India's famous caste system to explain America's racial structure, but it also spends a good amount of time comparing them to Nazi Germany. Through it all, it provided answers to so many discrepancies that racism alone could never quite fully account for.
This book is unflinching in its analysis and chilling in its comparisons. To see racism in America as being equal to, or even at times worse than, the Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews, is horrifying and eye-opening. For example, in one of the passages around the formation of the Nuremberg Laws, the book talks about how the Germans learned from the Americans. They actually studied U.S. segregation laws and were impressed with their ability to keep black citizens powerless, all within a legal framework.
The book doesn't just talk about history, but also what is happening today. In particular, it addresses the backlash that formed following Obama's election to the highest office in the land, the seemingly confounding actions that Trump supporters took in voting against their own self-interest, and the fanatical fever of white and Confederate pride that have overtaken so many citizens and towns.
One of the unintended side effects of this book is that it helped me understand my Chinese heritage and culture. There were so many verbal and nonverbal cues I had picked up throughout my childhood, which had shaped me into the quiet and passive person I'd been in my early adult years. That, combined with the personality differences I have seen among my Chinese peers, all seem to tie into Chinese's implicit caste system of favoring sons over daughters. Even though there is nothing about China in this book, everything that is said about the psychological effects of a caste system can still apply (though to a much lesser degree).
I almost didn't finish this book, though. For all of its insightful breakthroughs, I almost stopped reading because I found the beginning chapters to be dull, indulgent, and flowery. It spent so long telling me what the book will be about instead of just getting on with it. It was full of metaphors for what racism is, like it's an old house, or a virus, or a play. And each metaphor is stretched to its limits, filled with pages and pages of comparisons. It wasn't until the middle of chapter 4 that the content finally starts to become cogent. If you are considering this book, do try to power through the initial muddling pages to get to the rest of this powerful and worthwhile book.
We cannot hope to bridge the divide that has so fractured this country if one side cannot understand the other. So for me, this book is of the upmost importance. It has done more for my understanding of US race relations than any other book I have read. Looking at race through the lens of a caste system is the only explanation I've come across that is both logical and comprehensive.
Rating: really liked it
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, makes the case that America is a caste system analogous to that of India's but organized on the basis of race. She strongly implies that the 2016 Presidential Election was somehow evidence for this claim and then outlines what she posits are the features of the American caste system (8 pillars of caste):
Wilkerson's 8 Pillars of Caste:1) Divine Will and The Laws of Nature
2) Heritability
3) Endogamy and the control of marriage and mating
4) Purity vs pollution
5) Occupational hierarchy
6) Dehumanization and Stigma
7) Terror as enforcement, cruelty as a means of control
8) Inherent superiority vs inherent inferiority
Wilkerson's thesis is ostensibly ridiculous as a description of contemporary America, which is actually organized as a hierarchy of competence where competence is roughly determined by free market forces (any serious discussion of political economy is strikingly absent from
Caste), a meritocracy in other words. Wilkerson's claims are also reckless, especially given the media attention given to her work (i.e. Oprah's recommendation). This is not a work that is seeking to achieve the racial reconciliation and harmony of a post-racial America where all races and creeds can cash the promissory note of the American founding and the American dream. It wallows in the racial sins and misery of America's past (slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow) and labels those evils as America's essence rather than the chronic disease that America has always aspired to eliminate.
I would be more inclined to take her arguments seriously if she didn't assiduously avoid all the aspects of American life that plainly contradict her or at least mitigate against such a stark perspective. For instance, Wilkerson completely ignores Asian American minorities in her book. She fails to address why in a caste system organized by race with "whiteness" as the dominant identity that Asian Americans are the most educated, wealthiest ethnic group. Of course black/African Americans historically suffered much deeper, more severe iniquities than Asian Americans, but her thesis is predicated on the claim that society is systemically organized to ensure dominant status for white Americans. It's just sloppy to have such a glaring omission, a white elephant of sorts that lurks behind every line. Moreover, Wilkerson's seeming aversion to sociological and economic data is evidenced as she opts for the telling of emotive anecdotes of racial iniquities. Wilkerson is a moving writer; however, the lack of rigor, specificity, data, and analysis belie her true intentions, which are those of an activist rather than a scholar (activists don't have time for pesky facts or to dissect a delicate, hot-button topic in a balanced, dispassionate fashion).
There were some aspects of Wilkerson's discussions of race that I thought were accurate. For instance, she does point out that there is no biological (i.e. genetic) definition of race, making it decidedly a social invention. I think this is an important insight, but Wilkerson does not follow this understanding through to its conclusion. Given the harm caused by the arbitrary use of skin color as a historical system of oppression and disenfranchisement, we should aim for a future where skin color is no longer a meaningful measure (a color-blind egalitarian society where one's merit entirely determines one's place in the social hierarchy). Despite Wilkerson's vagueness on how this supposed American racial caste system can be remedied, it is clear that this is not the vision she has for America's future or even believes that such a future is possible.
I could belabor my critique, but I think a recommendation to readers interested in this topic would be better.
Political Tribes by Amy Chua, although not as directly engaged on the issue of race, is still far superior in its discussion of similar issues, a balanced, reasonable analysis of the tribalism in contemporary American society.
Rating: really liked it
Liked this book for its blunt discussion of racism and caste discrimination, though at times its analysis felt rather simple or superficial. In terms of positives, I appreciate
Caste for its international perspective. A lot of books on race write about race within the context one country, whereas Isabel Wilkerson compares and contrasts the United States, India, and Nazi Germany. Wilkerson does a great job too of showing how many anti-Black racist events within the United States occurred not too long ago. In part because of the myth of a post-racial society, we often believe that things like slavery and segregation occurred way back when, when in reality those racist events happened relatively recently and still manifest today through mass incarceration and voter suppression. I appreciated Wilkerson’s more provocative or deeper insights, such as how a lot of people in lower castes will try to assimilate and desire proximity to upper castes (yikes), as well as how these issues of caste extend into arenas ranging from disenfranchisement in academia to nastiness in interpersonal interactions.
Sometimes I wanted more from this book’s structure and its recommendations about challenging the caste system. The book’s thesis and argument style feels a bit simplistic in that early on Wilkerson establishes the idea of castes. Then, she describes several racist events, and at the end of each description she comments about how the event exemplifies the presence and maintenance of castes. I desired more innovative, less repetitive writing that delved deeper into the systemic, international mechanisms that perpetuate castes. Goodreads reviewer Chetana raises issue with the simplicity of Wilkerson’s international analysis in her review, which I agree with. The solutions and action steps toward the end of the book felt pretty surface-level too. While radical empathy and recognizing each other’s humanity is great, I’m additionally interested in specific, systemic, actionable ways we can dismantle white supremacy and caste discrimination.
I do think it’s important that the racist events Wilkerson describes in this book are acknowledged, though I’m not sure those more familiar with racism will learn much from reading
Caste, aside from some of the introductory international analysis. I’d be curious for writers to include more about how Asian and Latinx individuals fit into the American caste system as well as how intersectionality plays into it. In terms of books about racism and anti-racism, I’d still recommend
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde,
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Longe, and
So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo.
Rating: really liked it
FAVORITE NON FICTION AUDIOBOOK since Michele Obama’s “Becoming”.
Ten years ago, I read “The Warmth of Other Suns”....The epic story of America’s Great Migration ....
One of the most highly imagined - engrossing - heartfelt books I’ve ever read. There were three main unforgettable characters— their complexities - individual stories - and motivations for what they did - had to do - was soooo well written and experienced from Isabel Wilkerson...I’ve never forgotten the power and impact her book left on me.
Ten years later...brings me to:
“Caste...The Origins of Our Discontents”....( an Oprah Book Club pick... more deserving than all other ‘club-picks’, combined)....is an exceptional- needed - extraordinary - masterful - BEST NON FICTION BOOK ....perfect timing book - in the pandemic year of 2020 - that brings a whole new meaning to the term: “INSTANT CLASSIC”.
*Audiobook*....read by Robin Miles [14hours and 26 minutes] ....
Robin is the perfect reader for this book.
Two full days of compelling binge listening. This book only left my side for one phone call, ( Tzipora), and couple of quick messages.
The last time I listened to an audiobook with this much gusto, was when I listened to Michelle Obama read from her book ‘Becoming’.
This book changes us...
It has changed me. I’ll never think of caste, American Caste, dominate caste, subordinate caste, mis-casting of caste, sickness of caste, hate, suffering, violence, rejection of caste, cruelty of caste, disparity, fears, resentments, intolerance, mocking, beliefs, assumptions, lies upon lies, stereotyping, slavery, abuse, discrimination, oppression, class, blacks, white, race, hierarchy, and collective madness the same again. There is no returning to where I started from before this book.
I learned so much more about American history....about AMERICAN CASTE HISTORY... realizing how much I never understood before.
It would take me 5 to 10 years to write a deserving review to match a third of this highly accomplished book.
And now that I’ve finished it - it might be a better use of my time to read professionals reviews, watch YouTube’s, podcasts, interviews, and read other readers reviews, than spend the next many years trying to write one book review myself. I do intend to stay engaged with the conversations - ( be mindful as one Goodreads buddy said), and apply action where it seems appropriate).
Oprah must have some discussion group going, yes? I’d pay to join a quality book discussion with Isabel Wilkerson speaking.
The only other time I engaged with one of Oprah’s online book clubs, was when she and Eckhart Tolle...lead a ten week -weekly hour- online gathering discussion- chapter by chapter ( people from around the world).
Point is, I’m at at age, stage, and readiness of wanting to stay engaged learning, growing, re-evaluating, reassessing, being mindful, and taking action when it comes to social injustice- intolerance- racial justice - and civil liberties.
Reading this book....was fitting with my own commitment to the cause.
While digesting so much information from this book - I’m aware that I’ve still no idea just how ‘much’ this book is a useful gift ....it’s opened a new pathway inside my brain...for more...new... greater effective learning.
Isabel Wilkerson connects caste histories - giving us a connective experience of the caste system in India, Nazi Germany, and in America.
For example, Isabel, explains how radical inequality in America has its parallel in caste in inequality in India even though by definition race and caste are not the same thing. She draws different parallels from different systems of oppression.
She breaks down eight pillars of caste: ( explores each of these with us to better understand)
....Foundations of caste origins of discontents
....Divine Will and Laws of Nature
....Heritability
....Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating
....Purity Versus Pollution
....Occupational Hierarchy: The Jatis and the Mudsill
....Dehumanization and Stigma
....Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control
....Inherent Superiority Versus Inherent Inferiority
Race and Caste are examined - how they are similar and how they are different. Both divide society in many ways to the unfair advantage of certain groups over others. I particularly liked when Isabel included real people, situations, and their ‘oh-my-fricken-god’ stories that gave me a more direct experience of the intensity of discrimination.
My mind connects best with real stories include...and there are plenty.
There were several personal stories that will stay with me ...
....one was about a woman named *Miss*,
....another true ‘sharing-story’ about when Isabel was in a position where she was accused of impersonating herself. I’m still chuckling over that one.
....THIS IS AN INSIDE FUNNY FOR READERS WHO HAVE ALREADY READ THIS BOOK:
In need for a new mailbox? Haha!
There’s an old saying I learned years ago....
If you have a flat tire, and you’re angry about it.... you can kick it, and kick it, and kick it again....but the tire will still be flat.
I mentioned it might take years for me to write a proper review.
I could write much more about this book and I’m sure it would be a beneficial process for myself....
However, at this point, best to share the real truth to others: READ IT!!!
It really should be required reading - in our schools - families - for humanity.
I hope I was able to contribute a small part, of adding my voice to the endorsement FOR WHY READ - ( audiobook was great for me)...this book. Reading will have many advantages too. I’d need to consider purchasing- and reading this book for a next read.
The start was awesome - a creative fun way to get a regular reader interested - ( and again its must be said that the voice narrator, Robin Miles was fantastic); I was immediately hooked.
I was never bored but there were a few parts that were harder for me to understand than others.
The journey is a process.
I don’t think I’m expected to understand everything from one read, but I got a hell of a lot out of it.
Isabel Wilkerson is a genius.
She’s a phenomenal teacher ( besides incredible author).
I’m thankful for the added spoonfuls of sugar, to the much needed medicine: seriously’ helpful in digesting this much learning in 2 days.
Is it even necessary to say?
5 strong stars - and more.
Rating: really liked it
To start, I have to say that I think this book deserves a 4-star rating as a detailed narrative of the actions of certain individuals who were interested in maintaining a caste style hierarchy of others based on skin color. However, I found it a bit short-sighted and was personally disappointed in this work.
That said, as an individual reader, I think I was just expecting something different than what this book actually is, and that led me to the 2-star rating.
I eagerly awaited the publication of this book, hoping that it would be a deeply researched tome that would provide illumination for race relations in the United States. Seeing the title of "Caste" had me believe that this discussion would go beyond the binary frames that usually are associated with discourses on racism by using the lens of caste hierarchy. As the book went on, however, I found the intricate retelling of past atrocities against individual African Americans--which most of the book is dedicated to--akin to a rehashing of past work. Instead of establishing a new frame using caste, I found that on many occasions, the phrases of "dominant caste" and "subordinate caste" were just replacements for the words "white people" and "black people", and I didn't get the sense that the investigation was meant to go beyond that. Discussions of India's and the Nazi's caste systems were scant, and never really were raised to the same level of comparison as those of America's Jim Crow and Antebellum south.
To be clear, this isn't to say that these stories aren't significant to be reminded of, especially during our current moment. But it provides readers with more of an explanation of WHAT happened to certain individuals at a very particular time, rather than providing a fuller picture of the WHY these things happen, and the deeper implications of those actions both on the victims and the aggressors. That's where this book didn't reach the expectations that I had for it -- which admittedly, may have been misplaced.
Rating: really liked it
Americans don’t think in these terms, but Isabel Wilkerson points out in no uncertain terms that the country is running a caste system, remarkably and sadly just like India’s. In India, there are four varnas and numerous, maybe thousands of subdivisions between them. Each one is a caste with strict rules of life, conduct, liberty and employment. In the US, there is the dominant caste and the subordinate caste. In between, there are various subcastes for various colors and tribes, but at the very bottom there are blacks. It’s so obvious, obstructive and intrusive that even blacks from other countries go out of their way to distinguish themselves from African Americans.
The main difference is that in India, you can only tell the castes apart by people’s postures and attitudes, because everyone is from the same genetic family. In America, it’s entirely by skin color, making it very easy to tell the castes apart. This has made America’s caste system stubbornly resistant to laws, directives or social movements. In her gripping and staggeringly affecting book Caste, Wilkerson looks at the system from every angle, finding it a terrific waste of time, human potential, and life. Its attributes are entirely negative, just as in India. It’s all for nothing and all about nothing. But it costs plenty. Those human costs are the real meat of the book.
Americans have been well aware of running a caste system, for centuries now. In 1832 a Virginia slaveholder said “poor whites have little but their complexion to console them for being in a higher caste.” Civil War era Senator Charles Sumner said caste was a “violation of equality.” The word keeps popping up, but it seems no one has seen fit to work with it.
Wilkerson finds that white skin is salvation for a lot of poor whites, who know with certainty that they are not the bottom of the heap – as long as there are blacks around. So it’s important to both keep them down and keep them poor. The situation is so devoid of truth or reality that 55% of Americans think all poor people are black. And that’s reason enough to keep the castes separate, and to be against aiding the poor.
One of the very many impressive things in Caste is the day-to-day horror of living while black. There is having to be careful over every step you take and every word you utter, lest a dominant caste member take offense – just like in India. America had a an example just last week (as I write this in May 2020) as a woman in Central Park called the police when a black birdwatcher asked her to leash her dog as signs indicated was required. She claimed her very life was being threatened by an African American. This can lead to beatings or death. False charges never stopped a lynching.
Treatment by store clerks, by doctors and by the police is different for blacks. And not better. Daily indignities and humiliations are horrors in themselves, and it’s not just a stop-and-frisk policy that sees the same men harassed several times a day, every day they dare to venture outside. It is also disproportionate jailings, sentencing and monitoring. Blacks are followed around stores, suspected of being potential shoplifters because they are black. They receive an outsized portion of traffic tickets and fines. And police kill them with little if any thought. For decades, they were denied government-backed mortgages, got worse rates on loans, and went to worse state funded schools. This is a caste system at work.
As in India, where even the shadow caused by the presence of a Dalit (Untouchable) is thought to pollute the higher castes, so in America, the thought of shaking hands or allowing a black child in a municipal swimming pool was a horror beyond imagining. When laws were enforced to allow blacks in public pools, American towns filled them with concrete rather than allow it.
There were separate everythings for the castes, from water fountains to hotels, restaurants, toilets, churches and train cars. A black with a first class ticket could not sit among whites, dine at the buffet, or mingle. Wilkerson cites a black building owner who had to enter his own building by a rear door in order to collect the rent. I use the past tense, but it clearly continues throughout the country in different mutations today. For example, the former Confederate states still maintain the death penalty, and use it mostly on blacks. Black voters are harassed for state-issued ID when voting, and the slightest mismatch, such as a missing apostrophe, is sufficient to deny them their vote. That’s when the state doesn’t totally shut down their polling stations, which are fewer than for whites and placed inconveniently far away to keep the poor from getting there at all.
Americans used to travel by the thousands to witness a lynching, buy picture postcards of the event, and even grab a body part as a souvenir afterwards. Slaves, chattel that they were, could not even rely on family. A wife or child could be sold off for a nice profit. But even after the Civil War, a child could die in front of its father at the hands of whites - with no recourse. Punishment for a crime was and still can be several times more severe for a black person. Wilkerson cites the stat that in Virginia, 71 offenses rated the death penalty for slaves, but only one of just simple imprisonment for whites. And of course the crime paranoia is totally unjustified. Wilkerson found that 10% of crimes involve a white victim and a black suspect. It’s usually the other way around.
To reinforce the points that make caste different from mere racism, Wilkerson went to Germany. She found that the Nazis created their race purity policies directly and consciously from America, the model for the world. They implemented the same sort of separations, forbidding Jews from holding certain jobs, forbidding whites from marrying or even associating with them, and in order to get a job, forcing all to prove not a drop of Jewish blood in their line, going back at least three generations. Some of the existing policies they found in America were so bizarre and offensive even the Nazis couldn’t justify implementing them. America’s caste system was proudly the worst of the worst. Nazi officials, right up to Hitler, read and prized books by American bigots. It was the umbrella the Nazis could flourish under.
They enslaved Jews, broke up their families, took all their possessions, erased their names and starved them while working them to death as free labor for major German firms. They eliminated their humanity and turned them into a necessary evil. The common hatred of Jews was the glue that kept the whole country together and on the same page. It has been said that if there were no Jews, Hitler would have had to invent them. Without Jews as scapegoats, Hitler would have floundered. So in the USA: blacks are tolerated with both hostility and fear. They provide the bottom rung and convenient scapegoats.
Caste is a wonderfully constructed book. Wilkerson has filled it with stories and examples she sets up before going into her analysis of the aspect the chapter covers. The stories often open readers’ eyes to what would be ordinary situations for anyone else. But they slide into cruelty very quickly. She has plenty of her own tales, as well as famous and lesser known outrages and insults going back 200 years. It has the effect of putting the reader right in the shoes of an African American, showing how debilitatingly stressful and limiting the caste system is for them. This makes the book no treat to read, but also impossible to put down, as readers will find themselves horrified at the impossibly difficult life the dominant caste imposes on the subordinate caste.
It is necessary, but insufficient merely to feel revulsion. Wilkerson calls on everyone go far beyond not being racist, teaching children not to discriminate, and to protest abuses of power. She wants everyone to be pro-subordinate castes in an effort to dissolve them entirely.
Her point is the whole country suffers from the caste system. If there were real equality, healthcare would be equal, as would job opportunities and incarceration. The country would benefit and be much farther ahead with the skills and talents of African Americans. And not just in sports and entertainment, where they are (now) allowed. Poverty would be substantially lessened for all.
Instead, the country is a rough patchwork of different standards, different treatment, different restrictions, and suppressed lives. She says: ”It is not about luxury cars and watches, country clubs and private banks, but knowing without thinking that you are one up from another based on rules not set down in paper but reinforced in most every commercial, television show or billboard, from boardrooms to newsrooms to gated subdivisions to who gets killed first in the first half hour of a movie. This is the blindsiding banality of caste.”
Wilkerson found that in 1944 there was an essay contest for kids in Columbus Ohio. The topic was what to do with Hitler after the war. A 16 year old black girl won with just one sentence: “Put him in black skin and make him live the rest of his life in America.”
David Wineberg
Rating: really liked it
I'm of two minds on Caste. On the one hand, it is a must-read book for anyone with the slightest interest in understanding the Black experience in the US. Its reach is so broad that having read it is table stakes for any cross-racial conversation on point. If you're white and serious about expanding your meaningful relationships with Black individuals, you particularly need to read it, along with The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Between the World and Me and a couple of other Systemic Racism 101 titles. Otherwise, let's be honest, your unwillingness to invest your reading time in understanding systemic racism suggests you're expecting those Black friends to educate you, and I suspect they are weary of taking on that thankless task.
Then again, what you take from reading Caste depends on the level of knowledge and lived experience you bring to it. I found it to be repetitive both within its own pages and in terms of what I know from reading other books, articles and columns covering this same subject matter. Nonetheless, I read and discussed Caste over a 7-week series of meetings with a Zoom book club of predominately well-intentioned, not particularly politically-engaged, white readers; I observed that those readers who knew the least going-in found Caste to be the most impactful, a major eye-opener, as it were. In contrast, the two of us who have been engaged intensely on this topic for decades found it to be fine but it didn't bring new insights or learnings. (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness it is not.)
I have the utmost respect for Wilkerson and her writing is engaging and avoids the research-dump trap. A self-aware reader will know whether Caste should be 1st or 150th on her TBR.
Rating: really liked it
I always feel really weird about reviewing nonfiction. Reviewing fiction is cool, because it's just my opinion versus something somebody made up, but reviewing nonfiction...what am I against facts?
So I will keep this quick.
Famous last words.
A lot of reviews say their issue with this book is its repetitiveness, which is kinda fair, but I do think it's necessary - it's an introduction of a new theory and historical/sociological perspective, so repeating the lesson for the sake of ingraining it makes sense to me.
And it is a very compelling argument. I learned a lot about the connection between Nazi Germany and the American South, which (shockingly) in my experience American education was not very eager to teach us about in detail.
And the anecdotal and historical examples of caste (both in the author's theory and in established thought) were well done too.
I did find the discussion of modern day politics very lacking compared to all of the above. Where everything else was fairly groundbreaking and convincing, the way Trump was discussed as the keystone and the source of pure evil and whatnot felt...like a parroting of a million other arguments. And not necessarily good ones.
Which isn't to say I don't hate Trump. I do. But I also think the goofy way that some people responded
(and still for some reason do) to him - for example, people with psych degrees all bonding together to drop a press release diagnosing him with narcissism, for example, in contrast to what counselors are supposed to do and as highlighted in this book - undermines the believability of other arguments.
Don't get mad at me. I'll expand on it if I have to.
Bottom line: Good stuff! Mostly good. Very good. I'm going to stop talking now.
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pre-reviewreading my once-annual nonfiction
update: i should do this more often.
review to come / 4 stars
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reading all books by Black authors for Black History Month!
book 1: caste
Rating: really liked it
Impeccably written, extensively researched, this book couldn't be more timely. Systemic rascism, though that word is not used, rather Wilkerson argues it is in fact a caste system, a system that became embedded with the first colonials. She uses comparisons of the caste system in India and it's treatment of the undesirables, as well as Nazi Germany and its treatment of the Jews.
What makes this so poignant is the stories of individuals, and the effects in people trapped within these systems. Systems of the utmost cruelty that see these people as others, less than. It is in all ways a quest for power, fear of relinquishing any part of said power, and the ability to portray certain groups of people as a threat. It is this fear, this concern that she believes is what led to the election of the current administration.
A social and historical study, this book does offer a solution but again, will there be any permanent changes? It does provide much for thought, at least for those brave enough to read and to aknowledge
the truths within.
Rating: really liked it
The book is full of moments that annoyed or bothered me. The book was written by a highly regarded and well-paid mainstream author; a journalist with a decidedly bougie perspective. The book focuses excessively on the past; when the focus shifts to the present, the book can be... petty. The book has mixed messages, contradictions; it does not even try to be objective. The book often lacks empathy, kindness.
The book is full of facts and anecdotes that should bother everyone. The book dreams of a country that rewards its people with the regard and pay that they deserve; a place where everyone has the chance of being just as bougie as they want to be. The book seeks to unbury the past so that the present can be better understood, a present full of petty slights and horrific injustices. The book has many messages that do not fit neatly together; its perspective is often a subjective one, a human perspective. The book ends with resonant examples of kindness and posits that
"If each of us could truly see and connect with the humanity in front of us, search for that key that opens the door to whatever we may have in common... it could begin to affect how we see the world and others in it..."Sometimes a journey is not what you want or expect it to be, it goes a different direction and you get agitated, you become appalled at parts of the journey, the foolishness. But it still ends up being a memorable and important experience. I love a good journey for both its problems and its merits, for all the things I learned, for the people who I met or came to know better during that journey, including myself. And for the feeling that there are more journeys to come.
This book was a journey, for real!
PROGRESS NOTESPart 1: Toxins in the Permafrost
Ah the relief at realizing I am reading a
writer. A person who actually understands and enacts the power of prose. He said pretentiously. But after the often drab and basic writing styles of my other forays into modern identity politics (DiAngelo, Kendi, Reilly), it is such a pleasure to see on display actual talent at writing sentences that are nimble, ambiguous, poetic, metaphorical and laden with meaning.
This section starts with Trump and ends with The Matrix. Nice way to keep it real and current, I appreciate that, but I appreciated even more the clear statement of this book's thesis: to better understand (and perhaps replace misuse of the word) "racism" via the lens of caste, as seen in American history with black people, the caste system in India, and the demonization of Jews in Nazi Germany.
Part 2: The Arbitrary Construction of Human Divisions
"No one was white before he/she came to America," James Baldwin once said.Wilkerson's point that "whiteness" was created in America is interesting and challenging. I don't love how she hand-waves aside the evil of slavery that has plagued the human race since forever, but I do love that she is making clear that "racism" is not really what this book is about. Caste: Origins of Our Discontents will apparently be about how and why artificial hierarchies are established. This is the shadow cast by the American experiment. An experiment that was perhaps the first of its kind in modern history - and one that can be praised, cherished, and remembered - but one that also established a very new way of perpetuating casteism: by enshrining racism. And that cast shadow should always be criticized, rejected, yet remembered.
Wilkerson makes a fleeting point that is profound in its implications: yes, Italians & Irish & other European whites were taken captive, traded, bought & sold, enserfed, enslaved... and yet they could escape, they could blend, they could still hope to join a more free level of people in society, higher in the hierarchy, if only through subterfuge... such an opportunity was never possible for those whose caste was displayed on their very skins. And so, yes, many whites were also treated as subhuman by the glorious American experiment, and yet no, it was never the same kind of suffering as faced by black people, by the Africans enslaved.
"We think we 'see' race when we encounter certain physical differences among people such as skin color, eye shape, and hair textrue," the Smedleys wrote. "What we actually 'see' ... are the learned social meanings, the stereotypes, that have been linked to those physical features by the ideology of race and the historical legacy it has left us."
And yet, observed the historian Nell Irvin Painter, "Americans cling to race as the unschooled cling to superstition."Wilkerson's closing chapters in this section are a familiar but still powerful indictment. She describes how the Nazis initially studied American laws to enact their own anti-Semitic laws, although they stopped short of mirroring some of the more draconian anti-black laws in place. She also describes how not even the Nazis produced memorabilia from death camps to then excitedly trade among themselves... while Americans did just that with memorabilia from lynchings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynchin...
Part 3: The Eight Pillars of Caste
1. Divine Will and the Laws of Nature
2. Heritability
3. Endogamy and Control of Marriage & Mating
4. Purity versus Pollution
5. Occupational Hierarchy
6. Dehumanization and Stigma
7. Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as Means of Control
8. Inherent Superiority versus Inherent InferiorityThis section is basically a series of history lessons regarding the evils of American slavery - and to a lesser extent, the Indian caste system and the Nazi's Jewish Program - complete with many horrific examples. I thought this was useful as just that: a history lesson. Most of what is written here should also be taught in high school so that youth are familiarized with key aspects of American history.
I had issues with the writing on the first pillar, which felt like a real reach in its misreading of the Bible (especially its sole focus on the Old Testament), but hey so many others have misread it too, including those who supported slavery. The section on the second pillar was little better, as its perplexing primary example is an incident involving Forest Whitaker. But the subsequent chapters were strong, mainly due to their stomach-churning recountings of various atrocities. The chapter on Dehumanization and Stigma was particularly effective.
My main issue with this section is that it is, essentially, a moral treatise on the sins of the American past. I think I wanted more that was specifically relevant to current times. But it is hard to fault Wilkerson for that lack, as the book's subtitle is "Origins of Our Discontents" - this book is about the history of slavery in the US. History needs to not be whitewashed and it needs to be learned from; moral lessons become resonant when appalling examples are provided so that these lessons are not mere intellectual exercises. And that said, I am really hopeful that Wilkerson will be connecting these origins, these histories and examples of atrocities, to present-day systemic inequities and racist behavior patterns that continue to oppress black Americans.
Part 4: The Tentacles of Caste
This fourth part is a frequently frustrating but ultimately inspiring mix of missed opportunities, digressions of variable quality and purpose, and fortunately, many highly impactful points made through the profiles of a number of important historical figures.
It starts off quite weakly, with a very questionable forward that seems to be praising a traumatizing elementary school experiment that no child should have to go through. Three subsequent chapters are little better. A review of alpha to omega roles in animals was fascinating and enjoyable for an animal lover like me, but utterly fails as an astute analogy for Wilkerson's thesis on caste. Another chapter seems to gloat in an embarrassing way at the suffering of impoverished whites as well as whites impacted by the opioid crisis - her presumption that all of the despair in this lower rung in a higher caste comes from the depression that blacks are succeeding is almost farcical in its lack of nuance or empathy. But worst of all is her chapter on scapegoating, which I thought really strains the definition of that word in seeking to use it as an example of the caste system at work. What bothered me the most though, was that scapegoating
does come into play when looking at how America treats different castes differently when using essentially the same drug: namely, cocaine. In its rock form, crack is a symbol of lower caste degradation; in its powdered form, it is an enviable recreation tool for the upper caste. And the stark difference in punishment for use of either is a perfect illustration of how the judicial system keeps caste in place. I don't understand how the author could have overlooked using this as a primary example of how extremely unfair the caste system is for black drug users versus white. The prison system of the 90s was not full of white Wall Street types arrested for sniffing cocaine.
Fortunately, from those weak chapters, Wilkerson moves from strength to strength. I appreciated her linking of embedded caste behavior patterns of the past with the modern phenomena of widely reported "living while black" incidents. I've been waiting for that linkage! Her examples are of course almost entirely familiar thanks to social media, so I was particularly appreciative of her portrait of her own very diminishing experience. It is important to be regularly reminded of what black people have to deal with throughout their lives, instances of microagression and outright aggression that I - even as a mixed-race person who has experienced racism - haven't had to experience, and will probably never experience.
Her detailing of inequities in the American army during World War II was brief but powerful. Her centering of enslaved African Onesimus as the person who actually introduced innoculation into America is really important - this is the person who modern vaccines can be traced back to, and I should have learned about him growing up. The chapter on colorism and caste maintenance enacted by members of lower castes must have been painful for her to write on a personal level (just as it would be challenging for me to write about Filipino fascist Duterte and why Filipinos love him), and so I particularly appreciated that she really went there. Much as Kendi did in his own book. And the closing chapter on legendary baseball player Satchel Paige was very moving.
Best of all, her fascinating and tense chapter on the caste-researching team led by brilliant black academic Allison Davis and that included his wife, a third black member, and two white teammates. His (and his team's) embedding themselves and disguising their research purposes within 1930s Natchez, Mississippi was an entirely gripping story. Why is this story not more widely known and shared? For example, the Wikipedia entry on Davis only glancingly mentions the result of this team's research (Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class) and doesn't even bother to discuss how it came about. Nor does it do more than mention his subsequent career at the University of Chicago as "the first black tenured professor at a major white American university."
The resonant, depressing closing paragraph:
Under the spell of caste, the [baseball] majors, like society itself, were willing to forgo their own advancement and glory, and resulting profits, if these came at the hands of someone seen as subordinate.
My God, how the human race has cheated itself by its sustained deployment of the caste system.
Part 5: The Consequences of Caste
Similar to the preceding part, this is a mixed bag. The main feeling I'm left with:
I wanted more. Not to diminish all of the good in this section, and there's plenty, but I assumed incorrectly that this would be the climax of sorts, the place where all of what came before - all of the explorations of what got us (the U.S.) here, in our centralizing of the caste system with blacks on the bottom rung - would now be illustrated by the undeniable inequities that currently exist in this country. Housing and redlining, mass incarceration and inequal sentencing, disparities in education and healthcare and within the workforce including demonstrable differences in pay rates and titles, police brutality, etc... I thought that these would be the literal examples of
consequences.
Instead, Wilkerson mainly discusses microagressions and Uncle Toms.
To the former, I did appreciate the message: namely, that there is an actual physical toll on black bodies from the regular anxiety that comes with experiencing (or even worrying about the potential for experiencing) that misnomer "microagressions" - a term I dislike because why not just call it what it is, racism. Or bias, implicit or explicit. The author is clear that dealing with that bullshit on a daily basis literally shortens lives. And often the life spans shortened are those POC who have moved themselves up the economic/class ladder but who now have to deal with living in a world that often refuses to recognize the validity of their existence. I appreciated that nearly an entire chapter was devoted to Wilkerson's own experiences as a black woman who frequently flies first or business class. That chapter should have been cringey, with its focus on travel accommodations that few can afford, but instead, all of those situations really drove her point home. Well, for me at least. I'm a POC male who semi-frequently flies first or business class, and I've experienced none of the things she's described. Because I'm not black and I'm not a black woman. This section was genuinely enraging, perhaps because it was so real and personal for the author. It made the following chapter, where she outlines how such interactions cause hypertension and other physical issues, thus shortening lives, perfectly understandable and relatable. "Living while black" often means not living as long as living while white.
To the latter, Uncle Toms... oof. The chapter intriguingly entitled "The Stockholm Syndrome and the Survival of the Subordinate Caste" is peculiarly tone-deaf. The focus on the victim's brother, the baliff, and the judge in the Amber Guyger trial (and their comforting of the defendant) is embarrassing - at one point, Wilkerson condescendingly compares the black female judge to a maid. The author's scorn of forgiveness is not a good look; completely overlooked is how forgiveness is a Christian value. It could have been argued that those black individuals who enact that value are far more succesful at practicing Christianity and living the words of Christ than those white individuals who do not. Instead, she devalues forgiveness altogether, as well as the power of empathy to connect disparate people. She also appears to underestimate the healing power of forgiveness. One does not have to forget to forgive; forgiveness does not go hand in hand with capitulation. Forgiveness is a way to not let a slight or a harm rule a person. To not let a person's life become further shortened due to living with rage on a daily basis.
And all that said, I'm not judging Wilkerson's rage. I would prefer to live a different way, but that's me. I'm not black and so I'm not going to judge black rage.
This section opens with an exploration of how narcissism is an inevitable characteristic of both the individual and the society that upholds the caste system. It is a powerful argument and I would have liked to have read more about that idea. But I should have realized that with that opening thesis, Wilkerson was defining this section's parameters: her focus will be on the psychological not the the sociological, the personal instead of the political, the individual injuries experienced and how they impact longevity, rather than on the structures and systems that have harmed and continue to harm the many.
Part 6: Backlash
Easily the best chapter of the book. Wilkerson evaluates the American reaction to Obama, Trump, and the removal of Confederate statues. She reminds us of how Obama was demeaned in ways that no other president has been, she attempts to smack away the notion that Trump won over Clinton due to class rather than race, she contrasts the German memorialization of Nazi victims with the American adulation of Confederate warriors. She links the ease that many Americans have in dismissing universal health care to the ease that Americans feel in ignoring the impact that slavery had, and continues to have, on this country. (That last point was a new one to me and I really appreciated its portrait of an American character that rejects empathy as a laudable characteristic.) Finally, she positions the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on people of color and on the lowest-paid workers as another symptom of how the caste system allows any number of indignities and inequities to be visited upon lower castes.
Part 7: Awakening
Beautiful! A Brahmin giving up his caste. A Jew who saw the flaw at the heart of his new country. A black female author and a white male plumber who recognized the humanity in each other. All quite moving.
What is a meritocracy? A place where everyone can aspire to reach a higher level, a place where every group of people can have their merit recognized, regardless of how they look, what their lineage may be, where they were born. America has long considered itself such a place. When reflecting on our history, the truth is clear: this is only a recent development for many of us. This nation has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.
I thought that Wilkerson's dismissal of "empathy" was pat and flat, tunnel-visioned and laughable. But I did appreciate her promotion of "radical empathy" despite her misunderstanding of the word empathy itself.
The last chapter is both epiphany and plea. A plea to all to recognize the origins of black discontent, to not brush them aside, to understand how they created the tensions of today. An epiphany: change is still possible, change is necessary, change should and can be embraced. I love a hopeful ending.
Notes & BibliographyStetson wrote a reasonable, well-argued 1-star review of this book. I liked it. But what sorta chaps my hide is that he critiques the author for lacking specificity and data. My guy, did you not notice the 50+ pages where she lists all of the sources for her many anecdotes, data points, and statistics? I guess someone had their white blinders on, cough.
Rating: really liked it
This may be the most important book I read this year. It’s timely, well researched, and well written. Non-fiction is not my primary reading material, but I found myself engaged and easily turning the pages. Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of another book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration posits that African Americans are on the lowest rung of a caste system in American. In a systematic revelation of facts, Wilkerson shines a searing light on the history of enslavement in the South and compares it to the Third Reich’s treatment of the Jews and India’s caste system. The Jim Crow south continued to perpetuate inequality and worse. It’s a bone-chilling account and a call to personal awakenings of conscience.
Wilkerson writes of silent earthquakes rumbling deep within the earth long before the actual earthquake creates havoc and devastation. She states that “only recently have circumstances forced us, in this current era of human rupture, to search for the unseen stirrings of the human heart, to discover the origins of our discontents.” That is what she probes within these pages.
The eight pillars of caste as outlined by Wilkerson begin with ‘Divine Will and the Laws of Nature.’ Just as some Christians point to the ‘curse of Ham’ as justification for slavery, so does the ancient Hindu text of India provide for the caste system. It pains me to remember the sermons in my own church when I was growing up...that "integration is an act of communism," a reflection of the ignorance and unjustified fears of the time. I was eight years old when my school became integrated. The other children were just like me, only a different color.
Wilkerson points to the 2016 election as a consequence of a backlash against the presidency of the first African American, Barak Obama. Many people vote against their own self-interests when they perceive that their dominance is threatened. One would think that climate change, science, and coronavirus would be at the forefront of everyone’s agenda, seeing as how all those things have to do with the survival of humanity, but that is not the case. The protection of wealth, superiority, and entitlement seem to be just as valid these days.
Wilkerson compares how Germany faced the aftermath of what happened there with how American continues to subjugate blacks and other minorities. She imagines what life would be like if all people were celebrated, if everyone was allowed to reach his/her full potential. Noam Chomsky, celebrated linguist, scholar, and political activist recognizes the Black Lives Matters movement as a reason for hope and “the biggest social movement in American history with support beyond anything that’s ever been registered in the past.” (1)
I don’t believe I have ever read anything so thorough or revelatory about what it means to be black in America.
(1) https://daily.jstor.org/noam-chomsky-...
Rating: really liked it
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is a 2020 Random House publication.
“Caste makes distinctions where God has made none”It has taken me a good while to get through this book. There were times when I took long breaks from it- taking some time to reflect on what I had read.
Reading through some top reviews of the book and seeing that it has garnered over twelve thousand reviews, I can’t see how I could add anything more profound to what others have already said.
Instead, I’ll just say that Wilkerson has written another very important book- one that should be read by all.
Here are a few of my highlighted quotes:
Caste is structure. Caste is ranking. Caste is the boundaries that reinforce the fixed assignments based upon what people look like. Caste is a living, breathing entity. It is like a corporation that seeks to sustain itself at all costs. To achieve a truly egalitarian world requires looking deeper than what we think we see. We cannot win against a hologram. Caste is granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindnesses to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing the hierarchy.In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance. In America, race is the primary tool and the visible decoy, the front man, for caste.Choose not to look, however, at your own peril. The owner of an old house knows that whatever you are ignoring will never go away. Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.Overall, Wilkerson writes an in-depth study on the American Caste system, compares it with that of other countries, and gives readers plenty to think about and learn from- but it’s her own experiences that allow one to see these truths in action, to experience their affects from a personal perspective.
Once more Wilkerson has written an unflinching body of work, one that teaches and admonishes- but also enlightening- allowing us to imagine a world without Caste.
A powerful book- highly recommended.
5 stars
Rating: really liked it
One of the most important books of this year, tackling the issue of race, caste, class and prejudice, giving insight into how a caste society is built, how it functions and how it shapes an individual.
For me it was eye-opening and mind-blowing at times, a reading experience that greatly appreciated.
A big thank-you to Isabel Wilkerson, Penguin Press UK, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
