Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson

Eye-Opener – “If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” That’s historian Taylor Branch, in conversation with Isabel Wilkerson in November 2018. Now, after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, we know: about 74 million, if not more. If you want to better understand what’s happening today in the United States of America, read this book. If you think our country is grappling with a race problem or a class problem, think again: As Wilkerson eloquently argues, we’re struggling with a caste problem, for as Wilkerson notes, “Class doesn’t protect you from Caste.” Wilkerson outlines the “eight pillars of caste,” along the way offering eye-opening comparisons to India’s caste system and the Nazi’s approach to creating anti-Semitic legislation. (To learn how to most effectively write laws against the Jews, the Nazis studied how Americans wrote laws against Black people.) How do we overcome something as engrained as caste? First, reveal the real American history with an eye on race, class and caste. Second, recognize there is personal, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic work to be done. Third, attack caste at the roots by beginning to dismantle the structural rules, procedures, regulations, laws, bureaucracies, ways of doing business and ways of living our lives that power caste in automatic, intentionally invisible ways. Reading “Caste” is a good place to start.