#notes/north-america

Caste : The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

Summary

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”

Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Isabel Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

My review

I’m not proud of this but I’m going to say it anyway. At some point in my life, I learned that black people have thicker skin than white people. I learned they can handle more physical pain and needles don’t work very well on them. I didn’t think to ask why; my juvenile mind reasoned that it’s because the sun burnt their skin (since they’re from Africa). Of course I learned better before I started college, then learned about more horrifying assumptions and beliefs into adulthood.

I remember when I learned that I thought this. I don’t remember learning it, nor did I ever think about it until one day when someone was listing off a fun fact list of inherent racist thoughts that white people carry ignorantly. Only then did I realize, oh shit. That’s me. I’m that ignorant white person.

I’ve done a lot to learn about more of those fun facts so I can correct my views. Now that I’m once again a person who reads regularly, I picked up Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson to finally educate myself on the race issues that America built in its foundation.

I cannot even begin to express how difficult this book was to read. It wasn’t the writing style (which was engaging), it was having to face the reality of what this country was built on and how that influenced racism globally. The book includes graphic descriptions of death and mutilation which my picture-brain imagined in the most gruesome detail while I was reading. Want to keep yourself up at night? Don’t watch horror – just learn some American history.

The book dives into what America was in the beginning, providing quotes from the white men themselves who squashed people simply due to skin color and used the bible to justify their decisions. You learn how slavery and the black experience in America was treated in the media and the false ideas our parents and grandparents grew up on, thinking black people liked being seen as a service. Thinking they were happy to be seen as “less than,” because they agreed. You learn about the sudden change in trajectory when America elected a black president, and how everything in history leading up to that point delivered it as a glorious necessity to some and a perceived threat to others (not because he was a democrat, but because he was black).

In between the lines, you observe yourself reacting to these moments in history you were never taught. You see how you’re taking this information and folding it into your life reflection. You remember how you once thought black people had thicker skin, and you realize you have a long way still to go to really understand. (You start to see maybe you never will fully understand.)

I admit I could only read a few chapters at a time in small spurts (sometimes only a few pages). I would lie awake in bed and imagine the entire day of the person I just read about – piece together a fiction of their last day on earth before they made one tiny misstep in front of the wrong person. It took me 6 months to finish the book (though I’m not a fast reader anyway).

Suffice to say, this book will break your heart if you have any remaining attachment to the idea of an American dream, or to the fiction that American racism is “very different” from what it was 100 years ago. Sometimes you might be a little grossed out by the humiliating mistreatment of people (like I said, it’s quite descriptive), but keep reading. This is part of what makes the book so powerful – it forces you to come face to face with the horror of your nation’s past.

Written: 1/22/23

Quotes