Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson

Review by Dave Gamrath

One-liner:  In Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents, author Isabel Wilkerson makes a strong argument that the racial discrimination that has always existed in the US is comparable to the caste systems of India and Nazi Germany, and that caste is actually a better descriptor than race when describing American society and our cultural conflicts. 

Book Review: 

In Caste:  The Origins of Our Discontents, author Isabel Wilkerson explains that the racial discrimination that has always existed in the US really is best characterized as a caste system, like that in India and Nazi Germany.  The scientific definition of racism is the combination of racial bias and systemic power.  Per Wilkerson, this defines caste.

Caste ranks humans based on artificial and arbitrary criteria, creating boundaries to keep different castes apart, in their distinct and assigned places.  If the criteria are highly visible, such as skin color, it’s hard to escape your assigned caste.  Live with a caste system long enough, it becomes the norm.  Caste is a disease, and no one in society is immune. 

Wilkerson explains how race, like caste, are human inventions – social constructs, not biological ones.  The human genome reveals we are 99.9% the same.  Race and caste were invented by dominant classes to solidify their advantages.  Today in America, the dominate caste are whites, the middle caste includes Asians and Latinos, and the lower caste includes African and Native Americans. 

Caste is embedded in our culture.  It’s the patterns of our social order, with one’s caste established at birth.  Caste sets forth the rules, stereotypes and expectations.  Caste is about who has power, and who doesn’t.  It’s about respect, authority and assumptions of competence.  It’s the “granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy.”  Caste is how we process information, and guides us beyond our awareness.  It is embedded in our bones and in our unconscious. 

The American system began in 1619 with the first colony in the South.  For 250 years, “slavery was the fabric out of which the cloth was made.”  America’s form of slavery was the most brutally extreme in the world.  Slaves were regularly subjected to tortures that would be banned by the Geneva Conventions.  This “living death” was passed down for twelve generations.  Slavery so perverted the balance of power that it made the abuse of the subordinate caste seem normal and righteous.  Wilkerson describes how when Nazi Germany sought to develop their own caste system, they looked to America for inspiration and direction.  But even the Nazis never stooped to selling body parts as souvenirs, as Americans did at lynchings.  President Andrew Jackson, when he went horseback riding, used bridle reins made of Native American flesh.  Wilkerson shares many horrific examples of America’s 400 years of racial violence.  Reading these examples will likely stir anger and outrage, which were often my feelings.  Even as America moved to more progressive policies, such as FDR’s 1930s New Deal reforms, the majority of the lower caste, farm and domestic workers, were excluded.  African Americans were also excluded from government programs to assist with homeownership, which is a key factor leading to today’s wealth gap between Black and White Americans. 

Wilkerson describes eight pillars of caste, providing a broad understanding of the system.  These include caste being divine will and within the laws of nature, the heritability of caste, the occupational hierarchy within caste, the use of terror as enforcement, and cruelty as a means of control.  Wilkerson provides great detail and many examples of each pillar.  The reader will recognize the prevalence of these eight pillars in American history, as well as in our culture today.  Whereas Germany refuses to hide or forget its Nazi past, America has celebrated the history of our caste system, with Confederate flags, statues and memorials. 

A caste system builds rivalry, distrust and lack of empathy towards one’s fellow countrymen.  Wilkerson describes how America has suffered due to our culture and caste system.  There are many indicators of this, including our poor health, high violence, and low happiness levels when compared to other developed countries.  Americans are incredibly stingy in aid to the poor, but are more than happy to lock them up.

Wilkerson writes how the symbolism of Barack Obama was a profound loss of white status.  In response to Obama’s election, Republicans have been focusing on changing election laws to restrict minority voters, including the Supreme Court overturning the Voting Rights Act, new Voter ID laws, and other tactics used in the South during Jim Crow.  The US Census projects the end of white majority by 2042; this is a crisis for the dominant caste.  Look for greater and greater attempts to suppress the votes of lower castes.

Wilkerson claims that Make America Great Again is the result of the threat to the dominant caste.  She states that working-class whites need the demarcations of caste more than rich whites.  They are the people most likely to aggressively claim that Blacks can never attain the status of even the lowest white.  “One might lose everything, but not whiteness.”  The rise of the lower caste is a threat to their existence.  Working class whites may be voting against their own economic self-interests by electing a right-wing oligarch, but what they get is someone working to maintain our caste system.  The book asks “If people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness.” 

Wilkerson closes her book with ideas on challenging our caste system.  We can’t fix anything that we won’t admit exists.  As much as 80% of White Americans hold unconscious bias against Blacks; it kicks in before one can even process it.  White Americans need to awake.  Then we have a choice.  Not to speak is to speak; not to act is to act.  The bottom caste didn’t create this mess, and the bottom caste alone can’t fix it.  Wilkerson calls for “radical empathy”, defined as “putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective”.  It is not enough to be tolerant.  White Americans must become pro-African American, pro-woman, pro-Latino, pro-Asian, pro-indigenous, pro-humanity.  White Americans are not responsible for what people who looked like us did centuries ago, but we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today. 

Reviewer Opinion: 

A disturbing read, but also a very important one.

Reviewer Rating of Book:

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