Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Isabel Wilkerson
I read Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration a couple of years ago and learned a great deal. Ditto her second effort, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.
I’m not certain it’s any kind of great revelation that the USA has a caste system, and that it’s similar to India’s and that of other countries. I perceived such long ago, and from what I’ve seen in my travels, caste, class, and racism are intertwined and present, if not institutionalized, in every country and culture. Racism is a necessary part of any caste system, as is classism, and every society is thus stratified.
What I read with great interest, and learned from, is Wilkerson’s detailed research into the history of Nazi race laws, adapted from American race laws, which the Nazis assiduously studied. Rachel Maddow, in her recent podcasts and books about the history of Nazi sympathizers and enablers in 1930s American politics, has echoed Wilkerson on this score.
In its review of Caste, NPR observes that Wilkerson herself seems to accept that caste is inevitable, and argues not so much for eliminating it, but for divorcing it from race, so that there is no permanent underclass determined solely by color: in other words, high-achieving Blacks should be able to take their rightful place in society and the economy alongside their white professional counterparts.
I note with interest that in Texas (and likely other red states), Caste has been banned from public school curricula and libraries, along with other books addressing racial and LGBTQ issues. Well, sure. Although Wilkerson does not argue for reparations (or even mention the subject), right-wing racists are terrified by the prospect of young white readers learning how harshly lower castes — Blacks in particular — have been and continue to be treated and limited in America, and concluding on their own that reparations are justified.
I also want to say that Wilkerson knows how to keep readers turning pages. There’s nothing dry or academic about her writing. She fills these pages with vivid real-life examples and incidences, historical and contemporary, of caste restrictions and enforcement, and even includes personal encounters with the system. She’s a terrific writer, engaging and persuasive.
Your review is intriguing and attracts me to the book; I love a good story well told. I’m just curious about the rating. Any comments there? Thanks.
Four stars is a top rating from me. I use a five-star scale because that’s what Goodreads uses, and I use Goodreads. I used 5 stars once, and that was for Patrick O’Brien’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, better books than which I do not think exist. I would have gone to 4.5 on Isabel’s book if she’d written it at a slightly more academic level … as it is, it’s more in the style of pop sociology, fun to read but not rigorous enough to stand up to scholarly criticism.