Book Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson
This is the clearest explanation I have seen anywhere of why racial animosity persists in the US and elsewhere. Through objective scholarship and observations, Isabel Wilkerson decodes (what should be) the obvious: Race is only a pointer to caste—the irrational visceral need to assert imagined inherent superiority over those without privilege. This need to feel as though one is in a caste above (at least some) others is not a natural human state—it’s had a lot of help from its friends, namely those who profit from the caste hierarchy.
Wilkerson illustrates how lower class white people have literally died from lack of health care, solely to deny those (black people) they consider lazy from getting health care they falsely think they don’t deserve. These white people are paying a high price for feelings founded on falsehoods (such as believing that there’s a level playing field)—the profiteers of caste know that as long as a significant part of the population is deceived by the falsehoods injected into their society, people so deceived will remain unlikely to demand what they really need in terms of economic and educational improvements (which would deny the profiteers their ill gotten spoils). The false bogeyman of (what is inaccurately called) Socialism has been plied against poor whites from the days of southern slavery, and it’s continued success into our own time as a propaganda fulcrum for demagogues is remarkable (but explainable). Although this observation is frequently directed toward (usually southern) whites, these falsehoods are granted almost axiomatic status among other people as well—including people who consider themselves progressive. A book like this goes a long way in neutralizing those well worn false bromides.
This book is more than just a collection of historical records revealing things some (white) people might prefer to not see the light of day. Wilkerson covers the Jim Crow South with one relevant historical narrative after another—the reader will need a strong stomach for some sections, which describe actual beyond the pale abuse of black people. In addition to the American South, Wilkerson also covers as parallel and related accounts, the caste systems in India and the Nazi Third Reich—there’s a clear similarity in the ways African Americans, Dalits (also known as untouchables), and Jews have been viewed and treated. This book demonstrates (through multiple actual accounts) that these views are alive and operating today.
In addition to the depressing effects of caste, I also found in this book cause for hope—and that in an experience related by the author herself. It was in a circumstance in which she (through an act of desperation) began talking about similar personal experiences with a white repairman who up to that time seemed to ignore her humanity. His attitude toward her changed for the better once he recognized the things they had in common, and they then together found the cause of her flooded basement. Similarly, in addition to countering the (societal and media based) psyops embedded in caste systems, it’s likely that also using every opportunity to claim our shared humanity will begin to expel the scourge of caste—for the good of all.
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