Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

To know that we as people seem to always have a need to have a hierarchy is very fascinating. The author did an amazing job explaining how Caste is not just about status but can be made through race and how it relates to racism.

I should mention I am a White American, so Wilkerson is probably right that this book is mainly written with people like me in mind who are better position to fix the ‘caste’ system in the United States (Wilkerson 380). The writer Isabel Wilkerson defines a caste system as “an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits. A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep the ranked groupings apart, distinct from one another and in their assigned place” (Wilkerson 17). Wilkerson believes that the term Caste when applied to the United States provides a better way to explain the hierarchy than the term race, which is a concept that does not exist. Many other thinkers such as the American Politician Charles Sumner, the Swedish social economist Gunnar Myrdal, the American anthropologist Ashley Montagu, and other thinkers have thought that caste worked well to describe the hierarchy in the United States (Wilkerson 24-25). Part of the caste system, in the United States and in India was the fact that is based on a strict hierarchy of labor (Wilkerson 132). Wilkerson includes Nazi Germany as a caste system, but I personally believe Nazi Germany was not a caste system (Wilkerson 17). Nazi Germany was interested in killing Jewish people and several other populations (Wilkerson 343-344). 1/3 of the Jewish victims who died in the Holocaust were just shot and they never arrived in the concentration camps (Hulten 2023). Wilkerson, I think includes Nazi Germany in her book because post-World War II Germany is one of the few countries on Earth that had to reckon with its past (Wilkerson 343-349). It is only after I finished the book, that I realized the focus of the book is the hierarchy in the United States, I should read the subtitle more clearly which is “the origins of our discontents.” Isabel Wilkerson’s book is well-written. thoughtful, and well-done book about a different way to look at hierarchy in the United States. Works Cited: Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 2011. Black in Latin America. New York: New York University Press. Hulten, Jessica. 2023. “The Holocaust in the Soviet Union.” Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. Accessed: June 7. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union - Illinois Holocaust Museum (ilholocaustmuseum.org)

Thought provoking. A very deep read.

Isabel Wilkerson does a great job showing how racism and discrimination is tied together across the world and through different communities. In particular her work on how slavery in the American South and the Holocaust in Nazi Germany are interconnected is really powerful. Highly worth a read. The movie by Ava DuVernay is also very well done (and is one of my favorites).

This book is a masterpiece. Wilkerson is a brilliant writer who tackles a complicated concept and explores it with research, grace, and humanity. This is a must read.