Caste The Origins of Our Discontents
Reviews
Eye opening. Caste controls all of us and we must be the ones to dismantle it.
Enjoyed is not the right word to describe my experience with this book but it certainly was a page and head turner. Looking at the structure of society in the US as a caste system provided a lot more nuance and intricacy than looking at race relations as a racism issue alone. Wilkerson is a phenomenal writer and this book can be approached by academics and non-academics alike and has plenty of references to further on your reading.
The first couple of chapters were quite repetitive, but once you push past them the book is worth it
very valid points and incredibly insightful, just sickeningly repetitive, making it incredibly hard to get through.
This was an interesting read. The central theme of how caste effects our interactions with others was shown in three distinct examples: The U.S, Nazi Germany, and India. Each chapter following the first was loaded with examples and analogies comparing one to the other. Many of the stories portrayed were new to me and brought certain parts of history in a new light. Many examples were thought provoking. One recommendation I have for the author is to highlight some potential federal and local government initiatives that can be used to solve this problem. None were given. Instead, asking each reader to open up their heart more and connect with African Americans was the prime solution given. Those in the highest caste were asked to volunteer and be a part of the NAACP and to help speak for those lower.
decided to put this one down. It is a good introductory book into black struggle in America and how it carries over into the modern day however, it was too introductory for me. I would recommend “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander over this one.
everyone should read this book
Magisterial. Recommended. 1. Exhaustively and vividly details the past and present injustices visited upon black Americans, and by way of second-order effects, all Americans. 2. Uses the much older Indian caste system as a parallel example of a fixed, immutable, heritable, “divinely ordained”, violent, terrorizing system of power striation, exclusion, economic, spiritual, and political oppression that mirrors the American legacy of slavery in ways that will unsettle many Americans. 3. Presents comparisons between Nazi eugenics and the southern slave trade and its downstream effects on both descendants of slavery and on American society as a whole. Offers examples where the Nazis used the American slavers’ rules and laws as templates for the Nazi Holocaust, and in at least one instance, looked at the American rules for oppression as TOO STRONG, the Nazis instead choosing a more “inclusive” definition of Aryan than the American slavers’ “one drop” rule. 4. Reframes and integrates common mental models about radicalized injustice in America. The author very thoroughly paints a picture of America’s racialized caste system as being (only) incidentally about “race”, but rather more fundamentally grounded in divide-and-conquer power consolidation processes — deliberate systems of economic control that evolved repeatedly in order to maintain their efficiency through different means. 5. Offers comparisons between the German model of reconciliation — destruction and paving over of Nazi monuments or historic sites, the construction of highly visible monuments in high traffic areas, reparations — to the relatively tepid American reconciliation and apologia for slavery — to the ongoing Indian caste struggles of the Dalits (often called “The Untouchables”). Definitely a hearty, and emotionally heavy, read. Some people are born to write — a certain subject, focus, book; and the author is one such example. Powerful, well reasoned, deeply thorough, thought provoking, inspiring, unsettling, and emotional. Good books to read after this one would be DYING OF WHITENESS, THE CONDEMNATION OF BLACKNESS, and THE SUM OF US.
The best book I’ve read this year. My hope is that this eventually makes its way onto required reading lists in high schools across the country.
This book made me weep. It is well-researched, poignant, thought-provoking, gut-wrenching and eye-opening, and I commend Ms. Wilkerson for completing the monumental task of writing it. I learned a lot. Every American needs to read it.
Probably my favorite read this year!
This is a book that everyone should have to read. The contrast between how the United States handles our horrible history compared to Germany is infuriating and heartbreaking.
this was a fantastic read, wow
Things I'd like to remember, but will probably forget every time they'd be a useful point to bring up in a conversation: 1. Affirmative Action has always existed in the USA, but it has only been called Affirmative Action when it benefits minorities. In recent years, redlining has gotten a lot of attention, and this is an obvious example. Bank lending practices much more recently have also continued this trend of ensuring that Black families are fighting an uphill battle for the exact same things White families can get cheaper and more easily. Another example Wilkerson points out is the New Deal itself, which at the behest of racist southern lawmakers, did not afford the same benefits to those working in mostly-minority careers, ruling them out from all the benefits of these policies. 2. Before getting too excited about how great the USA is, remember The Nazis literally studied the USA and its codified approach to racism when developing their party's platform. They found the USA inspiring. Not to mention the fact that, early on, they thought the USA was maybe a bit too extreme for their tastes, and had certain areas they thought we had gone too far. 3. A caste system by any other name is still a caste system. We have a caste system in the USA. Look at how financially (and sometimes otherwise) insecure White people responded to the Obama presidency. Look at the immediate backlash to "Make America great again" by cracking down on minority groups, and how those message resonated with so many White people, especially men. You can try to write racism off as something distinct or separate, but people are afraid they are losing social capital when they see people from certain artificially constructed social groups achieve more success than they have. This can be both racism and also illustrate the caste system in this country.
Beautifully written
(Unsurprisingly) as brilliant as it was well-written. Another piece of required reading from Wilkerson, the best non fiction writer I am aware of.
4.5/5 stars i will revisit this one again and again. too much information. alot to think about.
(audiobook)
Incredibly well written. Wilkerson’s comparisons to the caste systems in India and WWII Germany provide abundant examples and context to understand the caste system in the US. Should be required reading.
One of the most important books that I have read this year. The closing paragraph is definitely something I will keep in my heart forever: “In a world without caste, being male or female, light or dark, immigrant or native-born, would have no bearing on what anyone was perceived as being capable of. In a world without caste, we would all be invested in the well-being of others in our species if only for our own survival, and recognize that we are in need of one another more than we have been led to believe. We would join forces with indigenous people around the world raising the alarm as fires rage and glaciers melt. We would see that, when others suffer, the collective human body is set back from the progression of our species. A world without caste would set everyone free.”
"Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another's experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it."
Exceptional a must read for all people born to the privileged caste .A book that inspires self reflection. A book that motivates one to truly attempt change.
The best kind of history; blended with narrative and information, laced with insight and perspective that we all could stand to hear more of. Wilkerson does a great job of making complex and nuanced topics approachable and revealing, inviting us to see both the bigger picture and our individual involvement. I hadn't realized the depths of the caste system in India & comparing it to the US and Nazi Germany put each system in stark relief. This book has pretty solidly shifted the way I conceptualize the US & how I'll frame my country in future discussions and critique. I highly highly recommend this book to all folks in the United States, and particularly to my fellow majority culture relations. Major content warnings for depictions of abuse, crimes against humanity, torture, the holocaust, slavery. They are handled well, but can be hard to read.
Such an uncomfortable but necessary read. This should be required reading.
should be required reading, truly.
Highlights
[H]istorically caste trumps class.
A caste system persists in part because we, each and every one of us, allow it to exist in large and small ways, in our everyday actions, in how we elevate or demean, embrace or exclude, on the basis of the meaning attached to peoples physical traits. If enough people buy into the lie of natural hierarchy, then it becomes the truth or is assumed to be. Once awakened, we then have a choice. We can be born to the dominant caste but choose not to dominate. We can be born to a subordinated caste but resist the box others force upon us. And all of us can sharpen our powers of discernment to see past the exter- nal and to value the character of a person rather than demean those who are already marginalized or worship those born to false pedestals. We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity.
Whatever is lurking will fester whether you choose to look or not. Ignorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction. Whatever you are wishing away will gnaw at you until you gather the courage to face what you would rather not see.
oof
The country was losing the capacity to be shocked; the unfathomable became just another part of one's day.
"This is not America," or "I don't recognize my country," or "This is not who we are." Except that this was and is our country and this was and is who we are, whether we have known or recognized it or not.
A world without caste would set everyone free.
Robert E. Lee was a well-born graduate of West Point Academy, a pragmatic and cunning military strategist, a political moderate, for his times and his region, and a Virginia slaveholder who saw slavery as a necessary evil that burdened the owners more than the people they enslaved. "The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically," he once wrote. "The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise merciful Providence."
"Its foundations are laid," said Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, "its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. ... With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system."
A quote for anyone who says the Civil War was just about “state’s rights”
Through no fault of any individual born to it, a caste system centers the dominant caste as the sun around which all other castes revolve and defines it as the default-setting standard of normalcy, of intellect, of beauty, against which all others are measured, ranked in descending order by their physiological proximity to the dominant caste.
What kind of person is likely to carry this kind of unconscious bias? “This is a wonderful person," Williams said, "who has sympathy for the bad things that have happened in the past. But that person is still an American and has been fed the larger stereotypes of blacks that are deeply embedded in the culture of this society. So, despite holding no explicit racial prejudices, they nonetheless hold implicit bias thať's deep in their subconscious. They have all these negative images of African-Americans so that when they meet an African-American, although self-consciously they are not prejudiced, the implicit biases nonetheless operate to shape their behavior. This discriminatory behavior is activated more quickly and effortlessly than conscious discrimination, more quickly than saying, ‘I've decided to discriminate against this person.’
While the Nazis praised “the American commitment to legislating racial purity," they could not abide "the unforgiving hardness" under which "an American man or woman who has even a drop of Negro blood in their veins counted as blacks," Whitman wrote. "The one-drop rule was too harsh for the Nazis."
Rather than defining such people as half-Jewish, the skeptics wondered, woula they not also be half-Aryan? But one hard-liner, Achim Gercke. referred back to the prototype they had been studying. He pro- posed a definition of one-sixteenth Jewish for classification of Jews, Koonz wrote, "because he did not wish to be less rigorous than the Americans."
Love being reminded that the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow.
This was what the United States was for longer than it was not. It is a measure of how long enslavement lasted in the United States that the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil. No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaved. That will not come until the year 2111.
As a window into their exploitation, consider that in 1740. South Carolina, like other slaveholding states, finally decided to limit the workday of enslaved African-Americans to fifteen hours from March to September and to fourteen hours from September to March, double the normal workday for humans who actually get paid for their labor. In that same era, prisoners found guilty of actual crimes were kept to a maximum of ten hours per workday. Let no one say that African-Americans as a group have not worked for our country.
lgnorance is no protection from the consequences of inaction.
In a totalitarian regime such as that of the Third Reich, it was an act of bravery to stand firm against an ocean. We would all want to believe that we would have been him. We might feel certain that, were we Aryan citizens under the Third Reich, we surely would have seen through it, would have risen above it like him, been that person resisting au- thoritarianism and brutality in the face of mass hysteria. We would like to believe that we would have taken the more difficult path of standing up against injustice in de- fense of the outcaste. But unless people are willing to tran- scend their fears, endure discomfort and derision, suffer the scorn of loved ones and neighbors and co-workers and friends, fall into disfavor of perhaps everyone they know, face exclusion and even banishment, it would be numeri- cally impossible, humanly impossible, for everyone to be that man. What would it take to be him in any era? What would it take to be him now?
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