Review: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel WilkersonMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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I remember reading about the caste system in India and thinking about the injustice of making one set of humans like gods and others lower than the animals, just because of who their parents were. And I was proud that in America, the country of my birth, we all had equal opportunity. Anyone could be anything they wanted if they just worked hard enough.
Over the years I have realized that is not entirely true. That some people have extra opportunities based on family connections, that the schools we go to, based on where live, afford us opportunities that others don't have.
My parents couldn't give the kids in our family cars, college tuition, or mentors in "high" positions, but they could give us music lessons and books. And so we had more opportunities than some but not as many as others. And as I thought about this in my early 20s, I had my first understanding of privilege, although I didn't use that term until many years later.
I would never have thought of this as a caste system.
After all, perhaps if I had just been more ambitious, worked harder, sought out the right connections, perhaps I could have achieved more in my life. American Dream. Equal opportunity. Meritocracy.
And yet, as Isabel Wilkerson reveals in her meticulously researched book about slavery and racism in America, "[b]efore 1965, the year of the Voting Rights Act, the United States was neither a democracy nor a meritocracy, because the majority of its population was excluded from competition in most aspects of American life. People who happened to be born male and of European ancestry competed only against themselves. For most of American history, the country was closed off from the talents of the bulk of its people of all colors, genders, and nationalities" (384).
This statement is jarring, at the end of a book which has detailed the many ways African-Americans have been prevented from achieving success over the course of America's history, even recently. Wilkerson's research includes analysis of India's caste system and its fundamentals have been replicated in the United States, with white men at the top of the caste system and Black men and women at the bottom. She details how Nazis examined the American dehumanization of Blacks in order to replicate this dehumanization with the Jews.
This is a long book, a disturbing book, a necessary book.
When we examine the past, we see its remnants in the present, and we have the potential to alter the future.
She asserts, "If each of could truly see and connect with the humanity of the person in front of us, search for that key that opens the door to whatever we may have in common, . . . it could begin to affect how we see the world and others in it, perhaps change the way we hire or even vote" (386). Too often we don't see the utter humanity of people who are different than we are, and we must or we perpetuate the wrongs of the past.
To those who protest that they are not responsible for that past, she agrees: "We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today. We are, each of us, responsible for every decision we make that hurts or harms another human being" (387-8). I would add that we are responsible even if we don't realize that we are hurting someone else. It is our responsibility to open our eyes and see how or actions might harm someone.
Furthermore, she contends, "We are responsible for recognizing that what happened in previous generations at the hands of or to people who look like us set the stage for the world we now live in and that what has gone before us grants us advantages or burdens through no effort or fault of our own, gains or deficits that others who do not look like us often do not share" (388).
I have done significant reading about race in America over the last five years, but this book was different because of its comparison of race to caste, a notion that Americans reject out of hand.
Every white American should read this book.
Over the years I have realized that is not entirely true. That some people have extra opportunities based on family connections, that the schools we go to, based on where live, afford us opportunities that others don't have.
My parents couldn't give the kids in our family cars, college tuition, or mentors in "high" positions, but they could give us music lessons and books. And so we had more opportunities than some but not as many as others. And as I thought about this in my early 20s, I had my first understanding of privilege, although I didn't use that term until many years later.
I would never have thought of this as a caste system.
After all, perhaps if I had just been more ambitious, worked harder, sought out the right connections, perhaps I could have achieved more in my life. American Dream. Equal opportunity. Meritocracy.
And yet, as Isabel Wilkerson reveals in her meticulously researched book about slavery and racism in America, "[b]efore 1965, the year of the Voting Rights Act, the United States was neither a democracy nor a meritocracy, because the majority of its population was excluded from competition in most aspects of American life. People who happened to be born male and of European ancestry competed only against themselves. For most of American history, the country was closed off from the talents of the bulk of its people of all colors, genders, and nationalities" (384).
This statement is jarring, at the end of a book which has detailed the many ways African-Americans have been prevented from achieving success over the course of America's history, even recently. Wilkerson's research includes analysis of India's caste system and its fundamentals have been replicated in the United States, with white men at the top of the caste system and Black men and women at the bottom. She details how Nazis examined the American dehumanization of Blacks in order to replicate this dehumanization with the Jews.
This is a long book, a disturbing book, a necessary book.
When we examine the past, we see its remnants in the present, and we have the potential to alter the future.
She asserts, "If each of could truly see and connect with the humanity of the person in front of us, search for that key that opens the door to whatever we may have in common, . . . it could begin to affect how we see the world and others in it, perhaps change the way we hire or even vote" (386). Too often we don't see the utter humanity of people who are different than we are, and we must or we perpetuate the wrongs of the past.
To those who protest that they are not responsible for that past, she agrees: "We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today. We are, each of us, responsible for every decision we make that hurts or harms another human being" (387-8). I would add that we are responsible even if we don't realize that we are hurting someone else. It is our responsibility to open our eyes and see how or actions might harm someone.
Furthermore, she contends, "We are responsible for recognizing that what happened in previous generations at the hands of or to people who look like us set the stage for the world we now live in and that what has gone before us grants us advantages or burdens through no effort or fault of our own, gains or deficits that others who do not look like us often do not share" (388).
I have done significant reading about race in America over the last five years, but this book was different because of its comparison of race to caste, a notion that Americans reject out of hand.
Every white American should read this book.
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