Wilkerson - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

 Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020) has captured wide attention, mostly among those who already advocated more inclusion, equity, and justice in the U.S.A. and around the world. Wilkerson's conceptual approach and skillful writing compels us to move faster and deeper.

The roots of racism in the U.S.A. run deep and have been present for a very long time. She proposes that as a young immigrant nation, composed of new-comers from diverse places, the U.S.A. sought to order itself into a privilege hierarchy where:

To gain acceptance, each fresh infusion of immigrants had to enter into a silent, unspoken pact of separating and distancing themselves from the established lowest caste. Becoming white meant defining themselves as furthest from its opposite - black. They could establish their new status by observing how the lowest caste was regarded and imitating or one-upping the disdain and contempt, learning the epithets, joining in on violence against them to prove themselves worthy of admittance to the dominant caste (p. 50).

Through this process of entry and stratification above the lowliest among them, the concept of race was created. And, a way to keep the lowliest at the bottom was essential to the entire hierarchy.

After examining the historic emergence of how the Nazis modeled their discriminatory practices and laws by studying the U.S., Wilkerson outlined the eight "pillars of caste": divine will and the laws of nature; heritability; endogamy and the control of marriage and mating; parity versus pollution; occupational hierarchy; dehumanization and stigma; terror as enforcement, cruelty as a means of control; and inherent superiority versus inherent inferiority. She explores in great detail the "tentacles of caste" that have intruded into practically every area of life in America.

These pillars are ensconced in U.S. policies to the extent that they are the substance of our discontents across caste levels. The caste system is reinforced by the fear of middle or lower caste members who are striving to make sure they remain above the lowest caste, people of cultural minority status. One of the saddest chapters, titled "Last Place Anxiety: Packed in a Flooding Basement," describes how lower caste individuals are pushed deeply into racism by their own fear of being marginalized. This fear, and the complicity that goes along with it, results in lower caste people accepting and being resigned to the role that is dictated to them by the elites of their society. As Wilkerson describes, this is particularly powerful in Indian culture where the social structure is fused with the philosophical orientation that conforming to expectation is a virtue, one that will be rewarded in the next life.

Perpetuating caste depends on rivalry and distrust among various layers of the system, one that dehumanizes everyone and results in a political environment that has no empathy for those in need. Accepting this dehumanization robs the potential from individuals and from the society at large. Wilkerson's "Epilogue" asks of those whose potential was lost (pp. 377-378):

Whatever creativity or brilliance they had has been lost for all time. Where would we be as a species had the millions of targets of these caste systems been permitted to live out their dreams or live at all? Where would the planet be had the putative beneficiaries been freed of the illusions that imprisoned them, too, had they directed their energies toward solutions for all of humanity...?