#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York TimesThe Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today … that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.
NAMED THE #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY People • The Washington Post • Publishers Weekly AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Bloomberg • Christian Science Monitor • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Fortune • Smithsonian Magazine • Marie Claire • Town & Country • Slate • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist
“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.
Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.
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Isabel Wilkerson takes us on a powerful journey where we examine the evils of caste and racism .The author quotes Einstein who said to the National Urban League The taboo , the let’s not talk about it must be broken . It must be pointed out again and again that the exclusion of a large part of the colored population from active civil rights by the common practices is a slap in the face of the Constitution of the Nation .Just recently in Detroit Monica Palmer and William Hartman attempted to get away with not certifying the 78%Black vote in Detroit and allowing Livonia with a 4.4 Black vote to be certified This assault was swiftly addressed and both areas were certified We can no longer remain silent to retain our democracy every vote must count regardless of color ,religion or economic status ! The writer shares with us both Nazi Germany and the United States reduced their outgroups ,Jews and African Americans respectively,to an undifferentiated mass of nameless,faceless scapegoats, the shock absorbers of the collective fears and setbacks of each nation.Individuals were no longer individuals .Individuality after all , is a luxury afforded the dominant caste.Individuality is the first distinction lost to the stigmatized!The writer reminds of what a world without caste could be , instead of the false swagger over our own tribe or family or ascribed community we could look upon all of humanity with wonderment! Everyday let us also remember Maya Angelou who told us it is not important what you know but how you make people feel .Let us make every person we encounter feel respected and appreciated . Let us vote for leaders who serve us all rather than special interests and themselves !
I agree with all of the buzz about this book. It really should be required reading for all Americans. I learned so many things I should have already known but never learned. This isn’t an easy read by any means but it’s such an important one.
We normally only think of India as having a caste system, when we have the same in America.
I don’t know how to review this book. It is simply perfect. I read it last year and six months later, it’s still the book that sends my heart into a tizzy when I think about it. This should be required reading for everyone over the age of 13. It’s incredibly thoughtful and vulnerable. There are moments that made me intensely uncomfortable, angry, and sad, but over all I was left inspired by Ms. Wilkerson’s words and perspective. This is such an important book. It’s reflections on caste systems is the most clear eyed and thorough discourse I’ve read regarding the racial dynamics of this country. It’s a mirror that I wish everyone would look into because that’s the only way we’ll ever begin to make real progress when it comes to the fight for equality.
This is a book that should be read by every adult American. It should be used as a textbook for every high school student. Well researched and well written, this book hard to take in. It fundamentally changed my understanding of race in America.
Truly a tough read but very helpful in laying out much of the history of racism in the US. Compares the caste systems of India, Nazi Germany and the USA–we don’t call it a caste system here, but there is a pecking order we should be aware of and hopefully, over time, break down to allow for every person to achieve his or her full potential.
Isabell Wilkerson’s Caste is a follow-up to The Warmth of Other Suns. In Caste, Wilkerson – as the subtitle, The Origins of Our Discontents suggests – delves into the origins of segregation and racism. While working as the New York Times’ Chicago Bureau Chief, Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, becoming the first African-American to do so. Her books reflect Wilkerson’s expertise and sensitivity.
Definitely 5 stars. Startling and heartbreaking. Everyone in this country should read this book, especially if you think we have conquered racism in the U S. I was reading it leading up to the presidential election and a description Ms Wilkerson wrote about while watching a video of Hitler giving a speech and the reaction of the mass of people attending is seared in my memory. It had an uncanny likeness to the Trump rallies.
The book answered questions that I’ve had all my life about race and class in America. Now I know it’s rooted in caste.
This is an incredibly researched and detailed novel of non-fiction about the inception of the Caste system and America’s mirrored twin, racism.
The comparative knowledge the author presents connects the similar historical natures of the Nazi party and how they relate to American racism.
This novel provides the historical genesis of Caste and Racism based on birth revealing the unimaginable cruelty humans inflict upon one another.
Anyone willing to learn and understand the issues of America’s racism should read this novel.
This novel reveals why the propagandized supposedly democratic US Government systemically underfunded and segregated the educational system to include private and parochial schools for their benefit of remaining in their hierarchy positions.
It also explains why people of power maintain their supremacy from above while never acknowledging white supremacists who target our country’s marginalized.
Reading this novel should begin in elementary school, which could seed the foundation for a future without Cast or Racism.
It is an excellent read or listening if using the audible book side, but definitely a must for all.
Excellent, interesting, informative
fantastic, interesting, well written nonfiction
5 stars – I loved it!
“Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States.”
This book was mind blowing. Isabel Wilkerson dives into the history of the caste system in America, India, and Nazi Germany in this book. She explores all eight pillars that underlie a caste system and brings in history, stories about real people, and her own experiences to show that the United States does have a caste system.
“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”
Like I said, this book was mind blowing. By the end of the first chapter I knew this book was going to change the way I looked at race, racism, and suppression. It seems so obvious now that America has a caste system, but until it was pointed out in this book it never dawned on me, which is sad because it is very obvious now.
One of the things that I enjoyed most about this book was that Wilkerson discusses the caste system for multiple races. She doesn’t just focus only on African Americans in the caste system. She talks about Jewish, Indian, Native American, Muslim, and Mexican people and how they have been ranked in the caste system.
“A world without caste would set everyone free.”
Overall, this was a world changing book. I highly recommend it, especially the audiobook because Robin Miles does a great job narrating.
Love, love, loved this book. Isabel Wilkerson covers so many different topics, events, and racial issues throughout history. Some are familiar and others not so much. Throughout history we see these caste systems, even with Nazis who adopted their laws from the US. Completely mind-blowing. Wilkerson travels through history from and how this caste has been in place in our entire history and how its still in place today. We see how not all that much has changed.
CASTE: THE ORIGINS OF OUR DISCONTENT, BY ISABEL WILKERSON
Caste: a system of rigid social stratification characterized by hereditary status, endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, or religion. Merriam Webster’s dictionary
If ever a book turns the accepted definition of the “race problem” on its head, CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontent, by Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson is-that-book. CASTE explains, for me, at least, why in the seventh decade of my life, I still find my people, the descendants of enslaved Africans, in much the same predicament in America that was prevalent when my family migrated to West Africa in 1979. We hoped to escape a racialized United States that choked our spirits and our daily existence as surely as the thick neck chains that constrained my ancestors from escape. They were forced and marched to awaiting slave ships destined to provide their free labor for generations to build America into a global superpower.
After publishing my memoir, Sweet Liberia, Lessons from the Coal Pot, written after our eleven-year sojourn in Liberia, I was often asked, “Why would anyone leave America for Africa? I realized then, as now, that in America, we would never be allowed to flourish, but I never fully understood why. After reading CASTE, I better understand why the progress we hoped to make as a result of the Civil Rights Movement and all the events that culminated with the election of a Black Man as the President of the United States never came to fruition. Isabel Wilkerson helps me/us understand that our handicap was deeper than race. Slavery enrolled us in a race-based American caste system created to hold Blacks as a perpetually stigmatized underclass in which “race is the skin and caste is the bones.”
“Everything that is faced cannot be changed but everything must be faced.” James Baldwin
Wilkerson introduces the idea of caste primarily through three caste hierarchies: the ancient Hindu caste system, the American race-based caste system, and the Nazi German’s interpretation of caste institutionalized to justify the enslavement and systematic extermination of millions of German Jews. Throughout her book, Wilkerson compares, contrasts, parallels and crisscrosses between these three systems. In each caste system, some members would perpetually be relegated to the bottom. In the Hindu caste system, it is the cast-less Daliets, more commonly known as the Untouchables. In Nazi Germany, the Aryans at the top with scapegoated Jews at the bottom, and the American caste system devised for the elevation of Whites while containing Blacks as the permanent under caste.
By designation of lowest caste rank, one can never acquire enough spiritual wisdom, intellect, or wealth to rise. These artificial designations of status continue perpetually for the individual, but this inheritance is passed on to one’s generations.
Wilkerson identifies the 8 Pillars of Caste in section Purity versus Pollution. She details the creation of Whiteness as a group into which initially only the Anglo Saxons belonged and into which others were selectively enrolled to meet a need for numerical superiority and control over Blacks as they were forced into underclass status. It is interesting to note that the Irish, Poles, Jews, Greeks, and Italians, were not automatically considered White. In Louisiana, Italians were lynched and were considered by some “lower than the blacks.”
The racial designation White has been a bouncing ball in the hands of the eugenicists and progenitors of white supremacy until somewhere in the early 1900s the so-called “one-drop rule” was used to define Blackness. She points out that if that rule applied with today’s DNA analysis, millions currently living their lives as White would be considered Black.
She indicates as I discovered while living in Africa that Africans on the continent do not define themselves by their color, but rather by their ethnic origins. Skin color only comes into play when in Europe or America.
This race-based controversy found its way into the election of the 44th president of the United States. It is now being debated over Joe Biden’s selection of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate in his bid to become the 46th president of the United States. Harris is of a mixed racial heritage that places her in two caste hierarchical systems. She is the daughter of an East Indian mother and a Jamaican father. Yet again, a swirling controversy has ensued by Whites, and sadly some Blacks questioning her caste membership rather than her fitness for duty.
CASTE: The Origins of our Discontent, by Isabella Wilkerson, has joined a list of books that have set the table for serious movement towards reparations for the descendants of the millions stolen from Africa during the transatlantic slave trade.
In her epilogue A World Without Caste, Wilkerson leaves us with a vision of what might be possible for humanity if we could only surmount the superficial divisions that caste has imposed upon our gifts. Yes, where would we be indeed?
Never before has a book taught me more a racism and the subconscious shameful actions of a caste system. Everyone should be required to read this asap. So relevant and researched and important.
Love the book and I find it very informative .
Caste is foundational for understanding systemic racism in America and its persistence over centuries. The earth trembles with the weightiness of this book.
Insightful as a paradigm shift for today’s political and cultural conflicts: caste conflict. Very worrisome. Great book.
This is easily one of the most enlightening books that I have ever read on the subject of understanding the complexities and history of race in America.