#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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I’ve read a lot of good books lately but Caste is more than good, it’s incredible. It shows where we’ve been and where we are as a society. And it’s not a pretty picture.
If I could etch the entire book in granite, I would not hesitate. The writing is superb.
Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson is a beautifully written history of racism in the United States, a chronology of the significant events and ignored events documenting that our systems, including government, have never honored the equality of all. We celebrate living in the greatest country in the world, but the truth is, we are an experiment in democracy and “we the people” has never meant “all the people.”
Wilkerson points to specific periods of history, the change in our global environment, U.S. politics, our educational system, our penchant for guns and violence, our inadequate ability to provide health care for all, the history of the inequality in law enforcement, including police brutality as a few of the symptoms of our national ailment. “Looking beneath the history of one’s country is like learning that alcoholism or depression runs in one’s family or that suicide has occurred more often than might be usual… You don’t ball up in a corner with guilt or shame at these discoveries…forbid any mention of them. In fact, you do the opposite. You educate yourself…talk to people who have been through it …learn the consequences…options and treatment.. and work to ensure that these things, whatever they are, don’t happen again.”
The author has studied the caste system in India and draws comparisons between this system and racism in the United States. “In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance. In America, race is the primary tool and the visible decoy, the front man, for caste… Race does the heavy lifting for a cast system that demands a means of human division.”
This book is a must read for any American, especially those searching for a way to make our country a great one. Because as Wilkerson aptly demonstrates with statistics, America is not the greatest. Other countries have figured this out for ALL their people. They provide better education, better health care, and they’re happier. We can do much better, and it will be incumbent on all political parties to decide if they will focus on keeping our democracy, or whiteness.
This was a thorough and shocking study of the origins and effects of caste. This book is incredibly well researched and written. Wilkerson introduces us to the pervasiveness of caste systems in America and abroad throughout history. She most notably compares the caste systems of the United States, India, and Nazi Germany. The book is filled with fascinating historical facts and stories of which most of us are probably unaware. Overall, this eye-opening book provides numerous fresh ideas and perspectives to bring to the discussion of caste, or race relations
Thought provoking. Honest. Hopeful. I lay awake for hours thinking of the things I learned in this book and consider it necessary reading to understand our society better and create positive change.
Thought provoking. Honest. Hopeful. I lay awake for hours thinking of the things I learned in this book and consider it necessary reading to understand our society better and create positive change.
A must read for those interested in learning about racism in America.
Hasrd to read at times, but still a very good book.
I love examining everyone’s bookshelves in this Zoom era – and CASTE is one one so many shelves. I hope people are reading this amazing book that delves deep into our nation’s history of racism using comparisons to Nazi Germany, India, and the author’s own experiences. The result is thorough, thoughtful and thought-provoking. If you were to read only one book about racism, it should be CASTE.
This book, for me, was the incredible look at the caste system in America and other countries and offered a glimpse on what African-Americans have and still endure. Absolutely brilliant writer!
So many heart breaking facts and experiences! The way African Americans have been treated is just disgusting! I am sick over this inhumane way of living – we are an educated country of wealth and should never have these type of actions allowed. Racism is alive and well and it depresses me. Just an Excellent book – everyone should read it!
Not an easy read; requires thoughtful consideration.
Well worth the effort!
Very well written book! Gave a whole new perspective on the Caste system in America. This is a must read for everyone!
A must read to understand the current issues re racial justice. The author has done a superb job with the topic.
Wilkerson tells it like it is, especially for those who never thought about their privileges.
Everyone should read this book! It is beautifully written, impeccably researched, and it will make you rethink everything!
As you know I am a big Trump supporter and can’t understand why so many people hate him. In the first chapter the author describes the election of 2016 and speaks very derogatorily about his supporters. Being insulted I almost quit reading but I forced myself to keep going.
Isabel Wilkerson studied the Nazi’s treatments of the Jews and India’s Untouchables and likened these groups to white America’s treatment of blacks and to some extent Hispanics. It was another jaw dropping moment when she claimed that Nazis travelled to America in the 1920’s as they were formulating their platform on treatment of the Jews. They thought they could not be as brutal to the Jews as we were to the black race.
None of us have been proud of all the injustices visited upon the black people but I have not always been as empathetic as I should have been. She has a lot of statistics which can be interpreted to prove many different points.
She never cites proof that Trump is anti-black but alludes to several of his unfortunate comments, the statistics of who voted for him and his anti-Obama mantra. She praises Hilliary as the most experienced candidate to ever have run without mentioning any of the corruption or even anti-black positions Hilliary had taken through the years. It was interesting that the author had so many examples of long term experiences of mistreatment of the lower classes and then proceeds to value experience as an attribute. She quotes that Trump was the least experienced president and/or candidate ever as a bad thing. I believe we need even more politically inexperienced people to handle these issues.
I read Isabel Wilkerson’s THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS years ago and was impressed by both its scholarship and accessibility—and surprised and appalled that I knew virtually nothing about the migration of six million blacks within our country. In CASTE, she brings together three caste systems—India, Nazi Germany, and the US—to illuminate the similarities in their underpinnings (eight “pillars of caste”), justifications, and effects. This isn’t an arbitrary yoking together—she makes the telling points that these caste systems are linked historically: both India and the US, fertile and coveted, were at one point both protected by oceans and ruled for a time by the British; and the Nazis based their Final Solution on two books about race and miscegenation written by white, Ivy-League-educated American men—The Menace of the Under-man (1922) by Lothrop Stoddard and The Passing of the Great Race (1916) by Madison Grant. Drawing upon primary sources including slave narratives and secondary scholarly sources, Wilkerson’s 400-page book is well-researched, compelling, and accessible, and I read it in 3 days, scribbling in the margins as I went. (It seems to me Wilkerson leans on theories of discourse and repeated performative acts, such as are described by Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, although she does not credit them.) My one gripe with the book that she employs a wide range of metaphors for caste and its effects: the anthrax released during a heat wave in Siberia, earthquakes, an old house and its mudsill, grammar, the usher in a movie theater, the cast of play (characters, roles, stage), DNA, mineral springs, a ladder, and the sci-fi movie The Matrix. But this is in an effort to bring her points home, and while I found it somewhat distracting, I applaud any strategy that helps convey her important message. I was more affected by her personal stories, as a black woman experiencing caste, which I found appalling and (admittedly) somewhat discouraging. Highly recommend.
We must never stop learning ways to understand and be an antiracist. This is an important think piece by an amazing thinker.
Ms. Wilkerson certainly knows how to write a compelling story. From the origin of Hitler’s ideas to her own personal exploits, she demonstrates just how society puts people of color in their own boxes. Some of the graphic details are hard to stomach. She doesn’t get political about her opinions and tries to document the treatment of minorities with a realistic lens. Definitely a must read for history buffs or anyone who wants to know how we got to this place in 2020.
A powerful analysis, deeply researched, that may very likely change the way you look at race in America.