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A review by hannahwinston
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
challenging
informative
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
Whatever you think you know about the origins of racism/classism/caste, this book goes even further.
While I knew a lot about the American Caste, I did not know how much it influenced Nazis. There were several lines that blew my mind but this one, about selling souvenirs from lynchings during the Jim Crow Era, knocked me off my feet:
“This was singularly American. Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, wrote time magazine many years later.”
The biggest takeaway/reminder:
“Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf.”
While I knew a lot about the American Caste, I did not know how much it influenced Nazis. There were several lines that blew my mind but this one, about selling souvenirs from lynchings during the Jim Crow Era, knocked me off my feet:
“This was singularly American. Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, wrote time magazine many years later.”
The biggest takeaway/reminder:
“Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing. All that it needs from bystanders is their silent complicity in the evil committed on their behalf.”
Content Warnings
Graphic: Confinement, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racism, Slavery, Torture, Antisemitism, Kidnapping, Murder, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism