A review by that_bookish_life
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

 
A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups.


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.


Caste does not explain everything in American life, but no aspect of American life can be fully understood without considering caste and embedded hierarchy.


Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an interesting and eye-opening read. The writing is thoughtful, more literary than scholarly, approachable, but well researched and argued.

Offering a slight shift in language Isabel Wilkerson shifts the perspective just enough that one can view our systems through an entirely different lens. The lens of caste. Normalizing the systems of stratification means America is no longer unique, exceptional, instead able to be held against other caste systems such as those in India or Nazi Germany, systems of stratification which we condemn for the superficial inequality they create.

Caste offers a macro view wide enough to clearly see and assess our systems of inequality and injustice free of context which usually clouds our understanding. This is important because race/racism/racist have become such highly charged words in the American lexicon.

In How to Be an Antiracist Kendi talks about this very thing; people take such offense to being labeled as racist, but aren't offended by their racist ideology or actions. It's the label they take issue with, which often shuts down conversations before they begin. We have to find a way to move beyond this to move forward.

Neutralizing the language really helps clarify conversation on race in America. Holding our stratification systems up against others in the world and in history offers important perspective on U.S. history, current events, and where we're headed in the future. By seeing ourselves clearly we can begin to address the roots we've been working for generations to cover up instead of uncover and confront.

If people are willing to read only one book on the topic of race in America this might just be the one I'd recommend. 
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