Sobering. Educational. Disturbing. Enlightening. Thought-provoking. Difficult.
Those are just some of the words I would use to describe Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020) by Isabel Wilkerson.
I had never thought of the United States of having a caste society until Wilkerson laid out the facts for me. I’ve used a lot of words, OK, maybe just a few to describe the inequities in our country. I just never used caste.
But it’s more than the choice of words. I really have to accept there is a tiered system in the United States; even today.
This is not an easy book to get through, but it is one I think everyone should read or listen to. It’s so powerful.
She primarily compares the castes of the United States, India and Nazi Germany. It was so alarming to learn how the Nazis used the United States as a model to oppress people, and that even some of what was going on here was too much for them to adopt.
Examples of the bigotry, hatred, racist, inhumane behavior are so hard to hear. (I listened to the book.) I forced myself to keep listening. It’s the least I could do. Clearly, we have not evolved much as a society.
One line in particular struck me when Wilkerson said so many people in the United States are willing to side with being white instead of siding with the Constitution. She said it a little more eloquently, but the sentiment is the same.
I know I have white privilege. It’s how I use it that matters. I want to work toward a world where no one’s skin color gives them a better or worse life than someone else.
While I’m not doing anything substantive to change the world, I do believe educating myself about the inequities, sharing what I’ve learned, and talking about it are at least a start. From there, perhaps I can help effect some positive change.
One day, though it won’t be in my lifetime, it would be wonderful if the caste system in the United States were abolished. It won’t happen, though, if those of us in the upper caste don’t start doing more, and doing it soon.
Kae, this did not excite me to want to read the book. The only issue talked about is whiteness as a privilege. I am tired of hearing that as much as BLM. If you say all lives matter, you are a racist. If you say unborn life matters you are anti feminist.
Tired of this whole thing. Yes there are idiots among us, but no country makes changes as well and as quickly as America. I refuse to change my position about America. It has been good to me.
Another for my list. Thank you.
Like you, I found the book enlightening. In my case, I recommended it to my book club and led the discussion. For those people debating whether to read it, some quotations I wrote down may be helpful:
Quotations: [discussing the 2016 campaign] A low rumbling had been churning beneath the surface, neurons excited by the prospect of a cocksure champion for the dominant caste, a mouthpiece for their anxieties. Pp 6-7
A caste system has a way of filtering down to every inhabitant, the codes absorbed like mineral springs, setting the expectations of where one fits on the ladder. “The mill worker ‘with no one else to look down on’ regards himself as eminently superior to the Negro,” observed the Yale scholar Liston Pope in 1942. “The colored man represents his last outpost against social oblivion.” P 25
[talking a about Hitler’s rise to power] The old guard did not foresee, or chose not to see, that his actual mission was “to exploit the methods of democracy to destroy democracy.” P 82
Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience, from their perspective, not as we would imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it. P 386
Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience, from their perspective, not as we would imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it. P 386
Strong quote I like very much, but that listening and humble heart always does best going both ways.
I learned a lot from “The Warmth of Other Suns”. Living in Reno, I didn’t realize how white-privileged I was. Thanks for the review.