Caste
Books | Social Science / Social Classes & Economic Disparity
4.6
(5.1K)
Isabel Wilkerson
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “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 are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: TimeONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus ReviewsWinner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • 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 • Kirkus Prize Finalist“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, and beautifully written 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 outcasting 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.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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Author
Isabel Wilkerson
Pages
544
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Published Date
2020-08-04
ISBN
0593230256 9780593230251
Community ReviewsSee all
"The title really sums this book up...the is the history of our caste system here in America. Our country has a very odd way of judging the history of slavery and racism in the sense that we sort of just want to acknowledge it and move on but not talk about how its still impacting so many people, especially those on the margins of society. This book illuminates that. "
"Simply put, this book should be required reading."
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Nikki Cureton
"This was a life-changing book for me.<br/><br/>If you grew up in the United States (Kentucky for me) and have always struggled to try to understand why things are the way they are, buckle up because this book will provide you a very long and detailed answer but also hit you with a sudden clarity and simplicity like shining a spotlight right into your soul and the deep recesses of your brain.<br/><br/>I have read many other books on race relations before, including the works of Montagu, Bryan Stevenson, and Michelle Alexander, and none of them has laid it out so clearly to me. If you are turned off by the tone of other books about race and don't understand white privilege or why you should feel guilty or worry about things that happened in your grandparents' generation or even before that, this is the book for you. <br/><br/>You see we are all CAST in a very specific role, playing the part assigned to us in a very deliberate society created hundreds of years ago in the colonies, based solely on a CASTE system of our skin color, a physical characteristic arbitrarily chosen because nobody can change it. You are playing a role, and your ancestors played a role, and your descendants will play a role, and you cannot help but play the role assigned to you. Wilkerson compares the United States to other caste systems in the world, perhaps ironically better known to us because we do study them in school and see them portrayed in movies - the Nazi Holocaust and the caste system of India. But then she clearly outlines how the same caste system takes place in the United States, and how it is never talked about. How we never learn the truth. <br/><br/>The thing is, these roles are harmful to all of us. And this is where I feel Wilkerson really hit me hard. She explains by all of us striving so desperately to be in the dominant caste (white male Anglo Saxon Protestants were the originals), we change ourselves, we are stressed out, we compete against our neighbors with the paranoid distorted belief that resources are somehow limited and only deserving to those at the top. I turn off my southern accent in certain situations; friends and family members search genealogies to try and find our Scottish/Irish ancestors in order to claim closeness to the original caste members when we were most likely indentured servants, fleeing persecution ourselves; I wear blazers to look more masculine in professional settings or when I have to give a speech; the list goes on and on. These roles cause us to subconsciously believe the lies passed on about the other caste members, and it negatively impacts our actual health and well-being to act this way. Why am I striving so hard to prove that I deserve to be at the table with rich white males? By acting this way I uphold the idea of the opposite, that at least I am not poor or black, which is the entire foundation of this caste system and all the unconscious beliefs associated with it. <br/><br/>I hope if you are American and you have ever harbored any spiritual or intellectual doubts about our history or the state of our current society, please read this with an open heart and mind. I realize I have a lot of soul searching to do to try to deprogram myself from this role and help to open the stage up to others."
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Rebekah Travis
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