“Caste” (2020) by Isabel Wilkerson looks at the caste system in the US and compares it to those of India and Nazi Germany, especially in their glory days of the 1930s and 1940s.
Isabel Wilkerson is the first Black American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, the highest journalism award in the US. She won it for her book “The Warmth of Other Suns” (2010) about the Great Migration of Blacks from the southern US.
Anyone who likes this blog would probably like this book. It touches on many of the same topics, some of them not so obvious, like Ambedkar, Einstein at Lincoln University and the Hugging of Miss Amber. And, looking at her bibliography, she even has many of the same books!
The R-word: But where I try to understand anti-Black racism in the US by putting it in the context of history and the racism against Asian and Native Americans, she puts it in the context of caste. Racism only goes back hundreds of years, caste goes back thousands. Caste also helps her avoid the R-word.
Caste is not race. Caste can be based on anything. In the US it is based on race. In India it is not. Lower-caste people in India do on average have darker skin, it is true, but that is like thinking gender is based on height because men on average are taller than women.
Caste is not class. You can change class – by becoming a millionaire or a drunk – but you can never change your caste. It is permanent, from birth.
The pillars of caste: she identifies eight:
- Divine Will and the Laws of Nature – caste is seen as part of the divine or natural order, not the invention of man, not a “social construct”.
- Heritability – you are born into a caste, can never escape it, and you pass it on to your children.
- Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating – you are only allowed to marry and have legitimate children within your caste.
- Purity versus Pollution – the castes are kept apart, segregated, even (or especially) at swimming pools.
- Occupational Hierarchy – castes have typical occupations, like being a maid or entertainer for Blacks in the US.
- Dehumanization and Stigma – lower castes are seen as not fully human. This helps to unite everyone else against the lowest caste.
- Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control – the violent “excesses” used to maintain the caste system are not an accident.
- Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority – upper-caste people think they are better than everyone else.
In the late 1900s, caste was greatly weakened with the rise of democracy in India and the US. This was done by overturning laws. But the culture caste created largely remains, still determining thought and behaviour in 2020.
More anecdotal than analytical: The book makes its main points not through sociology but through a mass of anecdote, comparing the experiences of Blacks in the US to Jews in Nazi Germany and Dalits (Untouchables) in India.
– Abagond, 2020.
See also:
513
Abagond 
Abagond,
first I have to thank you so much for your work and persistance on this website – I have learned so many things on so many different levels from you!
Disclosure: I am am white male, married to a black woman, who was born in Africa and grew up in France and Germany. We have two kids and live on Munich.
I came across your blog when I was researching about what I get myself into by falling in love with a black woman and having brown kids. There is no place like yours if a white boy wants to learn the lay of the land.
That you estimate “Caste” worthy of a blog entry confirms my judgement about the book. I think this book belongs to the “essentials” – books that show the forest and the trees and thus provide a thorough guide to our racist societies.
As a German reader “Caste” is especially enlightening: for as long as I am aware of racism within myself and the society I am living in I feel there is a fundamental difference in the way American racism works and there is a fundamental difference in the way African immigrants have to navigate in these societies and the are things missing in the narrative of the racism against jews in Germany.
Isabel Wilkinsons book provides an universal framework to study these phenomena.
“Caste” is now on my personal short list of books “that describe the world”, books, that allow to separate the “fluff from the stuff”. Sort of “societal thermodynamics”, the ideas described in these books serve as “razors”, to judge other ideas brought up in public (or private) discourse.
LikeLiked by 5 people
@Abagond…“The pillars of caste…” Black American folk, dancing in the streets about Kamala (like Obama), really need to read this damned book!
LikeLiked by 2 people
It is still sitting in my book stack. I am caught up in my Audiobooks.
LikeLiked by 2 people
@Deb Is Kamala a proven casteist? Is she worse than Biden, Trump or Pence? Could she not perhaps be better than them? I hope she (and Obama) reads this book. It is an eye opener for the entire world.
LikeLike
@Joe…“Is Kamala a proven casteist? Is she worse than Biden, Trump or Pence? Could she not perhaps be better than them?…”
I can’t honestly say yes or no to the “casteist” part of your question because I don’t know her like that. What I DO know, based on what’s been written about her since her days as California’s top cop is, she always has, and still does credit her Brahmin grandfather and mother for her success. I’ve not found any relatable, positive credit given to her Jamaican father (check out Abagond’s, “Donald Harris” post for some background).
As far as if she’s better or worse than those other three — in my humble opinion, categorically no — just more of the same sh*t, different day.
LikeLike
@Deb
Thanks!
What a miserable world we live in!
“Caste” has been named by Publishers Marketplace as the Best of the Best Books of 2020.
So there is room for hope!
LikeLiked by 1 person