well worth reading. It differentiates race, a false construct, with caste, another artificial construct of subjugation.
I am not able to finish it because it relentlessly recounts heinous deeds and practices.

A close examination of the cover on Libby shows I’ve been listening to an adaptation for Young Adults. Of course this should be a separate work from the original, but it does not show on the author’s page. Looking on the editions page, I am overwhelmed by the potential combination section. Ow! How did that happen? ( )

A "must" read. I did not like the many examples where the author presents as facts the supposed thoughts and/or attitudes of strangers. Many interaction she brings as examples of upper caste dominating a lower caste can easily have other motivations and reasons (eg the asshole passenger on the flight who violated her, or the plumber looking into her flooded basement). In my view such examples dilute, rather than enhance, the very overwhelming evidence of clear-cut and unambiguous caste dominance she presents (eg the woman calling the cops on the birdwatcher in central park, or the carnival atmosphere at lynchings). Despite this criticism, I think it is a great book and should be read by everyone and taught in every high school. This book finally made me understand why people voted for the 45th, and why we have not seen the last of his posse. ( )

This is an important book and should be required reading in schools. I'd encourage every American to read it, especially those who might question whether the US has a systemic racism problem. There were many facts in this book that floored me, and the extent to which the author was able to draw parallels between the United States and Nazi Germany was equally astounding and disturbing. I listened to the audio-book on my first go-round, but I do think I'd like to purchase a copy of this book to reread, and this time I'll have a pencil and a highlighter. ( )

9/10
This book looks beyond individual prejudice and racism to examine systemic racism under the umbrella of caste in the United States, drawing comparisons with and lessons from the well-established caste system of India and the relatively brief but deadly caste system of Nazism. The author clearly delineates the pillars upholding caste, repeatedly pointing out examples of the pervasiveness and persistence of caste. Not an easy or comfortable book, but I read with an open mind and heart and learned a lot. ( )

To be honest, I didn’t find this book as powerful or as revelatory as [b:The Warmth of Other Suns|8171378|The Warmth of Other Suns the Epic Story of America's Great Migration|Isabel Wilkerson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433354252l/8171378._SY75_.jpg|13341052]. There’s a lot here, and she makes a fairly strong (if narrow) case for the concept she’s proposing. But there isn’t much that I hadn’t already seen before—it’s just packaged together in service of the admittedly novel argument that race forms the basis for a caste distinction in America. I wonder if she had to tread so much familiar ground in order to beat that path. Sadly, she probably did. But I wish she hadn’t, or I’d like to see a sequel, because I came away wanting a lot more than just the evidence of her being right. I want to see some engagement with the question of whether/why that distinction really matters, for example. In addition, she makes a number of passing references to other caste distinctions that she identifies—especially gender and age, for example—and I’d really like to see her expand on the ways that they interact/overlap/conflict with the marker of race in this regard.

Then too, the the final chapter and epilogue were disappointing; a facile solution tacked onto a book that was better without.

The book is a strong overview, and I don’t doubt that it’s been a very valuable introduction to these ideas for a lot of people. But truly, I came away wanting a lot more. Thinking of it via the “What? So what? Now what?” model, it’s a book that greatly overanswers the first question, to the detriment of the others. The book clearly demonstrates that the phenomenon of race-based caste exists in America, but doesn’t do enough beyond that. ( )

The author’s acknowledgement tells more of her journey.

This may be one of the most important books I’ve ever read, tracing the history of prejudice and repression in this country back to the very origins. And then augmenting the narrative with examples of the results, both the mundane, every day events along with the world-wide implications. The result is a quickening experience, causing the reader to see the world around them differently and more keenly. One of the best passages explains the backlash from the Obama era, the group disenchantment after the election of a member from other than the ruling caste. Taken along with the census numbers at the time, heralding the time when white people would no longer be a majority in the country – and, thus, not the ruling caste – the disenfranchisement grew to boiling point, leaving us where we are today. It’s obviously more complicated than that, but that should just make you want to read the book.

5 bones!!!!!
Highly Recommended – should be mandatory reading. ( )

Excellent roundup of the history of and current research into the populating of North American from Asia. ( )

In this provocative work, Wilkerson makes a compelling case for the existence of caste in the U.S., despite little consideration having been given to that term for historical societal or racial divides up until now. The parallels to other nations in which caste has played a significant role in creating and perpetuating inequalities and inhumane behaviors are staggering.

So many concepts presented in this book are revelatory. To list a few that were especially thought-provoking:
• Nazi Germany was impressed with and inspired by American treatment of Black people — a chilling thought.

• The concept of Dominant Group Status Threat is eye-opening in that it pretty much explains the Republican Party's stance on just about everything.

• This excerpt: "By the time they recognized their fatal miscalculation, it was too late. Hitler had risen as an outside agitator, a cult figure enamored of pageantry and rallies with parades of people carrying torches that an observer said looked like rivers of fire. Hitler saw himself as the voice of the Volk, of their grievances and fears, especially those in the rural districts, as a god-chosen savior, running on instinct. He had never held elected office before."

• This excerpt: "This [the sale of lynching postcards] was singularly American. "Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz," wrote Time magazine many years later."

• This excerpt: "If the lower-caste person manages actually to rise above an upper-caste person, the natural human response from someone weaned on their caste's inherent superiority is to perceive a threat to their existence, a heightened sense of unease, of displacement, of fear for their very survival. "If the things that I have believed are not true, then might I not be who I thought I was?" The disaffection is more than economic. The malaise is spiritual, psychological, emotional. Who are you if there is no one to be better than?"

• I became conscious only as an adult that, despite feeling ethically superior in the aftermath of the Civil War, "The North" doesn't have a lot to brag about in terms of racism. It was never the welcoming utopia commonly depicted, and in fact northern racism was in many ways more insidious than the overt racism of the South because its equally discriminatory behaviors (e.g., redlining, redistricting) were shrouded in obfuscation.

It's difficult to put into words what I took from this book. It has both made me feel both more aware and more hopeless about the state of my country, as so much seems irrevocably broken, and I feel at a loss for what to do with what I've learned. ( )

#BookReview #NonFiction
"Caste: The Origins of our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson

When my daughter asked me what book I was reading and I replied "Caste", her next question was "Is it by an Indian author?" We all have this idea that India alone grapples with caste-based problems, that the US and other countries primarily face racial or religious issues. This book convincingly proves that idea a delusion.

Let me borrow the introductory paragraph from an article published on "The Print" website on 23rd August 2020, the article that first introduced me to this book.

/quote/
Oprah Winfrey’s book clubs are legendary. So, when Oprah sent out a new book to 100 American CEOs and 400 leaders soon after the transformative #BlackLivesMatters protest and called it the most important book club selection ever, the world had to pay attention. And when that book mentions ‘India’ 136 times, it becomes mandatory reading for us. And yet Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American author Isabel Wilkerson, a book that The New York Times calls an ‘Instant American Classic’ is not stirring up Indian public debate or hitting our bookshelves.
/unquote/

When I read this article (https://theprint.in/opinion/oprah-winfrey-wilkerson-caste-100-us-ceos-indians-wont-talk-about-it/487143/), I knew that I had to get my hands on this book. And what a ride it has been!

Isabel Wilkerson deftly uncovers the many layers that caste masquerades under. Right in the first chapter, she declares, "Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States."

Using her personal examples as well as historical publishings, Wilkerson builds up a firm case to support her hypothesis that America is a casteist nation. As she writes, "Most people don't look at America as having a caste system but it has all the hallmarks of one." She is scathing about the resurgence of the casteist ideas under the current president of the US. All those sections are a pleasure to read! Every argument is put up by sheer logic and not by any emotional parameters. Wilkerson has established a new benchmark in my mind for journalistic integrity in writing nonfiction.

While she focuses primarily on America for obvious reasons, she does cover the Indian system to a great extent. Historical statements on caste by Ambedkar, Manu and Jyotiba Phule, as well as contemporary insights by Yashica Dutt, Suraj Yengde and VT Rajshekhar, all find a mention in her research. I found it amazing to see how an outsider to our culture has so incisively figured out our complicated social hierarchy. A great part of me feels that she has done a better job of pinpointing our imbalanced framework because of her nonpartisan viewpoint. I now want to continue this journey of discovery by getting an insider perspective into Indian caste problems and will hence pick up "Caste Matters" by Suraj Yengde.

Wilkerson's handling of the topic of the Holocaust and Hitler's twisted idealogies that current Germans are doing their best to erase, deserves special mention.

This year, while I've read a great number of books, the quantity unfortunately hasn't been balanced with quality. Only a few books have stirred me enough while most have been underwhelming. This book is one of my best reads of 2020, if not the best. It isn't just an enlightening book, it must be made mandatory reading, and not just in America or India, in the entire world. Go for it without any doubt.

Leaving you with just a few of the many thought-provoking quotes from the book:

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3832697658

Overall, the book retains much of what made it interesting and compelling on my first read of it around the time it came out. I think some sections of the book are less compelling on a re-read because of the way they are written - those parts of the book that blend narration and quotation with story retelling start to feel overdone.

Similarly, the organizing structure of the book does a lot of handholding — sometimes too much, and makes the reader feel like the author thinks they might be stupid. I’m not sure how much of this impression is because I am re-reading this after seeing the adaptation “Origin” which lifts so much of the text word-for-word for narration/voice-over. Possibly a lot.

Those two points aside, this remains a great contemporary text that is accessible and approachable for people. ( )

This is an amazing book. An important book. And, at times, extremely hard to take. Dissecting the similarities between Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow Era Southern United States, and the caste system of India, a common thread of human rankings emerges. And it is troubling, to say the least. Interspersed are the author's own experiences as a woman of color, demonstrating the continued prevalence of racism in modern times, as well as historical vignettes that stand as yet more reminders that no matter how much I learn, there are still new horrors to discover about life in my home country before the Civil Rights Movement. But the point of this book isn't to shame anyone. No one alive today was around during slavery. But as the author points out, when you have a house with structural issues, you don't stand around claiming that because you didn't cause the problems, you shouldn't have to address them. No, you fix the problems with the house, no matter how many generations ago the damage was done. Same with one's country. ( )

A disturbing look at the way Caste affects a society, especially the U.S. 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 history has been shaped by a hidden caste system
, a rigid hierarchy of huma. 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 system of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of 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 surprising health costs of caste, in depression, and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. ( )

This is a tough read, not because it is difficult, but because the subject matter is so difficult to read about. There is so much to be taken from it, but one thing that has stuck is how there are no statues of Nazis in Germany, but we have (or had) plenty of statues of Confederates. They have monuments to the Jews, but we have had few monuments until very recently to the slaves. ( )

It’s a tough read, but needs to be read by everyone ( )

This is an excellent book, a must-read for anyone who wants to really understand what American society is really about.

Highlights for me include:
- A lengthy description of the "pillars" of any caste system, and how American society qualifies.
- A comparison of the American system with those of India and Nazi Germany. (Was gob-smacked to learn that the Nazis modeled their subjugation of the Jews on America's Jim Crow laws.)
- A description of the price America pays because of it's caste system (compared to other "developed" countries, we have relatively high infant mortality, poor scholastic scholastic achievement, shorter life expectancy, huge prison population, etc etc etc).
- The author's personal examples of how lower caste people are treated in America. Some are pretty devastating, all made me feel ashamed.

I felt the book had one weakness: there was very little discussion of where Native Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans fit into the system. This doesn't spoil the book, far from it, but I would have enjoyed the analyses.

Overall, this is a very engaging read, without being pedantic and with no detectable filler. It's an eye-opening challenge to thoughtful White readers, implicitly asking "how can people, who claim to be compassionate and fair-minded freedom lovers, allow such a system to exist?" This book has a permanent place in my shelves, and I will read it again.
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I have to say I picked up this book without hearing anything about it, which is a good thing. I thought it was an objective sociological study of caste with the obvious links to racism, classism etc. This book didn't deliver on that level. It wasn't an all-encompassing study of caste, focusing primarily on the position of the black people in the USA. While it definitely speaks about the horrendous racist history of the USA (there were some truly powerful moments in this book), the approach was a strange mix of anecdotal and factual, which was openly politically biased and very binary (in terms of black and white) with other minorities strangely underrepresented.

The biggest disappointment was that Wilkerson blames everything on this notion of caste and lists personal anecdotes that may be completely unrelated to her central thesis. She also gives very little space to talk about the class system based on the economy which is very central to the whole idea of caste. I felt disappointed with this as it seems to me that many black activists avoid this topic either because they do not want to be called out as communists or because in the American narrative it is just inconceivable to try to overthrow the holy cow of neoliberal capitalism.

I expected the central thesis of this work to be the comparison of the Indian caste system, Nazi Germany racial laws etc. with its contemporaries i.e. Jim Crow's south (that part was was done well, IMHO) etc. Unfortunately, the Indian caste system is covered very superficially, with no explanation of how that system evolved over time, especially in relation to the external (colonial) influence. The same superficial approach goes for Nazi Germany, which in the light of the recent research published in The Guardian that found that 2/3 of the US young adults don't know about the Holocaust is not something to take easily.
I gave up expecting a more scientific, systematic approach very early on in the book when I realized that this is not what the author had in mind.

This book is very successful in depicting systemic racism in the USA which is undeniable and very deeply entrenched into the social fabric of the society. I'm not convinced, however, that the current system is as monolithic as Wilkerson claims.

On the positive note, the writing style is engaging and Wilkerson uses some great metaphors to talk about her subject. It may be eye-opening for people who haven't come across caste in their education so far. But, I expected a lot more from this book. Or better said, something else. ( )

Following on Wilkerson's "The Warmth of Other Suns", this book examines the way we humans prefer to bin people based on certain characteristics. She focuses on the three most vile and reprehensible systems of caste: the Nazi program of annihilation of the Jews, the treatment of (some might say attempted annihilation) of African Americans in the US, and the human hierarchy invented in India known as the caste system. ( )

I did not enjoy the writing in this as much as I did Ms. Wilkerson’s earlier book, The Warmth of Other Suns, but her hypothesis about viewing racial tensions through the lens of caste rather than race is compelling. ( )

Good book about Caste system based on race in the U.S. ( )

In this book Wilkerson shuttles between comparative history and memoir. Either one would have been preferable and it could be the reason Wilkerson has explained in interviews that this wasn’t the book she wanted to write but felt compelled to.

Parts of it reminded me of Ta Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me. In this book we have a black woman’s engagement with a white male dominated world, and those parts of the book for me were the most effective and moving.

Wilkerson suggests that American society is based on caste, much like India, and that she navigates American society was one from a lower caste. She implies that blacks in America today are treated much like Jews were treated by Nazis in the Germany of the 1930’s.

She goes further to show how Nazis educated themselves in handling the races by studying the American racial laws, and the Jim Crow South.

For Wilkerson contemporary America is an extension of the Jim Crow South, and an immovable barrier to progress.

Race is biologically apparent, but not biologically significant any more than the length of your toes. Societally, however, racism is devastating and it is as global as a pandemic.

In this respect, America is not exceptional. Unfortunately. Some part of me wishes this was only an American problem. ( )

Since 2008 our generations have had to come to grips with the fact that, faced with a choice between loyalty to one's friends and family and loyalty to white supremacy - an alarming number would choose the second.

The cruelty from chattel slavery, the terrorism under Jim Crow, to the policies written in code since the Voting Rights Act – is there for anyone who cares to see it. The effort so many put into minimizing the damage done to perpetuate the myth of innocence and to enable the system to stay in place, the rage felt when someone’s ideas transgress the boundaries set by a caste system, the fact that given a choice between white supremacy and relationships, even blood, many will choose white supremacy, and the fact so many will choose to eliminate programs that will make their lives better (schools, health, employment opportunity) to prevent another group from benefitting – shows the deep roots beneath the surface.

It offers insight into why the organizations that enforce caste - why a law and order person will accept some violations but not violations of the caste system, why churches will be resigned to presence of some sin but not to transgressions of caste, why some school critics will accept some difference of opinion but not questioning of caste, why some acquaintances (social media and face to face) will be triggered by some ideas that bring up caste. Wilkerson is mining territory that's psychologically deeper than laws and religious texts.

Wilkerson addresses this as a teacher does, employing every analogy at her disposal, to show how pervasive our national problem is. Where her work succeeds most, perhaps, is in its encyclopedic organization. The long list of receipts and the short chapters dealing with each way caste penetrates our surroundings, is made to be re-read. I don’t think any one event in history is surprising but one of the dangerous myths is that every atrocity is an isolated incident – a myth that is easier to dispel when so many events are stacked so well, and their connections laid out with research.

And the book that needs to stay on the desk, accessible, since the problems addressed are going nowhere. As we see the move toward new channels where people can harbor their destructive beliefs – an attempt to create separate but equal news sources, social networks and truths – an accurate history and an accurate cultural memory are much needed weapons.
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This should be required reading in every high school social studies class ( )

The paradox of race is that it is a construct with no real basis and yet has very real consequences- in effect, a caste system. Isabel Wilkerson compares our American caste system of race to India's, as well as the Nazi regime (which took inspiration from American laws on how to Otherize an arbitrarily undesirable population while maintaining a veneer of innocence). She speaks in terms of dominant and subordinate castes instead of white and black, which further emphasizes how cruelly arbitrary it is (and just how much energy is spent on centering the dominant caste, on "putting people in their place" and the zero sum feeling like something is somehow lost when people in the subordinate caste succeed).

Strongly recommend, especially if you're a member of a majority group. Probably interesting to other readers but also more likely to have lived experiences. ( )

Yeah, this is it. This is the one.

Over the past ten years or so we have seen a lot of writing designed to attempt to explain the current predicament of American society as it relates to people of color, and especially Black people.

Isabel Wilkerson’s analysis of the situation in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (affiliate link) adds a helpful framework through which to explain and understand a lot of the disparate issues which have otherwise not been put together well in a coherent way. Through her own experiences, the stories of many in the past and present, and through insightful comparison and analysis, Wilkerson amply demonstrates how American society is a racialized caste society.

This is less than good news, and it’s nothing anyone wants to hear. Yet it is difficult to deny the comparisons.

When the word “caste” is brought up, most of us think of Indian society. The author does well at explaining how the caste system developed in India and how it effectively functions: Brahmins are raised, consciously and unconsciously, as high caste. Many of them work very diligently to maintain the privileges of their caste standing and actively disdain those of lower castes; yet even those who have come to recognize the challenges inherent in the caste system, and in various ways would actively work to delegitimate and tear down that system, still end up, however unconsciously, presenting themselves as high caste and treating others as “less than.” On the other side of the caste system are the Dalits, the “untouchables,” who are conditioned to see themselves as lesser, will act as such among those of higher castes, and expend a lot more energy and maintain much higher stress in attempting to figure out how to best navigate their world so as not to set off the higher castes against them. And then there are those in between, most of whom will despise those beneath them far more than resent those above them, and will often do almost anything to maintain whatever privileges they already have.

We don’t want to see ourselves as having anything like this, but we really do. At the top of the American caste system are wealthy white men. Near the bottom of the American caste system are impoverished Black women (and probably impoverished LGBTQIA+ women even more so). While there are aspects of class and gender to the American caste system, race still remains the most salient issue: in many respects a poor white man will still have higher caste standing than a middle class or even wealthy Black man; wealthier Black women often endure worse health outcomes, as a group, than poor white women.

Caste can be the key which can help explain some of the more challenging aspects of societal issues. Comparatively poorer white men and women often struggle to see how they have enjoyed “white privilege,” but that’s because they think of such things primarily in terms of economic and perhaps academic opportunity; in their caste privilege they are blinded to how much more difficult the situation proves to be for people of color in a similar socio-economic condition, and all the more so in the various ways in which various systems prove more responsive to them than they do even to wealthier yet lower caste people in their society. Matters of race are all too easily oversimplified and essentialized, and many fail to understand how a black person could act in racist ways toward other black people, and of course have almost no conception of colorism; yet when we understand the racialized caste system under which we live, we can understand how the desire to obtain greater caste privilege by associating with the higher caste would drive such behaviors.

The author’s personal stories are also heartbreaking. She well exhibits how many people of higher caste standing in America - people who most likely see themselves as at least somewhat racially enlightened - nevertheless unconsciously prove less helpful and more dismissive of Black people and others who are comparatively lower caste, and yet more helpful to those of comparatively higher caste. Understanding it all in terms of caste also helps to explain the feeling of “violation” when those placed in the lower castes are in environments in which the higher castes expect to predominate: in the author’s context, first class airplane flights. How many times has the assumption been made that they should be found in business or economy, or they work there, or something of the sort? Likewise when people assume the homeowner is the nanny or servant, or the doctor is really support staff, and so on and so forth. Sometimes it can be about gender or class, but race tends to be the most predominant factor. This is the world of “microaggressions,” and they expose the pervasiveness of our caste system, and our blindness to it.

We live in a time in which the higher castes feel quite threatened in their position and strength, and we have all been compelled to live with the fruit of that fear. Just as it is hard to get a fish to recognize it lives in water, so those of us in the higher castes have a difficult time perceiving the caste system and how it is designed to our advantage and comfort and thus to the disadvantage and discomfort of others. Since all such systems are predicated on oppression and exploitation, those who have benefited from it live in abject fear that it will be done to them as they, or their ancestors, had done unto others. But if it all really isn’t real, then why are they afraid? Why can they not imagine a healthy, productive society in which white people are not the majority and do not dominate in power? If they are as colorblind as they imagine they are, why would they not want to be treated in the way people of color are treated in America? In their own protests they tend to expose the unearned privilege they enjoy, and they seem petrified at the prospect of a re-sorting in which they are no longer among the dominant castes.

We do well to confess the caste society in which we live and to lament how it has actively harmed many. It’s one thing to see it; it’s quite another to find a new and better way. There’s a lot of idealism around about the power of knowledge to lead to solutions; as a Christian I have a hard time not seeing the work of the powers and principalities in these systems, and they’re fighting hard to maintain their existence. At this point the best we can do is consciously resist the caste system in the way we treat other people. Perhaps if enough people resist, the system will be torn down and something new can take its place. Hopefully it would be better.

Regardless, Caste should be required reading for considering the reality of the socio-cultural structures of the United States. ( )