Discussing Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Please read Ibram Kendi’s
How to Be an Antiracist 

tl;dr Racism is a vast, global, perennial injustice that deserves authors who are willing to take risks. In How to be an Antiracist, Ibram Kendi takes risks. Some of his book I agree with, some I disagree with, and some I struggle to come to terms with. With Caste, Isabel Wilkerson risks little. In 2019, an earnest antiracist in my Unitarian church said that her book discussion group had been reading antiracist books for years, and she still had no idea what she could actually do. Caste would fit in with the books that this woman’s discussion group read. Read How to be an Antiracist.

Exploring Caste

If you read Caste, I’d suggest rounding out the experience by considering some of the following questions. Wilkerson’s topic is so big and important that it demands extra thought, research, and information. For these questions, some answers I already knew, some answers I had to look up, and some I still don’t know.

Wilkerson says that the way to address racial injustice today is to understand the “origins of our discontents” and for people to undergo a change of heart. What evidence does she offer that this approach is effective? What schools of political thought are in line with this approach? What alternative approaches do others advocate, such as Martin Luther King or Ibram Kendi? 

Wilkerson makes her case primarily with metaphors, analogies, anecdotes, generalizations, and hypotheticals. Where does this approach originate from? From critical race theory? Counter-storytelling? Journalistic style? A little of each?

What historical social system did Southern plantation owners see themselves as emulating? 

How is racial stratification in the US different from what Wilkerson describes in Nazi Germany and Hindu India? How are the lynchings she describe different from the killings she recounts from Germany and India? How is the historical arc of African Americans different from that of German Jews and Indian Dalits?

Wilkerson cites scholars who have identified the US racial structure as a caste system. If this framing has been suggested before but has never been generally accepted, what is different today? If the nation were to adopt this framing, what benefit could we expect?

Wilkerson describes the racial caste system in North America as originating on American soil in 1619, and she describes anti-Semitism in Germany as resulting from Nazi propaganda. What were the larger historical contexts in which these injustices took place?

Wilkerson cites laws and customs from the South as representative of the caste system. How would her narrative be different if she took the laws and customs of the Yankee North as representative? What major 19th century event in race relations does she mostly elide, and how would including this event change her narrative?

What is the original meaning of the Portuguese word “caste”? 

What is the original meaning of the Sanskrit word “varna”? 

When European scientists identified “Caucasians” and “Negroes” as different taxonomic groups, how close did they come to identifying ancestral groups, as identified by modern genetic research? When early Americans differentiated people by “white” or “black” skin, what difference did they imagine themselves to be identifying? How well could height have served to identify the same difference that early Americans thought they were identifying? 

How well do Latinos and Asians fit together into a “middle caste”? How well does the “model minority” concept fit this American “middle caste” or middle castes in Nazi Germany and Hindu India? How would Wilkerson’s narrative be different if she gave Latinos and Asians more consideration?

Where do Jews fit in Wilkerson’s caste formulation? Are they middle-caste “model minorities”, like Asians supposedly are? What does it mean that Jews are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than African Americans? What caste did Einstein appear to be in? 

Where do Native Americans fit in Wilkerson’s proposed caste system? How would her narrative be different if she gave substantial consideration to Native Americans? 

According to James Henry Hammond, who were the “mud sills” of the North? How did Northerners react to his infamous speech? What alternative view of what makes a nation prosper did Abraham Lincoln offer?

What can we learn from majority-white nations with substantial Black populations that don’t have a caste system? For example, since Canada did not have a hundred years of Jim Crow, what can we learn from the success of the African-Canadian population? More generally, what are some good examples of societies where people of different ancestries live together harmoniously, such as East Asians with Africans or settlers with Indigenous people? What can we learn from those societies? Where in the world today can we find the most successful African-descended population?

Wilkerson recounts the 1990 case of Charles Stuart, who murdered his pregnant wife and blamed the crime on an African-American man. In recent years, what are some famous cases where reports of outrageous interracial crimes turned out to be hoaxes or mistakes? 

As if channeling Jordan Peterson and his infamous lobsters, Wilkerson talks about natural human hierarchies, using wolf packs and their alphas, betas, and omegas as a template. What was the primordial social order system of _Homo sapiens_? What new social orders did our ancestors develop over the last 50,000 years or so, and why?

Wilkerson recounts the tragic, outrageous case of [REDACTED]*. What pertinent details does she leave out? 

Wilkerson points out that, contrary to stereotypes, most African Americans are not poor, and most poor Americans are not Black. If you share this information with antiracist activists, with what emotional tenor might they respond?

Wilkerson points out that being shot by the police is a leading cause of death among young, African American men. What is the leading cause of death for that demographic?

Wilkerson builds her argument about “caste” by describing racial stratification, and she talks little about class. How would her narrative be different if she paid more attention to class?

Wilkerson mentions that white evangelicals predominate in the Republican base but touches lightly on religion. To what extent could opposition to liberal policies and support for Trump relate to religious beliefs? How prominently has Christianity featured in support for Trump compared to race? If the caste system tells whites that they are superior, to what extent do evangelical Christian beliefs tell believers the same thing about them? Would American voters rather vote for an African American Christian or a white atheist?

To what extent does American nationalism tell white Americans that they are special and on top? Toward whom would Trump supporters feel more warmly: an African American waving a US flag or an ethnic Russian waving a Russian flag? 

Only 43% of white voters voted for President Obama in the 2008 election, a low figure that Wilkerson attributes to the caste system. How does that percentage compare to votes earned by previous Democratic candidates? What single demographic trait best predicted whether a voter chose Obama or McCain (also Hillary or Trump, etc)?

As Wilkerson points out, the US military is noteworthy in the way it provides real opportunities for advancement to African Americans. How does the military establish solidarity among soldiers from different ethnicities? What practices did the US Army establish in order to integrate its officer corps? What professional cadre elsewhere in the world, if any, is more racially integrated than the US Army officer corps?

Wilkerson says that African Americans have been denied reparations, while reparations have been granted to other groups that have suffered discrimination. What are some good examples of such reparations.

Wilkerson refers to two aspects of human nature: the universal desire to be free and the putative tendency to form hierarchies like wolves do. What other aspects of human nature, especially our social instincts, might help illuminate racial inequality in the US? 

Wilkerson says that the caste system hurt white America by, for example, distorting the meritocracy and preventing society from taking full advantage of everyone’s abilities. How would ending racism be good or bad for white Americans, and to what degree would it be a net benefit or drawback?

If we substituted the term “status” for “caste”, as in whites being “high-status” and African Americans being “low-status”, what would be lost and what would be gained? The same question goes for Wilkerson referring to gender inequality and age inequality as “caste”.

As we as a nation confront the injustice of racism, what personal and collective actions does Wilkerson advocate that we undertake, and which seem more promising?

If a gifted journalist were to write a parallel book that ignored all the racist history that Wilkerson recounts and recounted all the egalitarian history that Wilkerson ignores, how close could the author come to making it sound like race relations in the US are peachy keen? (This question is hypothetical because I do not advocate that gifted journalists write one-sided accounts of race relations in US history and society.)

* It’s taboo to question accounts of this incident even when the details in the account are questionable, and I’m no Wilfred Reilly.