Caste by Isabel Wilkerson *****

BLM, racism, privilege, reparations. Do you feel these are oversimplifications of the complex situation of black Americans in the United States? Do you wonder if the real story of the last four centuries is more subtle and nuanced? Would you like a deeper understanding? Caste by Isabel Wilkerson is the book you want to read.

Wilkerson compares three caste systems: India, United States, and Nazi Germany. By comparing the similarities, the reader is enlightened about what happened in the United States from the settlement of Virginia to the current day. She directly addresses the mythologies of slavery and emancipation both.

One interesting contrast is post-WWII Germany and post-Civil War United States. A striking point is that Germany has chosen to erect monuments to commemorate the victims of Nazi Germany, while the U.S. commemorates the slaveholders. Germany has compensated the victims, while the U.S. has compensated the rebels.

Some people wonder why poor white Americans continue to vote for Republicans “against their own interests.” Wilkerson explains this. “Many voters, in fact, made an assessment of their circumstances and looked beyond immediate short-term benefits and toward, from their perspective, the larger goals of maintaining dominant-caste status and their survival in the long term. They were willing to lose health insurance now, risk White House instability and government shutdowns, external threats from faraway lands, in order to preserve what their actions say they value most—the benefits they had grown accustomed to as members of the historically ruling caste in America.”

Current projections predict that the white majority will be a minority around 2042. One possibility is that the United States will become more egalitarian by then. Another view suggests looking to South Africa for a view of the future. However, Wilkerson put forward a more cynical alternative. “The definition of whiteness could well expand to confer honorary whiteness to those on the border—the lightest-skinned people of Asian or Latino descent or biracial people with a white parent, for instance—to increase the ranks of the dominant caste.”

A comprehensive history of U.S. slavery and its continuing impact.