Pulitzer prize winner Isabel Wilkerson draws parallels between America, India and Nazi Germany in her unsettling history of racial hierarchies. This Oprah’s book club and award winning pick, is a well researched, brilliantly argued reframing of what we commonly think of as racism in America. Caste as a system is something found in many locations in the world and parts of society. Caste, as a hierarchy of human divisions, holds each group in their place and it is an operating system of dehumanisation that ranks human value. She argues that there is not a race problem in America, there’s a caste problem. She tracks historical reasons for her premise and uses many stories to recount examples of dehumanisation, which are hard to read. Caste is a sobering book, but an important one, hugely interesting and thought provoking.
Though reviews of this book are mixed, I found it brought a new and different understanding to racism, and shed light on how insidious systemic racism is. What our world needs is to see people as different, but not less than. She highlights the importance of radical empathy in finding a way to equality. Her insights point forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. “A world without caste would set everyone free.”
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