‘The human pyramid encrypted into us all’

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
• Isabel Wilkerson
• New York: Random House, 2020
• Pp. 476

In her new book, journalist, researcher and lecturer Isabel Wilkerson cites myriads of historical and contemporary examples of American hypocrisy. Only a few years ago, when confronted with the overtly racist rhetoric and policies of Donald Trump, like the Muslim ban and border walls, many Americans were heard to say, “This is not who we are.” To which Wilkerson retorts: “Except that this was and is our country and this was and is who we are, whether we have known or recognised it or not.” (p.4)

Though the term, racism, is most often used to denote discrimination, Wilkerson feels the term, caste, is more applicable as it is more comprehensive, rigid and immutable than racial concepts, and thus better describes the system which has been in place in the United States for 400 years, originally in the form of slavery and later as institutionalised racism. Derived to assert and perpetuate the power of the dominant group: “A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-or-death meaning in a hierarchy favouring the dominant caste... “ (p. 17)

Wilkerson analyses in detail three instances of the caste system that have stood out in human history: that of Nazi Germany, India and the United States. In analysing these three systems, their overlaps and differences, the author cites the relevant research of many social scientists and other thinkers. She relates fascinating vignettes of distinguished people, famous and not so famous, from Muhandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Albert Einstein, to Bhimrao Ambedkar, who championed the cause of the Dalits or Untouchables in the 20th century. From the earliest days of slavery to the Jim Crow South, the civil rights movement, and today’s mass incarceration of people of colour, she relates instances of incredible cruelty, deep injustice and utter absurdity motivated by the drive to preserve caste divisions. She also chronicles the great loss of potential benefit to humanity of keeping talented persons locked in their assigned place by artificial boundaries. 

To readers who have some knowledge of racism in the United States, much of this is familiar ground. It is not so much that Wilkerson presents new facts; it is more her ability to juxtapose and interpret them to produce new insights and describe reality in an accurate but beautiful language filled with expressive metaphors. Sometimes she points out surprising things or things that should be obvious but are not. For example, in her comparison of the US caste system with that of Nazi Germany, she cites examples of the Nazis rejecting American policies against black people that they found too extreme. She also highlights how Nazi symbolism is forbidden in Germany today, whereas the symbols of the Confederacy are still on display in the US.

What makes the book especially fascinating is that the author relates historical examples to the present, offering an explanation for the rise of the white supremacy movement associated with former US president Donald Trump: “We cannot fully understand the current upheavals or most any turning point in American history, without accounting for the human pyramid encrypted into us all...” The deep division in the American polity which has crystallised in the past decade is “more than a political rivalry—it was an existential fight for primacy in a country whose demographics had been shifting beneath us all… the white share of the population was shrinking”. (pp. 24 and 6)

To name one remnant of slavery, white people became used to policing the behaviour of blacks, a practice that survives today in the frequent killing of most-often, unarmed black males in particular by policemen, as well as ordinary citizens calling the police on a random black person, sometimes only a child, for an imagined offense. Wilkerson joins the ever-growing chorus of Americans advocating change: “the country cannot become whole until it confronts what was not a chapter in its history, but the basis of its economic and social order”. (p. 43)

Wilkerson is the first African-American women to win the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, awarded for her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration”, whereby African-Americans moved north in the thousands seeking better job opportunities. “Caste”, her second book, has received many positive reviews and was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club 2020. But there were also naysayers who criticise her for adopting a particular writing style and word choice in order to appeal to whites. In fact, she is addressing the white American population in as much as she is addressing all those concerned with changing the system; she writes quite openly that African-Americans cannot change the whole system alone. This much should be obvious, given that they are a minority. Wilkerson is quite upfront about the fact that her book is intended to build up the knowledge base and compassion needed to abolish the caste system and achieve justice for all. The only unresolved issue is to know how apartheid fits into her analysis. While South Africa is mentioned only a few times in the book, there is no reference at all to Palestine.