Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson

Read April 2021 - Well Read Book Club

What a powerful book.  So hard to read (for the content) but so important to read.  This book connected so many dots for me under the thesis of caste.  The US having a caste system sine our very beginning makes sense.  Whiteness is the thing that must be preserved at all costs (in this thesis) including if it goes against personal interests (economic, health, etc).  There have been three caste systems in world history - India (ongoing), US (ongoing) and Nazism (12 years).  Horrifying.  As mentioned in the book, this statement got me... Africans say they don't 'become black' until they come to the United States.  Everywhere else they are Nigerian, Ghanan, etc.  But 'black' in the US is the bottom rung no matter what else exists.  Also, Europeans become 'white' in the US - so can be a way to 'rise up'.  Wow.  So much.  Such an important book.  I also note that it is so important to read this book all the way to the very end.  There is so much horror in the book but at the end the author helps us by providing us with tangible ways of moving forward... things we can actually do.  To read the book and not get to that part would leave you with a weight far too heavy.