Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Wilkerson - A*

                Our country is built upon a centuries old caste system that is "the infrastructure of our divisions." It is "a fixed and embedded ranking of human value..." It's based on ancestry, and rigidly assigns boundaries and groupings. India has had one for over a millennium, Nazi Germany had one for just over a decade and America itself has a "shape shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid." In America, race is "the frontman for caste." It is a system we are born into without choice, but with a lifetime of consequences. "Caste is the operating system for economic, political, and social interaction in the United States..." For the average white person, it keeps blacks in their place.

              Slavery was in place for a quarter of a millennium in the South, where Africans were the prime building block of the region's economy. It was legal and made lords of those in the dominant caste. It was also the first time an enslaved subgroup was enslaved in perpetuity. African-Americans will not be free as long as they were enslaved in this country until 2111. And the first hundred years of that freedom under Jim Crow was far from free. For the vast majority of white Americans, they didn't become 'white' until their ancestors arrived here. "Hostility toward the lowest caste became part of the initiation rite into citizenship in America." We have inherited these "distorted rules of engagement." The New World made people white, black, brown, yellow and red.  The distinction between caste and race is a difficult one to articulate. Perhaps race attaches an inferiority based on color and caste is denigration based on a categorization. Caste is inheritable, endogamous (restricting marriage to within the same caste), and requires a quarantining and separation. Separation has been diligently enforced in the public water, beaches and pools in the US. Lower caste members, blacks in America, Dalits in India, were and are assigned the lowest most menial tasks in the work force. Dehumanization and stigmatization are two more foundations of caste and are enforced by terror and cruelty; lower caste members are permanently inferior.

     Disruptions to the caste system have consequences to both the lower and higher class members. When blacks achieved power during Reconstruction, the white response was vicious re-suppression through the Jim Crow laws. The Civil Rights movement led to mass incarceration of blacks. As blacks successfully began to rise up to become wealthy athletes, members of Congress, Secretary of State and even President, the cognitive dissonance for lower caste whites led to alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide to such a degree that white life expectancy declined.

     To be in a lower caste is to be perpetually repressed. "The subordinate castes are trained to admire, worship, fear, love, covet and want to be like those at the center of society...""Caste is more than rank, it is a state of mind that holds everyone captive, the dominant imprisoned in an illusion of their own entitlement, the subordinate trapped in the purgatory of someone else's definition of who they are and who they should be." 

      The stress of being in a lower caste has meaningful negative health consequences. Being lower caste is a significant factor in heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes among blacks. Sub-SaharanAfricans generally do not have any of these diseases. When Africans immigrate to America, they develop them at levels similar to native blacks. Black women have been proven to build up more visceral fat because of discrimination. When whites are mistreated in clinical trials, veins constrict and their bodies react poorly. Being on the bottom of the pyramid is bad for your health. "The caste system takes years off the lives of subordinate-caste people..." 

     The most significant disruption to the American caste system was  the election of Barack Obama to the presidency. He was not as threatening because of his upbringing in Hawaii and the fact that his father was Kenyan, not part of enslaved America's history. That said, only 40% of whites voted for him. The caste system sprung into action when McConnell spoke of limiting him to one term. Voter suppression of blacks became a Republican strategy. Shutting down the government became the norm. Obama was handcuffed. The 2016 election saw lower caste whites voting against their interests in order to elect a white bigot appealing to their baser nature. In fact, they were voting to preserve their caste.

     The price we pay for  caste is a safety net with holes, leading to below average education, health care, life expectancy, and infant mortality. Whether the system continues or diminishes  is up to us all, but it is primarily the decision of those in the dominant caste. This issue will be seriously challenged as the dominant caste loses its majority status in the future. "A world without caste would set everyone free."                                                                                                               This book has been acclaimed as the most important of the century. And, it is extraordinary. Yet it is far from perfect. Wilkerson eloquently makes her case and is unnervingly accurate and on point throughout. She is capable of going a bit afield at times. Comparisons to India's millennium long caste structure are enlightening;  Germany's 12-year genocide less so. Nonetheless, this is a magnificent must read for any thoughtful American. We have a caste system, even if most of us would not be willing to acknowledge that. Read this book and I suspect you will agree with the author.