Isabel Wilkinson’s latest book, Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents, immerses the reader in what it looks like, what it feels like and where it leaves us as human beings when we devalue human life – when we deny, debase and destroy other humans on the basis of skin color and other outward traits that have nothing to do with a persons’ worth, sensibilities and abilities.
An American who would truly like to help heal our country would do well to read Caste slowly, thoughtfully, and then absorb the gems Wilkerson offers us in her Epilogue. One example: Albert Einstein, who, having left Germany to escape the Nazi’s attempt to develop a caste system there, could not bear the pain he felt at the brutal treatment of Black Americans – even the accomplished and brilliant Black Americans he encountered due to his own celebrity in his adopted country. “The separation of the races,” he said, “is not a disease of the colored people…but a disease of the white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it.” And he wasn’t.
Wilkerson shares the 8 Pillars that make up a caste system and perpetuate it: 1. say it is the will of God, 2. make believe that position in the caste is inherited and deserved, 3. control marriage and mating practices, 4. describe any effort of lower caste members to engage as equals with upper caste members as “pollution”, 5. set up/maintain an occupational/economic hierarchy, 6. dehumanize the lower castes, 7. use cruelty and terror as controls, 8. establish superiority and inferiority as existential truths.
When such a system becomes “legal” in a society, that society cannot help but lose its soul!
I remember – few days go by that something does not trigger for me the images – a beautiful boy with bright, clear, expectant eyes, a smile to melt our hearts – and the companion piece, a grotesque, misshapen head, skin destroyed, discolored, eyes gouged. I remember how my eleven-year-old mind struggled to accept a fact it didn’t want to comprehend – both images were the same boy, the very same beautiful boy. The second one was taken after two white racists tortured and murdered him. Why I asked, why – over and over again – it didn’t compute – it still doesn’t – 66 years have passed, but the horror of knowing that a child was brutalized, and his killers, laughing and back slapping, were tried and freed, because he was black – like me. The images never leave me. Not that Emmett Till was the only victim of this American Caste system – there are untold numbers of black people who have paid dearly for being black. This is the Hell that caste fuels.
I tell this story to share the effects of caste on one child’s mind. Multiply that by millions and millions of minds!
It is time for a reckoning in America – this country has sought to right other wrongs here – as well as out there in the world at large, but as a society, it has never fully faced itself and acknowledged the terrible outcomes of this caste system that affects all Americans today. I am not interested in white people or any other Americans feeling guilty – I am interested in everyone who has the power to help destroy the system in whatever way – large or small – taking responsibility. Recognize the ways in which you are affected and ask yourself what changes can I make in the way I think about myself and others, what actions can I take – can I read a book, can I pay attention to the way people around me are treated, can I object to racial hatred and injustice when I see it, hear it – can I support leaders who are fair and just to all people?
I am proud of the Americans – a diverse group of human beings – who spoke up, shot videos and tried to stop a cop from killing George Floyd. I’m proud of all the Americans who stand with Native Americans when they object to the desecration of land and resources and support justice for indigenous peoples. I‘m proud of the political leaders and community members who stood up with the Bruce family in Santa Monica, CA, just a few weeks ago, and insisted that family land stolen by racist leaders over 100 years ago, be returned to Bruce family descendants. I’m proud of a child – or an adult – who will say to a friend, “Don’t call her that – it’s ugly and disrespectful! It offends me.”
Yes – a reckoning, redress of the wrongs done to victims of a vicious American caste system for several hundred years, and REPARATIONS, are long overdue.