Reviews with content warning for Torture - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

If I could give this book more than 5 stars, I would. Caste explained for me so many elements of American society that I had sensed below the surface but never totally understood. This is the education that every American needs, particularly white or upper-caste Americans. It is one of the most informative, moving, and necessary books I’ve ever read.

Content Warnings

nicole_p's review against another edition

Go to review page

informative medium-paced

4.0

Content Warnings

f18's review against another edition

Go to review page

emotional reflective medium-paced

3.0

Even going into this after reading reviews and therefore knowing it was more US-centric than international, I found it disappointing. The writing structure is multiple anecdotes per chapter followed by a sum-up of what Wilkerson was wanting to illustrate with those stories. It was not very intersectional and rarely mentioned groups outside of black and white when discussing the United States. While the anecdotes definitely have value it read more like a pop-social science book to me, which I suppose is the author's intention but not to my taste in nonfiction.

Content Warnings

tlilf's review against another edition

Go to review page

Content Warnings

kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Compelling and thought-provoking, Caste outlines the similarities between the traditional caste system in India and previously unidentified caste systems in Nazi Germany and America. This book highlights the parallels between the human hierarchies that each of these countries created and perpetuated. It discusses how the caste system created through the slave trade in the 1600’s is still being carried out today, in quieter but still nefarious ways. This book was difficult to put down. I had never considered racism through the lens of castes before but Wilkerson makes a great argument for why caste is the one stronghold in our country that must be broken in order for true healing and equality to happen.

Content Warnings

carmenvillaman's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

elly29's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark informative slow-paced

4.0

Informative. Particularly interesting to read this in parallel Haidt's "The Righteous Mind," which goes over how we developed our groupishness and how we continue to groupish cohesion, among other things. Some of it, as a privileged person living in the dominant caste, was difficult to hear. In particular was the constant comparison to the Southern United States and Nazi Germany; indeed, I did not know that Germany had modeled many of their practices and institutions on the American South. I also am horrified at the details surrounding lynching. For those with weak stomachs, skip that section.

I have a better appreciation for how intrinsic and invested racism is within American society. I think sometimes Wilkerson can be myopic, roundabout in her points, and excessive in her metaphors -- for example, she should've acknowledged earlier that European immigrants, though they themselves might've experienced racism, were able to assimilate after a generation, and she does indeed make the point that that was accomplished through distancing themselves from Black folk. However, her research is thorough, and she brings up many good points and examples about race, class, and caste within the United States. I'm particularly interested in Ambitkar, the Indian equivalent of Martin Luther King, Jr, and in Allison David's and the Gardners' "Deep South," a sociological study of caste while living covertly under it. They were some brave folk.

In terms of the writing, by the time we got to chapters in the twenties, it seemed like it had just become a litany of all the ways in which someone was denied expressing the full measure of their skill and mastery. Which, chapter after chapter, is depressing. The conclusion and epilogue kind of brought it back into analysis and calls to action.

Content Warnings

More...