Reviews with content warning for Mass/school shootings - Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

It’s difficult for me to rate/review non-fiction. However - I’ll do my best because I need people to read this book!

This books is incredibly well-researched from start to finish. Not only does it include facts and figures, but moving personal stories from the author and those she interviewed that I will carry with me for a long time. It was a new perspective to see the comparisons drawn between the US caste system (based on race and white supremacy), the caste system during Nazi Germany, and the caste system in India.

“Empathy is no substitute for the experience itself. We don't get to tell a person with a broken leg or a bullet wound that they are not in pain. And people who have hit the caste lottery are not in a position to tell a person who has suffered under the tyranny of caste what is offensive or hurtful or demeaning to those at the bottom. The price of privilege is the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly. And the least that a person in the dominant caste can do is not make the pain any worse.”

Several times throughout the book as the author moved through different time periods, I found myself wondering, “would I have been on the right side of history?” Because most of the time, white people have not been. There are many lessons/reminders to gain from this book, but a few would be: to continue to disrupt the current system in place, use your privilege to speak out, and listen to those marginalized communities who are hurting, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

“Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is not necessarily personal. It is the worn grooves of comforting routines and unthinking expectations, patterns of a social order that have been in place for so long that it looks like the natural order of things.”

If you have read this, I’d love to discuss! I think this would be a great book club pick.

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sydapel's review

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informative reflective slow-paced

While I don't know that I completely agree with the fundamental hypothesis of this book (for may reasons, some of which I can articulate and some I can't), Wilkerson's ability to combine storytelling and and commentary on systematic racism in this country is done incredibly well. I do wish more time was spent on detailing the complexities of the Indian caste system, but that's a personal thing I don't think it detracts from the power this book has. (read as Part of SFCM's anti racism book club)

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f18's review

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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.

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fromjuliereads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional informative inspiring slow-paced

This was definitely a dense read but so important. It had some really interesting insight and comparisons between the caste systems of India, Nazi Germany, and the United States.
There were anecdotes from the author's own experiences which lended to proving the points outlined. And some of the information provided was interesting, important, difficult, brought forth a lot of thoughts. I especially found it interesting when Wilkerson discussed the Black anthropologists who went to the South, as this was not something I had heard about previously. And I liked having some of the references to things I had studied about or seen in Germany.

The one thing I will say is that sometimes the switches between the three caste systems felt jarring, as it flipped from one to another in a single paragraph or page. I think it could have been laid out more cleanly where it didn't feel like a tangent.
But all in all, definitely a book that should be read widely.

(I'm not adding a rating for non fiction because I never know how to rate them properly.)

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junefish's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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k_tiches's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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