Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

75 reviews

tlilf's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Slavery, Torture, and Violence

kyrstin_p1989's review against another edition

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, Slavery, Torture, Violence, and War

shanflan's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

It is extremely important that we face the horrific reality of our past (and present) to hope for a better future. I learned so much. Everyone should read this.

Wilkerson's prose along with her incorporation of research, history, and anecdotes cemented the ideas in each chapter. 

The unspeakable torture and separations from family that those forced into slavery endured and even the lynchings of the jim crow era seem so far in the past, but to this day the casual disregard for black life is ubiquitous as shown by the thousands of police and vigilante shootings of unarmed black citizens. But it's not only this outward display of hatred/racism that upholds the caste system; just as important are the unconscious biases, the silent compliance of the upper caste and the desire of the upper caste to keep their place as if life is a zero-sum game.

Some of the most striking moments for me:
-The notion that race is really an arbitrary social construct created in America.
- I had no idea how much inspiration the Nazis took from America in the classification and treatment of the lowest caste (noting that "the one-drop rule was too harsh for the Nazis")
-2022 marks the first year that the U.S. will have been an independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil.
-The story of the little boy who wasn't allowed to swim with his baseball team but was eventually allowed to make one lap atop a floating device only after everyone else got out of the pool, reminding him "just don't touch the water"
-That the south still displays statues of confederate leaders who many are proud of rather than ashamed of, and how connected these symbols of slavery are to the notion that the upper caste will do anything to keep their perceived superiority, as shown by the 2016 election.

This was a very challenging read, but I like how Wilkerson ends the novel with a sentiment of hope. As a white person, I know that empathy is no substitute for experience itself, but with privilege comes the responsibility of allyship, and "the moral duty to act when one sees another person treated unfairly".

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gun violence, Slavery, Sexual violence, Physical abuse, Murder, Hate crime, and Antisemitism

carmenvillaman's review against another edition

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Body horror, Cultural appropriation, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Hate crime, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, Torture, and Violence

khum's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Police brutality, and Racism

biancadubois's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Slavery, and Hate crime

sadiereadthat's review against another edition

challenging dark informative tense slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Hate crime, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, Slavery, and Violence

courtneyfalling's review against another edition

A lot of the chapters and anecdotes in this book merely repeat the same point: race in the United States, particularly the divide between whiteness and Blackness, functions like a caste system. I agree with that argument, but I don't necessarily agree with how Wilkerson chooses to explain its consequences. There's a simplifying comparison made between the United States and India's caste system (which especially reduces Indian politics in service of commenting on US ones). And I think my main issue boils down to a section between pages 205 and 207, where Wilkerson talks about how this racial caste system is bad because the world is then "deprived of the benefit of natural alphas who might lead the world with the compassion and courage that are the hallmarks of a born leader... the actual intended alphas of the species" (207). This sent up huge red flags for me. What does it actually mean to be a "born leader"? What values represent leadership, and which, by logical extension, represent subservience? Aren't those always going to reflect social choices, including racial ones? And isn't this at its core eugenicist logic about fixed values in the world and fixed qualities and morals in people? 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Racism, and Slavery

aqtbenz's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Child death, Death, Genocide, Grief, Xenophobia, Violence, Torture, Slavery, Sexism, Religious bigotry, Racism, Police brutality, Murder, and Hate crime

frenchiesquared's review against another edition

informative sad slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cultural appropriation, Genocide, Grief, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racism, Slavery, and Torture

So very difficult but necessary for all to read.