A review by misspalah
Caste: The Lies That Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson

challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

Throughout human history, three caste systems have stood out. The tragically accelerated, chilling, and officially vanquished caste system of Nazi Germany. The lingering, millennia-long caste system of India. And the shape-shifting, unspoken, race-based caste pyramid in the United States. Each version relied on stigmatizing those deemed inferior to justify the dehumanization necessary to keep the lowest-ranked people at the bottom and to rationalize the protocols of enforcement. A caste system endures because it is often justified as divine will, originating from sacred text or the presumed laws of nature, reinforced throughout the culture and passed down through the generations.

- Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

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The book brought forward an arguments on how the concept of caste were different in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany but the impact of it on the society and how much it thrived due to inequality is staggering. The consequences of caste system were being highlighted that ranging from loses of income, loses of dignity and worst of all, loses of lives simply because of the racial status and hierachy of that person.  The author demonstrated the similarities from the caste system in India, the racial hierarchy in the United States, and the Nazi regime in Germany which at the end of day perpetuate inequality and discrimination due to their underlying principles of putting one group of people is superior or higher than the others. The book was divided into eight foundational pillars of a caste system, including Divine Will and Laws of Nature, Heritability, Endogamy, Purity vs Pollution, Hierarchy, Dehumanization, Terror, and Superiority. This pillars explored how the other groups were being dehumanized, brainwashed to accept that their status unchangeable and to climb out of it or to basically change one's race is just entirely impossible. The dominant caste also often imposed certain restrictions and warned non-dominant caste to not cross the line. While this may applicable to the complexity of Society in India and the unspoken Animosity betwen Black & White People in The USA, i believe the author wanted reader to feel challenged and managed to confront their own biases. I believe the book did provide a powerful examination of the hidden caste system that underlies in American society.

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Rant: Everything happened today just prove what Isabel Wilkerson wrote in the book holds so much truth to it. As of today, 15 November 2023, Many western countries refused to call ceasefire despite unstoppable assault of Gaza by Israhell and while the reason mostly on the trade deals, business alliance and but at the end of the day, you can see that brown, black and non-white lives did not matter as much as white lives. Look at how international media coverage on Russia-Ukraine War versus Israhell committing genocide against Palestinians. So many news and information were censored and shut down when it comes to Palestinian lives but when it was Ukrainian lives last year, it was all over the news 24/7.

Russia was being sanctioned for the crime yet

USA vetoed every action that UN wanted to do against Israel. So tell me, how is that not a perversion of white lives matter when you have brown kids pleading for ceasefire and hold a press conference in the middle of rubble yet majority of the western countries (UK, US and EU specifically) that always brought up human rights, equality and justice turning the blind eyes on this? Does Humanity only matters when it happened to white kids? Does the right to resist only matters when the sufferings only involved white people?