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ejdelorenze 's review for:
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson
I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, and I really wanted to like this book more, but although there are sections that were really strong, overall, it was a bit disjointed for me. The description of caste and how America's caste system works, and it's comparison to Nazi Germany and India were really strong and felt new and informative (at least for me ... she references several others who've written about the caste system in the US before). But I kept getting pulled away in small disagreements in her analysis (e.g., her noting that Germany shows that you can dismantle caste had me arguing in my head that a 12 year caste system is much easier to dismantle than one that is built into the foundation of a nation - at her own analysis). The personal stories felt at first like a good way to keep it from feeling too much like a dissertation. But they, too, often pulled me out of the narrative right at the end making them hard to connect to (e.g. ending a story of a racist encounter on the plane with a complaint about having to sit upright in first class for an entire flight across the country) or feeling like her own experience got in the way of interpreting another's actions (e.g. her story of a white friend's anger at a waiter after a meal they shared focused on the friend not having to feel that way before, but did not consider that the friend might have been trying to take a rare opportunity to be an ally - possibly in the wrong way, but with good intent). So many times it felt like something was missed in her interpretations (e.g. the caste researchers she referenced and how the white researchers are well known where the mixed race research team are not, she interpreted as an issue of racism without considering that this happens all the time in research - whoever gets their research out first gets the credit, no matter how well done other, similar research is). And these points kept pulling me from the thread, weakening her points instead of strengthening them. Which is a shame because I think the points she's raising are all good ones. They just often missed the mark at the final moment, for me. It feels like a book that really required more editing. I couldn't tell who it was written for. Certainly not the people in the dominant caste who really should read it. But also not really to people in the dominant caste who are trying to do the work. And not really people in the subordinate caste. When all is said and done, I am glad to have read it because I do think there was a lot in here that will help me grow. But it was hard to get through, and I really wanted to take more from it than I was able to.