A review by courtneyfalling
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Did not finish book. Stopped at 61%.
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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