(Belated) Book Club Discussion: Caste

[ufcasey]

Sorry this is so late! But here's the thread to discuss Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

As always, please feel free to just talk about your impressions of the book, or answer any/all of the optional questions below (provided by the publisher):


1. At the beginning of Caste, author Isabel Wilkerson compares American racial hierarchy to a dormant Siberian virus. What are the strengths of this metaphor? How does this comparison help combat the pervasive myth that racism has been eradicated in America?

2. Wilkerson begins the book with an image of one lone dissenter amidst a crowd of Germans giving the Nazi salute. What would it mean—and what would it take—to be this man today?

3. Caste and race are not the same thing. What is the difference between the two? How do casteism and racism support each other? Discuss how class is also different from caste.

4. Harold Hale, an African-American man, helped his daughter defy the "rules" of their caste in 1970s Texas by naming her Miss. As Wilkerson illustrates throughout the book, the dangers of being seen as defying one’s caste can range from humiliation to death. What do you think of the lengths he felt he needed to go to assure dignity for his daughter? What are the risks he put her in by doing so? Should Miss have had a say in her father’s quietly revolutionary act? Explain.

5. Wilkerson quotes the orator Frederick Douglass, who described the gestures that could incite white rage and violence: "in the tone of an answer; in answering at all; in not answering …" These contradict each other: One could incite rage by answering … or by not answering. Discuss the bind that this contradiction put (and still puts) African-American people in.

6. "Indians will ask one’s surname, the occupation of one’s father, the village one is from, the section of the village that one is from, to suss out the caste of whoever is standing in front of them," Wilkerson writes. "They will not rest until they have uncovered the person’s rank in the social order." How is this similar to and different from the process of determining caste in America? Have you ever, for instance, asked someone what they did for work or where they lived or went to school, and been surprised? Did you treat them differently upon hearing their answer?

7. "Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing," Wilkerson writes. Whether in the dominant caste or not, what are some of the ways that each of us, personally, can stand up to the caste system?

8. Wilkerson writes about the "construction of whiteness," describing the way immigrants went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to "white"—a political designation that only has meaning when set against something "not white." Irish, Italian … people weren’t "white" until they came to America. What does this "construction of whiteness" tell us about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste?

9. How does the caste system take people who would otherwise be allies and turn them against one another?

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who may have read this book:

jwright, meowmaps, dontlook

[meowmaps]

Overall, I thought Caste was excellent and I learned so much. One of the more significant points that I remember from the book (I read it last year) was that the Nazis studied and implemented dehumanization methods from the American model of racism. That was a real punch to the gut. I was also sickened by the section on lynching tourism - I don’t know if that’s the actual term used in the book but I’m referring to the people that would pose for pictures, send postcards, take their kids to watch, etc. Beyond disgusting.

[aurora]

Nov 5, 2021 14:41:58 GMT -5 meowmaps said:

Overall, I thought Caste was excellent and I learned so much. One of the more significant points that I remember from the book (I read it last year) was that the Nazis studied and implemented dehumanization methods from the American model of racism. That was a real punch to the gut. I was also sickened by the section on lynching tourism - I don’t know if that’s the actual term used in the book but I’m referring to the people that would pose for pictures, send postcards, take their kids to watch, etc. Beyond disgusting.

Yes, this part is especially sickening. Not that any of the caste system is good.

[aurora]

I found the book to be quite interesting. I hadn't really thought about how the caste system is such an apt way to describe racism in the U.S. I was basically convinced of that part of her "thesis" in Chapter 1 (I did read the whole book, though).

I think it's good for those of us who don't face caste-based discrimination to remember the many, many ways we get the benefit of the doubt in our everyday interactions, and hearing personal stories such as those Wilkerson shared is a good reminder.

[dontlook]

Thanks for the tag. I read it and loved it. It was tough to read but important. I’m reasonably informed about the Indian caste system but never made the connection between it and US systemic racism. I originally started this as an ebook and moved to the audiobook. This is one I want to go but a hard copy of to own. I want to read it again to digest more of the information presented.