Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Isabel Wilkerson

Aug 2020 · Sold by Random House

About this ebook

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

#1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, O: The Oprah Magazine, NPR, Bloomberg, The Christian Science Monitor, New York Post, The New York Public Library, Fortune, Smithsonian Magazine, Marie Claire, Slate, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews

Winner of the Carl Sandberg Literary Award • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • National Book Award Longlist • National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist • Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalist • PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction Finalist • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award Longlist • Kirkus Prize Finalist

“As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power—which groups have it and which do not.”
 
In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched, and beautifully written narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
 
Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people’s lives and behavior and the nation’s fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people—including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball’s Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others—she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their outcasting of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity.

Original and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of American life today.

Ratings and reviews

Such an insightful and informative narrative that gave me much to ponder, especially as I read the book while visiting Namiba. The US has so much work to do, as do other countries, and this book is an excellent guide. I appreciated the updated section as of 2022, and the bounty of resources included at the end of the book.

I read Caste over an extended period of time. There were moments I couldn't put it down & others where it took a great deal of strength to pick it back up & continue reading. During those moments my heart broke & searched itself looking for answers to right the wrongs. I absorbed every page, wrote notes, & researched the contents as I read. I ordered a few books used in the authors research in writing Caste. I learned some things while others were reconfirmed. In a perfect world it wouldn't take someone having to walk a mile in our shoes, their shoes. To experience the heartbreak of the lowest caste of India, the Native American, the Black American, or the German Jew, one needs but look around themselves and will their own eyes to see the destruction and death of those depicted as lower simply because..... It saddens me to see others who haven't experienced the atrocities, simply discarding truth as political rhetoric. These things happened & continue to happen even if u refuse to see.

Its like people dont understand basic human nature. Of course it feels like theres a caste system in place. In every nation it would feel like that because in every nation you have your rich, youre middle class and your poor. And if youre born poor in most places youll stay poor. But luckily in america we have more freedom and the opporunities for anyone and everyone to reach "the top". Also it should be noted the caste system is more like communism then capitilism. In a caste system your social status and job are handed on birth. There are also restrictions on food and drink with how you are allocated based on your "need"/social status. Which if you know a thing or two about history sounds more like the ussr in the early days then anything the us was involved with. Leave it a leftist to compare america to nazi germany. Seems like thats the first and only comparison they do now a days.

About the author

Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author of the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller The Warmth of Other Suns, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and was named to Time’s 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s and The New York Times Magazine’s list of the best nonfiction books of all time. She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia.