Isabel Wilkerson: Caste—The Origin's of Our Discontents

"Caste" was the second book we tackled in book club, and it's no exaggeration to say that the book was a little bit life-changing for everyone.

Wilkerson, as so many other authors, doesn't pull any punches, and I think that's why the writing is so effective, especially when you're in a place of really wanting to do the work of understanding systems of oppression, your place (whether conscious or unconscious) in upholding systems of oppression, and what might help dismantle these same systems.

Here are the first impressions I shared prior to community discussion:

This book is so rich and honest.

1. The Nazi’s designed their own Blood Laws—the laws they used to define who was Jewish and, therefore, who could be stripped of their humanity entirely—on America’s miscegenation laws.

But, they stopped short of America’s “one drop rule.”

Wilkerson tells us: “While the Nazi’s praised ‘the American commitment to legislating racial purity,’ they could not abide ‘the unforgiving hardness’ under which ‘an American man or woman who has even a drop of Negro blood in their veins’ counted as blacks,’ Whitman wrote.’ The one-drop rule was too harsh for the Nazis.”

Too harsh for the Nazis.

Too harsh for the Nazis.

I had to sit with that for awhile.

2. The brutality of lynchings in the South during Jim Crow was not new to me. I was aware photographers were present, too.

What I didn’t know, ashamedly so, was that lynching photos were often turned into postcards that were mailed so frequently they became a sub-department of the postcard industry.

Wilkerson again: “They sent postcards of burned torsos that looked like the petrified victims of Vesuvius, only these horrors had come to human beings in modern times. Some people framed the postcards with locks of the victim’s hair under the glass if they had been able to secure any.”

Finally, in 1908, the U.S. postmaster banned the cards from being mailed, but people loved the practice so much they just started putting the postcards in envelopes.

3. Henry Fonda was a 14-year-old boy helping his father at his printing press when he witnessed the brutal murder of Will Brown by an angry mob of white supremacists who lynched him, shot his hanging body multiple times, and then tied his corpse to a police car and dragged him through the streets.

What's been so, I don't know what exactly, is just the sheer brutality in proportions and magnitude that just always knocks the breath out of me.

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During our community discussion, we touched on some of the above, as well as other things:

1. We wondered about the famous poster of August Landmesser standing with his arms folded in a sea of Nazis. Wilkerson asks us: "But unless people are willing to transcend their fears, endure discomfort and derision, suffer the scorn of loved ones and neighbors and coworkers and friends, fall into disfavor of perhaps everyone they know, face exclusion and even banishment, it would be numerically impossible, humanly impossible, for everyone to be that man. What would it take to be him in any era? What would it take to be him now?"

2. We talked about the sheer brutality illustrated in this book, factual and evidenced brutality, and we considered the cost both physically and emotionally. One book club member discussed the example Wilkerson describes of a young Black child who was sat outside the pool while his Little League teammates enjoyed the water after a win, only to be brought in briefly but forced to ride on a raft alone, the pool empty, with the lifeguard repeating "Don't touch the water" as he pushed him in a circle.

3. We considered how race, similar to other traits used to separate and isolate people, is, at least in part, socially constructed.

   Wilkerson notes how she was once told that nobody is Black in Africa, and the ways in which race comes to be defined are not scientific, as is so often wrongly theorized, but instead arbitrary, neutral qualities that are continually reinforced as inferior to bolster the dominant caste (in short: to create and maintain white supremacy). In other words, the many differences assigned to various castes are not predetermined or divine. Rather, they are almost exclusively created and maintained to animate and uphold systems of oppression. The system is what gives these ideas power, and to strip power from the system, dismantling our internalized, almost always unconscious understanding of these ideas, is necessary.

   One idea that works for me sometimes is to continually remind myself that we are all just bodies, and that some bodies have organs and structures that allow them to do some things, like bear children, and other bodies produce hormones that increases muscle mass. Some bodies have more melanin, some less. When I can engage in the world with a mindset that is more clear and broad, I have more success not falling into some of the traps set by our internalized messaging.

4. We talked briefly about how intertwined capitalism and race are, and how most systemic oppression is in service of capitalism and how capitalism is, in large part, designed to serve the dominant caste. The vast majority, if not the entirety, of this country's wealth was built on the backs of human beings in bondage. In fact, the idea that much of this nation's current wealth wouldn't exist without the 250 years of free labor stolen via slavery is something nobody wants to grapple with, but until we truly acknowledge the historical function of slavery as the primary economic force in early America, dealing with the country's true and truly brutal history feels impossible (to me).

5. We looped around to solutions several times. I think we all want to play a part in making the world more equitable. We talked about feeling paralyzed sometimes and how we're all, individually, just one person. What can we do that will matter? The idea of racism and inequity feels overwhelming and sometimes too big, but we committed to the idea that small actions do matter and that being in community matters, too.

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"Caste" was so rich, we took two months with this book.

I started our second discussion around Wilkerson's idea of "radical empathy."

Wilkerson tells us:

"Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and listen with a humble heart to understand another's experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel."

The question is: What radicalized you and how can we work to help more people tap into their own radical empathy?

I answer this for myself this way: I've always been empathetic. From childhood on, my emotions have run deep all my life.

In my earliest years, I didn't really know how to translate that empathy into action, or even into deep, transformational education and personal growth.

What changed for me? My trans son.

That's a simple but wholly truthful answer to what I think about when considering what gave me access to a fuller, more urgent, engaged and necessarily active radical empathy.

The start of my own thinking about and dismantling of my own internalized assumptions around gender kickstarted my deeper dive into equity, which started primarily with the work of Ta-Nehisi Coates and went from there.

What I ask myself often is this: If I didn't have a trans son, would I have found a way to what Wilkerson names radical empathy?

My honest answer: I don't know. 

I'd like to think I'd have found my way, and perhaps what my son has afforded me is just a more direct way to, again, a more necessarily active radical empathy.

What I invite us all to think about is not only our own experience with radical empathy, but also, how we bring that idea to others and inspire them to tap into their own sense of community and radical empathy, most especially, perhaps, those people who have little or no experience with discrimination.

What can we do, what actions can we take to bring these words of Wilkerson's to life?

"If each of us could truly see and connect with the humanity of the person in front of us, search for that key that opens the door to whatever we may have in common, whether cosplay or Star Trek or the loss of a parent, it could begin to affect how we see the world and others in it, perhaps change the way we hire or even vote. Each time a person reaches across caste and makes a connection, it helps to break the back of caste. Multiplied by millions in a given day, it becomes the flap of a butterfly wing that shifts the air and builds to a hurricane across an ocean."

It's easy to believe, because of our own subconscious understanding of race and whiteness, that what marginalized and oppressed communities tell us is happening really isn't happening or really isn't that bad.

I start from:

1. I see you.

2. I believe you.

3. I trust you know your experience of the world better than I do.

4. What do you need from me to make your experience better and what can I do to make your experience more equitable and just?

That is part of our work, right? Radical empathy starts from seeing and believing the person in front of you.

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Have thoughts? I'd love to hear them.