I listened to this book on Audible, which is why it took a while for me to finish it. I haven’t listened to audiobooks as frequently in recent months.
I should start by saying that this book presented an interesting concept—a comparative analysis of how “caste” operated/operates in three societies: India, the United States, and Hitler’s Germany. Wilkerson introduces the subject as a detailed exploration of how the mechanics of “caste” (as opposed to binary racial discrimination) have affected each of these societies with the aim of reaching a generalized conclusion about the functioning of social hierarchies in the global sense.
However, the execution of this idea was poor throughout the book. I have not read Wilkerson’s previous work, The Warmth of Other Suns, but given that it received the Pulitzer Prize, I’ll wager it was a far more richly organized and researched volume than what we have at present. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent suffers from poor organization, unequal attention to the three portions of the comparative analysis, and a lack of nuanced evidence (archival or otherwise) to make any compelling or lasting points.
First, the comparative analysis. This work does very little with the German example. It is almost as if Hitler’s Germany was thrown into the mix here because, well, you know, we all make comparisons of current events back to the Third Reich now-a-days. The Final Solution and Hitler’s persecution of the Jews makes scant appearance throughout the work, with the exception of a few small dedicated chapters here and there. India receives more treatment in the work. However, again, in a very generalized way. Wilkerson does not delve into the religious or social origins of caste, does not distinguish between Vedic India and a more modernized iteration of caste that included the Dalits (“Untouchables”), or how according to the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, or Vedas, the “caste system” was supposed to correlate with upholding Dharma (social obligation). The caste system in India began as a social hierarchy with profound religious implications that, according to Hindu texts, should have subordinated the interests of the individual to the well-being of the social order. Whether or not it was truly oppressive in ancient times is beside the point, but the origins of caste in India and its meaning across time changed dramatically. There is fruitful areas of exploration about the similarities between social hierarchies in modern India and the United States—as Wilkerson points out, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders identified these parallels with their Indian counterparts. There is just no real in-depth exploration in this particular work.
Second, the evidence. The majority of the volume deals specifically with the black experience in the United States from slavery to the present day. There seems to be a lack of rich evidence to make compelling analysis of race in the United States as it relates to “caste” at the global level. Wilkerson makes the same mistake as many works that deal with contemporary issues—her work devolves from one of rigid analysis to a repetition of news headlines. Thus, you have anecdotal evidence about race problems in the United States from a smattering of popular headlines dating back to 2008, and a seasoning of Wilkerson’s own experiences as a black woman in the United States for good measure. While these are undeniably pointing to major issues in American society, they are not the evidentiary base Wilkerson needed to make a solid comparison with India or Germany.
Finally, I found the use of “caste” problematic in the book. As Wilkerson rightly points out in the beginning of this volume, “caste” is a very specific term with historical and present-day definitions that include, but are not limited to, racial hierarchies. She offers “caste” as a broader way of exploring social problems in the United States because, ostensibly, the concept allows her to transcend the binary confines of black-white relations in the United States and say something measured about the relations between numerous ethnicities and races in the American system today. In other words, through the comparison with India, Wilkerson’s ambition was to say something about the very complicated set of caste assumptions Americans subconsciously operate through that mediate relations between races, genders, ethnicities, and nationalities and that ascribes a sort of social pecking order. But throughout the book, Wilkerson uses terms like “upper caste” and “subordinate caste” to basically mean “white” and “black.” At some points, one could substitute “race” for “caste” and the meaning of a specific chapter would not change at all.
This leads me to conclude that while I found Wilkerson’s global ambitions here admirable and wanted to see a sophisticated comparative analysis of the United States and India, specifically, the slippage of concepts like “caste” into conflation with “race” combined with the overall paucity of rich evidence and an imbalanced approach to assessing India, Germany, and the United States made this work fall flat for me. There are other works out there on many of the issues that Wilkerson raises including Locking Up Our Own, The New Jim Crow, and The Rise of the Warrior Cop, which do a much more sustained analysis on the American side of police brutality, mass incarceration, the drug war, et al.
I wouldn’t recommend this book, but I will eventually read The Warmth of Other Suns, given that reviews on Goodreads and its Pulitzer-credentials attest that it offers a more robust form of historical scholarship.
