Monday, March 22, 2021

Caste - Isabel Wilkerson

 Sub-title: The Origins of our Discontents

Eye-opening and challenging, this book makes me think differently and see the place I've lived differently.

Through keen observation and historical context, Wilkerson explains how the US was predicated on dividing people into separate and unequal groups, black and white.  It's a powerful story of the evolution of racism in America.  Tough to read.  This book provided me with a new perspective on race in America.  I hope to participate in a book group discussion.

Quotes:

Chap. 4 - "It's a measure of how long enslavement lasted in the United States that the year 2022 marks the first year that the United States will have been an independent nation for a long as slavery lasted on its soil.  No current-day adult will be alive in the year in which African-Americans as a group will have been free for as long as they had been enslaved.  That will not come until the year 2111."

Page 111 - The Supreme Court did not overturn these prohibitions [against intermarriage] until 1967...Alabama..did not throw out its law against intermarriage until the year 2000. Even then, 40 percent of the electorate in that referendum voted in favor of keeping the marriage ban on the books."

p. 183 - "Those in the dominant caste who found themselves lagging behind those seen as inherently inferior potentially faced an epic existential crisis.  To stand on the same rung as those perceived to be of a lower caste is seen as lowering one's status.:...  "The elevation of others amount to a demotion of oneself, thus equality feels like a demotion." [my emphasis]

p 387 - "Human beings across time and continents are more alike than they are different.  The central question about human behavior is not why do those people do this or act in that way, now or in ages past, but what is it that human beings do when faced with a given circumstance?" 


Published: 2020  Read: March 2021  Genre: History 

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