"Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent" (book)

There is a system at home and abroad perpetrating more violence than any other land.

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She who assimilates with the oppressors wins!

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system [like India but more covert] that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

“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.”

Caste (Oprah Book Club)

In this brilliant book, author Isabel Wilkerson gives readers a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in the USA as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched 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 North 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 Dr. 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 Germany's Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their casting out 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. More