Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson · 2020

Wilkerson argues that a rigid, largely unspoken caste system, not simply racism, structures American life, and traces its architecture through eight shared pillars found also in the Indian caste system and Nazi Germany's race laws. The book moves between historical case studies (Nazi officials studying American segregation statutes, a schoolteacher's blue-eyed/brown-eyed classroom experiment) and analysis of contemporary events like the police killing of Freddie Gray.

Books mentioned in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (1)

• An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal: “In 1944, the Swedish social economist Gunnar Myrdal and a team of the most talented researchers in the country produced a 2,800-page, two-volume work that is still considered perhaps the most comprehensive study of race in America, An American Dilemma.”