Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Wilkerson introduces a protagonist with an unusual first name: Miss Hale. To explain why her parents chose this name, Wilkerson explains the social rules of the Jim Crow South: “Black men were never to be addressed as ‘Mister,’ and black women were never to be addressed as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs.,’ but rather by their first name or ‘auntie’ or ‘gal,’ regardless of their age or marital status” (54). Harold Hale, Miss Hale’s father, grew up watching his family members disrespected this way and detested it. During the Civil Rights movement, he marched with Dr. King from Selma to Montgomery and watched his fellow protestors face injury and death. When his daughter was born, he decided, “He would give no one in the dominant caste the option but to call her by the title they had denied his foremothers. Miss would be her name” (55).

The adult Miss Hale met with Wilkerson as part of the writing process for Caste and reflected, “I find that white people are fine with me […] as long as I stay in my place” (56). She recalled her childhood in Texas, where White families assumed her father was the gardener rather than a homeowner and attempted to knock down the family mailbox, which her father reinforced with concrete.

Miss, called into the principal to account for her use of walkie-talkies in school, upset the principal when informing him of her first name. He asked where her family was from and where her father worked. The principal told her he knew she was not from the area because she had made eye contact with him, as locals were afraid to. Her father was delighted by the story, and he assured her that White people did not have a monopoly on humanity or dignity. In college, Miss visited a classmate on Long Island and established a warm relationship with the family matriarch, who did not want her to return to campus. When Miss insisted, the elderly lady said, “there was a time […] when I could have made you stay” (58).

In another metaphor, Wilkerson notes that sometimes containers are labeled in such a way as to be “out of sync” with the contents, just as contradicting the expectations the caste system creates problems for individuals. Wilkerson shares a personal anecdote from her time at the New York Times, interviewing business owners in Chicago. She arrives in a boutique and asks to see the owner, who brushes her off because he has an appointment. She insists she is the appointment, but because she is now out of business cards and cannot present one, he refuses to believe her. The interview does not take place, and afterward Wilkerson sends the article to the owner. She refuses to name the business, not out of fear, but because: “The problem could have happened anyplace, because the problem is, in fact, at the root” (61).

Wilkerson imagines an alternate history of colonization, where the people with advanced weaponry found that those they encountered and subordinated were much taller than they were. Accordingly, they set up a social system against tallness. This would have resulted in a social system where Dutch people and African people were the same category. Wilkerson notes that this seems laughable in its arbitrariness, but, given time and social reinforcement, “people would have accepted it as the received wisdom of the laws of nature” (64).

Race is now acknowledged to be an invented concept, dating back to colonization and codified most rigidly in the English-speaking world. The term Caucasian was invented in the 18th century by a German medical professor who measured skulls to classify human beings. The professor, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, had a favorite skull from the Caucasus Mountains of Russia: “To him, the skull was the most beautiful of all that he owned. So he gave the group to which he belonged, the Europeans, the same name as the region that had produced it” (65).

Wilkerson declares that race “is a fiction told by modern humans for so long that it has come to be seen as a sacred truth” (66), and there is no genetic difference to support it. Scholars such as anthropologist Ashley Montagu have pointed out that the concept only exists to defend and buttress the dominant position of one group over another. These constructs must be taught, as children only describe people in terms of color until they are taught otherwise.

Turning back to her comparative lens, Wilkerson notes that the term “caste” was applied to India from a Portuguese word that was used to denote race. In India itself, the rankings are known as varnas and predate European racial categories by thousands of years—a reminder that “the human impulse to create hierarchies runs across societies and cultures” (67).

White people tend to treat the word racism as “radioactive” and, instead of assuming the relationship is about bias and the power structures built around it, assume that racism is only “overt and declared hatred” (67-68). Wilkerson finds this view both unproductive and dangerous, as it puts the focus on individuals rather than wider society and looks for personal admissions of guilt, which can lead to behavior that only keeps “the hierarchy intact” (68). Instead, we should “exchange that mindset for one that sees people as existing on a scale based on the toxins they have absorbed from the polluted and inescapable air of social instruction we receive from childhood” (69).

Caste as a concept is another way out of this trap for Wilkerson, as it includes “the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy” (70). It naturalizes behavior like elevating White teenagers over more qualified adults. Wilkerson calls behavior that seeks to maintain these hierarchies “casteism” and notes that it can be synonymous with racism but does not require the presence of animosity (71).

Wilkerson acknowledges that not every unpleasant or undesirable event can be attributed to these systems of power. Instead, she argues that they must be named and understood, as “its invisibility is what gives it power and longevity” (72). No social problem can truly be explained or understood by wishing it away or ignoring it.