Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Wilkerson describes going out to dinner with a dominant caste friend she did not know well. Immediately, she noticed their waiter was “curt” to them but much more responsive to a table of all-White diners. They experience delays in getting food while they watch those next to them eat, and her friend becomes “exquisitely aware of the couple beside us, that they were passing us on the escalator of dining attention” (366). When their food arrives cold, her friend is outraged and accuses the waiter of racism. The manager, a Black woman, apologizes, but Wilkerson’s friend storms out, and she follows. Wilkerson remembers feeling tempted to tell her friend that outrage is a luxury that Black people cannot afford for most everyday slights. She recalls:

Part of me resented that she could go ballistic and get away with it when I might not even be believed. It was caste privilege to go off in the restaurant the way she did. It was a measure of how differently we are treated that she could live for over forty years and not experience what is a daily possibility for any person born to the subordinate caste, that it was so alien to her, it so jangled her, that she blew up over it (368).

In the end, what predominates for Wilkerson is happiness, for “it would be a better world if everyone could feel what she felt for once, and awaken” (369).

Wilkerson’s last personal anecdote is an account from winter 2016, with a visit from a plumber “wearing a cap like the men at the rallies who wanted to make America great again” (370). He looks surprised to see her, as many service workers do, because she does not match his expectations of what a homeowner in her neighborhood looks like. She recalls that this was a time of increased dependence after the death of both her husband and her mother, when people “might resent me for being here and might or might not be inclined to help me or even do the job. And now the air had shifted after the election” (371). She tries to explain to the plumber she thinks the problem is the sump pump but that usually her husband did most maintenance work before his death, and she finds him unsympathetic. She found the problem after returning from a vacation and finds herself searching the basement, moving boxes, and proposing solutions as the plumber resists her. He tries to tell her a part must be replaced entirely and cannot be repaired.

Finally, she asks the man about his mother, telling him her own mother just died, guessing that they may have this in common. He relaxes and explains he lost his mother long ago and that his father is distant, and they trade other stories about their family. He fixes her problem, finally discovering the water heater is the issue. The plumber charges her a “fair” price for a new part and even comes back to make sure the gas was shut off. 

Wilkerson contemplates the vastness of the universe and the massive losses of human lives because of caste, from those killed in war and in Nazi genocide to the “unfulfilled gifts of millions more on the plantations in India and in the American South” (377). Wilkerson then recalls the life of Albert Einstein, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, who called segregation a “disease.” He lived out this conviction, befriending Black opera singer Marian Anderson when no hotels in Princeton would house her, joining the NAACP, and deliberately accepting an honorary degree from Lincoln University, an HBCU. Wilkerson underlines that caste systems rely on humans to perpetuate them and that we can also break them down. She declares, “We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity” (380).

Returning to her metaphor of America as a house, Wilkerson says she has assumed the role of “housing inspector” but that the real work of repair belongs to “owners, meaning all of us” (380). Demographic change poses new challenges for democracy, as Wilkerson asks:

Will the United States adhere to its belief in majority rule if the majority does not look as it has throughout history? This will be the chance for America either to further entrench its inequalities or to choose to lead the world as the exceptional nation that we have proclaimed ourselves to be (381).

The caste system could expand who belongs to Whiteness and lock those unable to access it “ever more tightly to the bottom rung” (381). Choosing caste over democracy would eventually damage all of us. So many of the rights we value, Wilkerson reminds us, “are the byproducts of the subordinate caste’s fight for justice in this country and ended up helping others as much if not more than themselves” (382).

Wilkerson takes comfort from the example of Germany as proof that caste systems do not have to endure and can be replaced. This can happen if people divest from systems they benefit from. Currently, there is little speaking up when marginalized people are mocked or vilified, and people are “willing to pay more taxes for their own children’s schools but […] balk at the taxes to educate the children society devalues” (383). Wilkerson imagines a future where more people will resist the “tentacles” of caste and engage in “reprogramming” to fight for justice, as abolitionists did, and as Einstein did (383-384). Wilkerson notes that the caste system undermines America’s claim to be a democracy where anyone can succeed on their own power.

No one can escape caste—the elderly are disfavored even when they hold other status—so real thriving requires its dismantlement. Ending caste, she believes, will require those at the top of the hierarchy to develop “radical empathy”: “the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it” (386). Making these kinds of connections, and committing to action, or doing no further harm, seeing the humanity in others, helps “break the back of caste” as Wilkerson did with the plumber (386). Tolerance is insufficient. In “a world without caste” we will celebrate all human achievements, and our own interdependence. Wilkerson concludes, “a world without caste would set everyone free” (388).