Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

Wilkerson describes the religious and natural arguments individuals make for a caste system. She describes how the divine texts of Hinduism set the Brahmins above other castes, while the Dalits were not even mentioned as “their very shadow was a pollutant” (102). Wilkerson then turns to the story from the Bible’s book of Genesis about Noah and his sons. Because one son, Ham, viewed Noah’s naked body while he was in a drunken stupor, Noah cursed Ham and his descendants. These descendants were said to have spread out in the world to the south, and Europeans argued that Africans were among them. Both the United States and India became established democracies with formal and informal commitments to caste. This belief that such division was divine in nature is a key “organizing principle” in all caste systems.

In both the United States and India, caste status remained within families: From the colonial period to abolition, enslavement or freedom followed the mother, while Indian caste followed the father. The colonial decision was a departure from English common law with profound consequences:

It converted the black womb into a profit center and drew sharper lines around the subordinate caste, as neither mother nor child could make a claim against an upper-caste man, and no child springing from a black womb could escape condemnation to the lowest rung (105).

Class position can be altered, but caste cannot be. As an example, Wilkerson cites an incident from 2013, when Academy Award-winning actor Forest Whitaker was frisked at a deli because an employee thought his behavior was “suspicious.” Black athletes are also subjected to police violence, which famed basketball player LeBron James himself has cited as proof of racism’s inescapability.