Book Thoughts: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
After I read a book, I generally email my thoughts or notes to a friend. I'm now copying these first emails to this blog since it's easier to revisit.
Original sent date: Sept 28, 2024 & Oct 12, 2024
Ok Ive been reading this and mostly going, yeah ok that's true, but then I reached the chapter where she talks about wolf behavior and says that humans could learn from wolves (deciding the hierarchy based on actual personal interaction and not on immutable traits) but like. yikes. we're not dogs and I don't like the idea that there always has to be a hierarchy even if it does often pan out like that. And we all know that ND people are the ones who are gonna end up at the bottom based on pure behavior anyway, if bullying is anything to go by.
I don't like this author's belief that some people are naturally more gifted than others. Maybe in some specific dimensions but like as an overall thing? Nay... I think not.
I finished reading this book. Some basic thoughts:
Yeah, I agree that this system is a caste system. By the nature of this though, so is the Israeli/Palestinian system. I've been curious if Isabel Wilkerson ever said anything about Palestine but she hasn't. Which is interesting because she bothered to draw attention to Jewish people in Nazi Germany as having lived under a caste system.
Building off of that: she gives Germany too much credit and assumes that the Nazis were actually dealt with after they lost instead of a lot of them just fleeing overseas to like the US and becoming entrenched there. Also there's probably something about how the ideology wasn't completely killed in Germany. I'm sure you know this history better than me at any rate.
I wish she had gone more into the idea of subcaste. I don't fully get what she means by saying that gender is also a caste separation without this detail. Because from what I remember of the basic Ambedkar stuff I read a while ago, the foremost function of caste is to separate who can produce kids together as a means of population control. All caste systems have prevented intermarriage and on paper, prevented having sexual relations between castes. On paper because they just needed a legal reason to deny people who went against this, but if it was a dominant caste person taking sexual advantage of someone under them then that was more permissible. This is her pillar number 3 and yet I don't get how that applies to man/woman relations.
The fact that white people would really just prefer to die rather than give up their imagined caste privilege is really chilling. The idea that she presents, that lower class whites are voting exactly in their interest, which is to preserve the system at expense of themselves, is terrifying but makes a lot of sense. That's how people are convinced to die for things like nations, after all. A lot of people are capable of giving up their own health and well-being as long as their core sense of belonging and being special in the world remains.
Thinking about how much of this is virtually impossible to unlearn kind of depresses me. There must be so much middle caste stuff that I do that is offensive to lower caste people and I'm not even aware of it. The innate sense of who gets to take up space and how subconscious it is even when you want to do better... yeesh. My therapist has mentioned this concept to me in passing before in regards to their own whiteness but I didn't really think about it deeply until now. Now that I'm more obviously implicated, I guess.
The fact that people will vote aspirationally with castes above them rather than with people who suffer similar fates as them, to feel more secure... yeeks. See also this podcast ep I listened to recently about this exact phenomenon with Latine people, though it didn't use the word caste.
Also similarly, that every lower caste will have people who betray their fellow people and does the upper caste's work for them as a feature that keeps the caste system going is grim.
I don't understand all the subcastes of whiteness. Some people might have a better internal sense of this because I remember not knowing anything about East / West European divides before I started talking to people from Eastern European. I still don't really Get it though because white people are just mostly white to me.
The fact that signing the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 cost Democrats the white vote forever is like. Lol. Lmao even. Reminds me of the book How Democracies Die, which after reading I just concluded that Democracies actually don't work. At least the American one has never worked in its life. The writers of that basically said historically the inner parties would work together to disenfranchise demagogues like Trump as a mutual agreement. And well, guess what. After 1964 that has just fallen apart due to white status anxiety. Fascinating! I think this country is doomed if the participation of Black people is so threatening that they would rather just nuke the entire political system.
I'm still not into how Wilkerson talks about some people as inherently superior (on an individual basis). Though I guess I can't argue with the fact that some people do have more talent than other people, and I also can't argue with the feeling of awe for people who can do things that I can't do, it always just makes me wonder like, what about people with intellectual disabilities and all. This constant valuation of "intelligence" above all else. Though again like, who do we admire if not for people who do things well, who challenge us because they do things well and new? Not saying that intellectually disabled people could never be creative or bring something new to the table, but by definition they probably aren't going to come up with the theory of relativity (and for that matter, neither am I).
All in all, after reading this tbh I think Harris is going to lose this election. I feel like caste is stronger. It's literally our whole system and I think this is probably the end of our joke of a democracy. I would like to be proven wrong but electionbettingodds.com which has proven to be more right than actual polling is favoring Trump right now. Though it's still basically a 50/50 split, is America actually serious about electing a multiracial woman, one of whose ethic identities include being from the lowest caste? I don't think so. I don't actually have faith in this country in that way ever since I saw how things have gotten worse since Obama in the same way that the 1964 Voting Bill was probably the real canary for the collapse of the farce since it actually challenged the caste system. Maybe I'm just too pessimistic. I certainly don't know what to do with myself if we live in a fascist country at any rate. And I'm probably not doing enough. I mean Harris isn't even fucking good for Palestine. But I'm not prepared to fight and I don't think I ever am, and that's probably a function of privilege but I keep thinking it would just be easier to lie down and die (not true, since death is actually quite hard for me to get with my super high fear levels regarding pain). My dumb ass don't got the hope necessary.
Besides, even if Harris wins this election it's basically a goner after her anyway since we'll see the backlash that Obama suffered but like worse because she's even more of an affront to whiteness. The Democratic party can't keep winning every election after her so once the Republicans win again we're all screwed anyway. Especially with our Supreme Court being the way it is.
Sigh.