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I started this review for “Black History Month”, but soon realized the book was more than a book about blacks. Caste refers to the process where a society identifies a portion of their population as inferior. It impacts all of us.
She writes about three societies that have embraced the idea of “caste”; India, where the Hindu religion has separated people into castes for millenniums, the United States where the import of slaves in 1619 created a permanent lower class, and Nazi Germany, where for a dozen years, the Third Reich identified Jews as inferior and evil.
It’s a long book (477 pages. About 100 0f them notes, index, and acknowledgements) It’s divided into seven parts with about 40 chapters. The chapters generally support the part they are in, but they read like individual essays. She writes beautifully using clear and direct language.
The first time I read the book was in 2020 just after Biden was elected. The talk then was of Covid, “build back better”, “green new deal” and unity. I thought “caste” was a historical issue we were getting past.
Re-reading it in 2026 hammers home how wrong I was about how I saw things back in 2020. She accurately describes caste on the cover as “The Origins of our Discontent”.
I was very glad to have my personal copy of the book. It rates re-reading and I intend to make re-reading it or sections of it a “Black History Month” ritual.
I can see clearly now that “caste” is the dark engine that is powering the bulldozer that is daily demolishing our Constitution and humanity. Our target caste has shifted slightly from blacks to immigrants, but the segment in power has perfected using caste as a weapon. In her words, “It is like a cancer that goes into remission only to return when the immune system of the body politic is weakened.”
We tell ourselves that our nation was founded on the principle of “All men are created equal” and that our constitutional protections apply to everyone, but caste makes a mockery of our high words.
I use goodreads.com as a research source for my reviews. They have a section called quotations where readers submit favorite passages. Most books are lucky to rate 25 quotations, her book rates 1200. Here are a couple of my favorites.
“Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is looking across at someone and feeling sorrow, often in times of loss. Empathy is not pity. Pity is looking down from above and feeling a distant sadness for another in their misfortune. Empathy is commonly viewed as putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and imagining how you would feel. That could be seen as a start, but that is little more than role-playing, and it is not enough in the ruptured world we live in. Radical empathy, on the other hand, means putting in the work to educate oneself and to listen with a humble heart to understand another’s experience from their perspective, not as we imagine we would feel. Radical empathy is not about you and what you think you would do in a situation you have never been in and perhaps never will. It is the kindred connection from a place of deep knowing that opens your spirit to the pain of another as they perceive it.” Page 386
“The species has suffered incomprehensible loss over the false divisions of caste: the 11 million people killed by the Nazis; the three-quarters of a million Americans killed in the Civil War over the right to enslave human beings; the slow, living death and unfulfilled gifts of millions more on the plantations in India and in the American South. Whatever creativity or brilliance they had has been lost for all time. Where would we be as a species had the millions of targets of these caste systems been permitted to live out their dreams or live at all? Where would the planet be had the putative beneficiaries been freed of the illusions that imprisoned them, too, had they directed their energies toward solutions for all of humanity, cures for cancer and hunger and the existential threat of climate change, rather than division?” Page 377
Book is available at Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library.
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com