Book Corner

We welcome your reviews of books that • were published within the past three years • do not advocate for a political party or politician • do address issues supported by the League, and • intrigued you enough that you want to share them. Please submit your review at any time to Margan and Thad Zajdowicz (Margan.Zajdowicz [at] gmail.com).

Caste
The Origins of Our Discontents
By Isabel Wilkerson

In her newest book, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson explores the important role of caste in our 401-year racial history and in the current fierce and dangerous partisan divide. She defines caste as “the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place,” while race “in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste.”

Wilkerson compares the roles of caste in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany and identifies eight unifying concepts, which collectively maintain control by the dominant caste and its separation from the bottom caste. These immutable caste principles underlie the changing country-specific definitions of race. She makes the important point that many modern people are racially sympathetic but are still subject to unconscious bias based on long-term negative cultural messages about minorities.

The book relates two chilling anecdotes. After Hitler took power, officials of the Third Reich visited the American South to learn how to institute racial control. They later praised their American hosts and used many of their methods. When Martin Luther King, Jr., visited India in 1959, he was introduced to an untouchable group as an American untouchable. King was taken aback at this, but then said that yes, indeed, he was considered an untouchable.

Wilkerson provides a compelling description of how the U.S. partisan divide has been fueled by dominant white caste fears of losing caste privileges. She explains how this started with the 1964 Civil Rights Act (after which no U.S. Democratic presidential candidate received a majority of the white vote) and was accelerated by predictions of majority-minority status by 2042 and by the election of Barack Obama and then Donald Trump.

Wilkerson concludes that the American caste system should be eliminated because it threatens our democracy and seriously demeans and diminishes everyone. She predicts significant dominant white caste resistance but points to German success in eliminating Jewish caste discrimination as a reason for hope. Finally, she does not provide a roadmap for eliminating caste, preferring to leave that to her readers.

Caste is essential reading if you want to learn how to reduce the partisan divide and achieve racial justice, but it is only the barest beginning. Our society is afflicted by the toxic, difficult-to-remedy, long-standing impact of its caste system, including de facto segregation of low-income minorities in public schools and housing. There is seriously inadequate housing, healthcare, education, and employment for all low-income people, but especially for disadvantaged minorities. Discriminatory policing and criminal justice are major caste effects.

Obviously, large-scale, long-term national and local action will be required to change dominant white caste attitudes and remedy these caste effects. What policies, funding, and political action should be implemented? How can this be achieved across the partisan divide? What should we and LWV do to support this effort? Reading this book should help you decide.

—George Null, North Unit Leader

Stamped
Racism, Antiracism, and You
By Jason Reynolds

Hello League Members,

I have a new book to introduce to you. I read it in two days: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You.

This book will open your eyes to many things you thought you knew. Your mind and soul will be so filled with knowledge introduced to you in a brand-new way.

Get ready for the ride!

—Betty J. Ford, Musician, Writer, Poet, Spoken Word Artist, and Motivator for Children and Youth