A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits, traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning in a hierarchy favoring the dominant caste whose forebears designed it.
A caste system uses rigid, often arbitrary boundaries to keep the ranked groupings apart, distinct from one another and in their as-signed places.
Caste can be seen as a universal form of human division that could be applied to many hierarchies in the world, but, through-out human history, across time and space, three caste systems have stood out to this day.
It is about power, which groups have it worthy of them and which are not, who gets to acquire and control them and who does not.
It is about respect, authority, and assumptions of competence who is accorded these and who is not.
As a means of assigning value to entire swaths of humankind. caste guides each of us often beyond the reaches of our awareness.
It embeds into our bones an unconscious ranking of human characteristics and sets forth the rules, expectations, and stereotypes that have been used to justify brutalities against entire groups within our species.
In the American caste system, the signal of rank is what we call race, the division of humans on the basis of their appearance.
In America, race is the primary tool.
Front cover
"Caste The Origins of Our Discontents" by Isabel Wilkerson
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize Author of THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS
NO.I INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER Oprah's Book Club 2020
Rear Cover of Caste The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Plaudits:
'Almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far ... It made the back of my neck prickle from its first pages, and that feeling never went away. It's a book that changes the weather inside a reader'
DWIGHT GARNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
'Powerful and timely I cannot recommend it strongly enough'
BARACK OBAMA
'If you haven't read it yet, you absolutely must'
EDWARD ENNINFUL, VOGUE
'Surprising and arresting... the idea of caste challenges fundamental notions of America as a meritocratic society... it feels like a prayer for a country in pain, offering new directions through prophetic new language'
BILAL QURESHI, WASHINGTON POST
'Such is Wilkerson's gift as a writer that she leaves you looking at the world differently'
AFUA HIRSCH
That's the #Caste game and it's definitely what every decision thusfar is embedding in painfully plain sight.
Cis superiority rules so far.
This one especially gross.