Reading @Isabelwilkerson’s Caste was an education in the racial heiarchy of the US. Her lucid writing & brilliance shines so powerfully that I often had to stop just to catch my breath.
But the book largely overlooks the current impact of a system that inspires its argument.
My review for @ForeignPolicy
Wilkerson’s Caste not only makes visible the plainly manifest yet stubbornly obscured reality of racial suppression of African Americans but also supplies other people of color with a vocabulary to understand their place in the lattice of racial and social order in the US.
But even as the most sensitive analyst, Wilkerson appears to give in to the idea of American exceptionalism and centers Western narratives while failing to dig into the continued brutalization of Dalits who largely reside in India—in the global south.
Despite her humanist and internationalist approach to bring all three systems of caste on par with each other, the original Indian version, as Wilkerson calls it, suffers the most in the service of the greater rationalization and possibly in favor of a largely American audience.
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