Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Caste, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Caste, Race, and Social Division in the U.S.
Caste as a Global Problem
How Caste Sustains Itself
The Costs of Caste
Summary
Analysis
Isabel Wilkerson describes meeting with a Black woman named Miss, who was born in the 1970s in Texas and whose parents gave her that name because, historically, Black women and men were never permitted to be addressed as “Miss” or “Mrs.” or “Mister.” Miss’s father, Harold Hale, attended the march from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1965, and the violence he saw directed at his fellow civil rights activists galvanized him. He decided that he would name his firstborn daughter “Miss,” so that no one in the dominant caste would ever be able to deny her the respect that was denied to her forebears.
This passage illustrates the extreme lengths to which subordinate-caste people must go to assert their humanity to those who have historically oppressed them. Miss Hale’s father knew that no matter how successful his daughter was or who she grew up to be, the dominant caste would still try to strip her of her humanity and disempower her. Naming her Miss was his attempt to safeguard her against some of the cruelties of caste—but this impulse in and of itself is one of the costs of caste, an emotional toll that all members of the subordinate caste must pay.
Themes
But when Wilkerson met with Miss while conducting research on the American caste system, Miss stated that Black people are still forced to stay in “the container” that white people have built for them. Miss cited numerous incidents from her youth that reminded her that members of the dominant caste still sought to control the members of the subordinate caste—long after the civil rights movement ostensibly brought progress and equality to the nation.
Even though Miss’s father tried to protect her from being judged or treated differently based on her caste, Miss could still feel the restrictive effects of growing up in a caste system. Her language about being put in a “container” speaks to how caste tries to constrict those in the subordinate caste and prevent them from ever moving beyond the category that society has assigned them.
Themes
Everyone, Wilkerson writes, is in a container of some kind—in a caste system, no one can escape being labeled and sorted based on how others perceive them, even if the label is wrong. Wilkerson herself recalls trying to interview a store owner in Chicago for an assignment she once took on as a journalist for The New York Times. The store owner walked in, and Wilkerson introduced herself to him—but he said he had no time to talk to her, because he was late to meet with a journalist. Wilkerson explained that she was the very journalist he was slated to meet, but the man refused to believe her and asked her to leave the store. These instances will never stop, Wilkerson predicts, unless the U.S. as a whole recognizes the roots of its caste system from which all prejudice stems.
Because Wilkerson, a Black woman, didn’t come in the “container” that her interviewee expected of her, she was dismissed out of hand. Wilkerson’s use of anecdotal experiences from her own life throughout the book expand on this idea of the subordinate castes being restricted to certain roles. Wilkerson’s and Miss’s experiences illustrate how caste keeps power with those who already have it.
Themes
