Caste

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife Coretta traveled to India in the winter of 1959. King had long dreamed of making a kind of pilgrimage to India, the place whose struggle against freedom from British colonial rule had inspired his own fight in the U.S. King had read of the caste system in India, and he wanted to meet members of its lowest caste—the Dalit, or Untouchables. But when the principal of a school King was visiting introduced him as an American “untouchable,” King was taken aback. It took him a moment to realize that he was an Untouchable, and that every Black person in America was an Untouchable, as well. In that moment, King realized that America had a caste system of its own.

The seeds of the American caste system were planted over 150 years before the American Revolution. The white men who wanted to overtake and “civilize” the new world they’d discovered knew they needed to conquer, enslave, or otherwise remove the people already living on it—and find “lesser beings” to do that work for them. Through a warped interpretation of the Bible, these men created a “ladder of humanity” that placed European people (particularly English Protestants) at the top, and African captives transported to build this new world at the bottom.

The invisible caste system these men created has lasted so long precisely because it is so difficult to see. While few people apply the term caste to American life today, many throughout history—including antebellum abolitionists—have named caste as a very real threat to the fabric of the United States. Attempting to uphold the hierarchical pyramid of the American caste system has been at the root of the American Civil War, the 1960s civil rights movement, and even the U.S.’s contemporary political configuration. While race is a social invention, humans have nonetheless found themselves trapped in its “mythology.”

White supremacists and eugenicists in the 20th-century U.S. proudly compared the Jim Crow laws of the Southern states, which dictated what Black people could do and where they could exist in public, to the efforts of the Indian caste system to “preserve the purity of [the upper caste’s] blood.” Under the American caste system, even the lowliest of white people who worked menial jobs and suffered in poverty could feel they were better than the most successful Black person.

In 1913, a man named Bhimrao Ambedkar—born into the Untouchable class in India—arrived in New York City to study economics at Columbia University. He went on to study in London before returning to India, where he became the leader of the Untouchables and gave his caste the name Dalit, meaning “broken people,” to illustrate how the caste system ruined countless lives. Indians had long been aware of the plight of Black people in the United States—and it is clear that Ambedkar’s education in the U.S. taught him the importance of understanding the relationship between Dalits and Black Americans.

Wilkerson began researching this book in hopes of understanding how caste began in the U.S.—and why it’s persisted in U.S. society for so long. The specter of caste haunted Black people who fled from the American South just as it haunts Indians throughout their own global diaspora. And as a member of the United States’ subordinate caste, Wilkerson wanted to identify the shared characteristics of the caste systems of India, the U.S., and Nazi Germany. Only by understanding all three side-by-side, Wilkerson believes, can one fully understand the roots of hierarchy and inequality around the globe.

Throughout the book, Wilkerson uses the terms “dominant,” “favored,” and “upper caste” instead of “white” and “lowest,” “disfavored,” or “stigmatized caste” instead of “Black.” She does so in hopes that her readers will reimagine how they see themselves and others. She also announces her intent to use “original, conquered, or indigenous peoples” instead of “Native American” and “marginalized people” instead of the terms “women” or “minorities.” 

Wilkerson stresses the importance of understanding the American caste system in relation to the caste systems of other countries by relaying an anecdote about traveling to a group of Indian scholars’ conference on race and caste in Massachusetts. After speaking about the similarities between the American caste system and the Indian caste system, the organizers of the conference presented Wilkerson with a bronze bust of Bhimrao Ambedkar. Countless presenters and attendees talked with Wilkerson about their experiences of caste. On the way home, a Black TSA worker flagged her bag for inspection and pulled out the small bronze statuette, asking who the statue depicted. “The Martin Luther King of India,” replied Wilkerson. After scanning the statuette, the TSA agent carefully, almost reverently, wrapped the bust back up and placed it gently into Wilkerson’s suitcase.