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
The term “scapegoat” comes from an ancient Hebrew ritual in which one goat was sacrificed to the Lord to cleanse and atone for their peoples’ sins, while a second goat was kept alive. The high priest would confess all the misdeeds of the Israelites to the second goat, then cast it out into the wilderness to suffer for the sins of others. Now, a scapegoat is a person or group blamed for causing or attracting misfortune. And in a caste system, the lowest caste is often the scapegoat cast: Jewish people were scapegoated for Germany’s failure in WWI, for instance, and the Dalits were scapegoated for the sins of their past lives. After the Civil War, Black people in the U.S. were scapegoated for the loss of that war and the end of slavery.
Here, the book examines the origins of scapegoating, or placing undue blame onto a certain person or group. It is significant that scapegoats were once literal goats—animals that existed outside of the bounds of human society. Now, caste creates groups of people who can be similarly dehumanized and seen as fit to bear grievances of the dominant caste.
Themes
To this day, Black Americans are scapegoated for the problems that disproportionately plague Black communities because of casteism and inequality. Scapegoating blames larger societal ills on those with the least power—and scapegoating always worsens in times of social, political, or economic strife.
Again, this passage calls attention to the cyclical nature of scapegoating and caste. Caste is a self-fulfilling prophecy in which any behaviors or problems that the dominant caste has ascribed to the subordinate class are then seen as the subordinate caste’s fault.
Themes
Wilkerson tells the story of a Boston couple, Charles Stuart and Carol DiMaiti Stuart, who were expecting their first child in the fall of 1989. While driving home one night through a working-class neighborhood, they were allegedly attacked by a Black man in a jogging suit. Carol was shot in the head, and Charles was shot in the stomach. Charles lived, but Carol and her unborn baby died. Authorities instituted a manhunt for the person responsible. But as the investigation continued and Charles picked out a Black suspect from a lineup, inconsistencies in his story began to emerge. It turned out that Charles had, along with his brother, plotted his wife’s murder because he was too cowardly to ask for a divorce. When Charles’s brother came forward, it became clear that Charles had counted on society’s impulse to scapegoat Black people for violent crimes.
Charles Stuart knew that no matter how flimsy his story was, the authorities would believe a white man over a Black one. He knew that if he simply stated that a Black person was responsible for his wife’s death, he would be able to let caste take control of the narrative and punish whomever they deemed fit to punish. This story is illustrates just how aware, on some level, the dominant caste is of its power over the subordinate one.
Themes
In 2018, a series of bombs went off around the Austin, Texas area—they were being left on people’s doorsteps as packages, and they killed several people. Because the bomber’s first victims were African American and Latina, no one paid attention to the stories or suspected that a serial bomber was on the loose—but when a bomb went off in a more affluent, whiter neighborhood, the authorities got involved and threw all of their resources into tracking down the bomber. They found him within 24 hours, illustrating the fact that scapegoats are, by definition, unimportant and expendable.
This passage illustrates how caste still defines many aspects of life in contemporary society. Victims who belong to the subordinate caste—or even those who simply aren’t a member of the dominant one—are disbelieved and deprioritized. The book suggests that this indifference to the suffering of lower-caste people is a form of modern-day scapegoating; the lives subordinate-caste members are seen as disposable.
Themes
Get the entire Caste LitChart as a printable PDF.
The 2014 Ebola epidemic began in West Africa—but the Western world paid little attention to the hemorrhagic disease until it reached the shores of the U.S. Eleven thousand people died—but Ebola wasn’t seen as a global problem because it didn’t primarily affect white countries. It would take another, deadlier outbreak for global society to recognize just how inseparable and interconnected the world truly is, regardless of race, class, or caste.
Issues that primarily affect people whom the caste system considers expendable aren’t important to members of the dominant caste. Even with global issues like viruses that don’t discriminate based on race or class, caste influences how people all around the world prioritize and respond to these problems.
Themes
