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 U.S., when compared to its counterparts in the rest of the developed world, is a harsh place to live. There is no universal healthcare, little diversity, a severe crisis in the education system, and an epidemic of incarceration. All of this, Wilkerson suggests, is the price Americans pay for life in a caste system.
The U.S. provides its poorest citizens with little aid, and it has the highest rate of gun deaths and incarcerations in the developed world. Life expectancy has fallen as maternal and infant mortality rates have skyrocketed. The U.S., in spite of its vast wealth, ranks 18th in global happiness. And when a global pandemic arrived on U.S. soil, many Americans were forced to “go it alone.” They were faced with the vulnerability of their social and medical systems and the inescapable hierarchy of a caste system in which racial minorities occupied the lowliest—and suddenly most dangerous—jobs in the country.
By listing some of the many social, political, and economic problems that plague the U.S.—one of the wealthiest countries in the world—this passage suggests that the U.S. intentionally allows these problems to simmer. To remedy them would require the nation to extend greater protections and social privileges to the subordinate caste (which is comprised of Black Americans). In other words, the country is forcing its general population to suffer rather than helping the people whom the dominant caste wants to keep at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Themes
All of these issues, Wilkerson argues, are because of the U.S.’s insistence on perpetuating its caste system. The country has “dehumanized others to build its civilization”—and now that civilization is, in essence, faltering.
Because American civilization is built on cruelty and lies, this passage suggests, it cannot be sustained in its current form. Swift structural change is needed to reform and rebuild U.S. society.
Themes
