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
In the summer of 2017, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia covered its statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee after a rally of white supremacists converged around the statue weeks earlier. On the day of the rally, marchers flew both Confederate and Nazi flags and chanted “Sieg Heil” and “Jews will not replace us.” After a white supremacist drove a car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer, the city shrouded its statue but didn’t removed it.
The Confederate and Nazi flags aren’t just flags—they represent all of the racist, casteist ideologies of those regimes. This passage shows how symbols associated with the dominant caste’s supremacy can embolden members of the dominant caste to assert their power over the subordinate caste, or anyone who associates with them. Caste systems sustain themselves through symbols, even after they have been officially dismantled.
Themes
The end of the American Civil War didn’t really mean the end of slavery—instead, lawmakers just found new ways to justify the debasement and enforced servitude of the subordinate caste, such as sharecropping and the creation of the Ku Klux Klan. Confederate monuments sprung up throughout the South—and by the 21st century, over 230 monuments to Lee existed throughout the States. Lee was a racist, a eugenicist, and a violent slaver—yet even after leading a treasonous war against his country, he faced few penalties or repercussions and was later glorified. At one point, the U.S. Postal Service had five different stamps bearing his face in circulation.
This passage shows how in the U.S. specifically, a refusal to reckon with the truth about caste can mean that caste’s most violent enforcers are elevated as icons. This suggests to both dominant- and subordinate-caste members that caste is an acceptable—even ideal—social structure. When the image and name of someone like Lee is everywhere in society, it’s hard not to internalize the message that society still condones violence against the subordinate caste.
Themes
That same year, in 2017, a SWAT team clothed in masks and garb that obscured both their identity and the color of their skin removed the first of four Confederate monuments in the city of New Orleans in the dead of night. Since the mayor had called for the removal of the statues in 2015, the city had faced threats of violence and terrorism should they make good on their promise to actually remove the statues. At the same time, Alabama passed a bill preventing the removal of any statue that had been in place for 20 years or more.
At the same time, places around the U.S. are working to remove these images from public sight. Many people do recognize how damaging these symbols can be, and how they help sustain caste throughout the country.
Themes
In Berlin, Germany, there is a 4.7-acre space dedicated as a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. A vast “modernist Stonehenge,” the site bears no signage or information—instead, 2,711 concrete rectangular stones form an indiscernible pattern. Germany has erected many memorials to the different groups of victims of the Holocaust—Jews, homosexuals, Sinti and Roma—but there are no memorials dedicated to the leaders of the Nazi Party and the SS troops who perpetuated unthinkable violence. In fact, the site of Hitler’s bunker is now a paved-over parking lot, nondescript and unmarked.
In Germany, on the other hand, there are no memorials or tributes to the people who committed terrible atrocities. Instead, the victims of caste-based violence are honored in many different ways. This suggests that while Germany remains stigmatized because of its violent history, the government is actually trying to prevent caste-based violence from happening again.
Themes
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Displaying the swastika in Germany is punishable by up to three years in prison—but in America, the Confederate flag is part of the state flag of Mississippi. While some German families might privately mourn family members lost in the war, they know that there should be no public memorial of the men and women who perpetuated war crimes and atrocities. Restitution has been paid to the survivors of the Holocaust—but in the U.S., it was white slaveholders who received reparations for the loss of their property. While former Nazis were tried and, in some cases, put to death, former Confederates wound up in leading roles in government.
Again, by highlighting the differences in how Germany and the U.S. have reckoned with their caste-centric pasts, the book shows that caste must be denounced and eradicated in order to stop its influence from continuing over time. Germany condemns the Nazis’ violence, and Wilkerson suggests that the U.S. should similarly condemn caste-based violence that happened in the past and continues to happen in the present.
Themes
In modern-day Germany, young people are properly educated in school about the realities of the Holocaust and their country’s true history. Even they are aware that while they may not be responsible for the sins of their forbears, they are responsible for acknowledging the horrors of the past and becoming “guardians of the truth.”
The book continues to suggest that the most effective way to ensure that caste doesn’t resurge is to make people fully aware of the truth. Then, they may feel a responsibility to be “guardians of the truth.”
Themes
