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 human species has, over the course of history, suffered unquantifiable, terrible loss due to the false divisions that caste creates. Eleven million people were killed by the Nazis, nearly one million Americans were killed in the Civil War, and millions more have been lost on farms and plantations in India and the antebellum American South. It is impossible to know where humanity as a species might be if not for these staggering, arbitrary, painful losses.
This passage emphasizes the human toll of caste around the world. In each caste system the book discusses, millions of lives were seen as expendable, and they were effectively laid at the altar of caste as a sacrifice to the dominant castes. With this, Wilkerson implies that the world needs to stop normalizing systems that treat human lives as insignificant and disposable.
Themes
In 1932, Albert Einstein arrived in the U.S. after fleeing the Nazis. He was repulsed and shocked to find that he’d fled one caste system for another. Throughout his life in the U.S., he was outspoken about the horrors of casteism. As a Jewish person himself, he felt he could empathize with the plight of Black Americans. So, he joined the NAACP and the civil rights movement and spoke at historically Black universities about the “disease of the white people” that was ravaging the country.
This passage shows that caste is a global problem whose solutions, too, must be global in nature. People who have suffered the injustices and indignities of caste must unite and speak out about the “disease” that caste really is. When people who have been oppressed by one system find that another system gives them a measure of power and privilege, they must use that power to advocate for those without it.
Themes
Caste divides people based on things they can’t change about themselves: their skin color, their religious identity, the family to which they were born. Around the world—and especially in the U.S.—these systems persist because the general populace allows them to by buying into the lies these systems sell. But once awakened to these lies, everyone has a choice in whether they will continue to uphold caste or whether they will work to dismantle it. This work is difficult because caste is a disease, and yet it is an attractive, seductive mechanism.
Those who benefit from the way a caste system structures power can easily be convinced to maintain caste—or simply not to speak out against it. But in reality, caste damages everyone—even those at the top of a caste system. So, members of the dominant caste need to take stock of how caste influences their lives, too, and reject the power it has arbitrarily afforded them throughout history.
Themes
While the demographics of the United States are indeed changing, the subordinate caste is still hundreds of years behind achieving equality with the dominant one. Political and social authority are likely to remain with the dominant caste unless there is a concerted effort to overturn casteism, reject the price Americans currently pay for their caste system, and fight for justice.
A changing society won’t erase the problems of caste on its own—too much of society still relies on the unspoken language of caste that keeps people in rigid categories. Instead, there needs to be a collective reckoning with what caste takes from people each day.
Themes
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Germany, Wilkerson argues, is living proof that a caste system can in fact be dismantled. But the Third Reich was not a “bizarre aberration”—caste systems that subordinate and dehumanize exist throughout the world, and there is no one person, no matter how evil, who is responsible for such societal divisions. It is difficult—but not impossible—to escape caste’s tentacles and to reject its toxins.
Just as many people might like to think that slavery was one isolated, uniquely “dark” period of American history, others might like to think that the caste system in Nazi Germany was extreme and unprecedented. But awakening to the reality of caste means understanding that caste has played a bigger role in global history than anyone would like to imagine.
Themes
Wilkerson suggests that in order to extract themselves from the vortex of caste, Americans must first recognize that they live in a system in which certain groups of people are excluded or disqualified. There must be a public accounting of what caste has cost this country—and how past injustices will be healed.
By not talking about caste, everyone perpetuates it and gives it even more power. Much of caste’s power rests on people’s silence about how caste dictates daily life, even in modern times. To dismantle caste, people need to have ongoing discussions about how caste intrudes into everyday life.
Themes
Every citizen of the U.S., Wilkerson argues, needs to adopt an allegiance to radical empathy—that is, putting in careful and considered work to educate oneself about another person’s experience from their perspective. While empathy isn’t a substitute for experience, it is necessary that Americans begin to truly see and connect with the humanity of those around them. If millions of people could commit to such a promise, the country would indeed be transformed. It is not enough to be tolerant any longer—Americans must not simply tolerate one another. They must love and uplift and fight for one another.
Much of caste’s endurance in the U.S. (and around the globe) is predicated on social division and the dehumanization of the lower castes. In order to combat this, members of the dominant caste need to repair those divisions by trying to understand subordinate-caste members’ feelings and experiences. Action rather than passivity is needed in order to remedy the wounds of caste.
Themes
Each of us, Wilkerson suggests, is cast into a role at birth. But as we grow, we must decide whether we are going to accept or challenge those roles—whether who we are on the inside is more important than what we seem to be on the outside. Though no one chooses the circumstances of their birth, one can absolutely choose how they treat those around them. Each person must accept responsibility for the horrors that have come before us—and for the commitment to enlightenment and change in our lifetime.
In this passage, the book suggests that both individual and collective action are needed to dismantle caste. Only awareness of the “roles” society tries to cast people in will create lasting change. Dismantling caste means learning about it, calling it out, and refusing to participate it any longer. And because caste prolongs its influence through social, political, and economic structures, it is up to individuals to start doing this necessary work in their families and communities.
Themes
In a world without caste, Wilkerson says, the world would be a healthier, more bountiful place. People’s accomplishments and successes would be celebrated rather than limited based on the color of their skin, the place of their birth, or the religious tradition they follow. We would seek not to hold one another back, but to invest collectively in the progress of our human species. A world without caste would “set everyone free.”
While modern-day societies celebrate the freedom of people who were once enslaved, true freedom is still, in the book’s estimation, far from reach. There will only be true freedom around the globe when the caste systems of the world have been thoroughly dismantled, and historically oppressed groups are no longer affected by the caste-based cruelty they’ve endured for millennia.
Themes
