Race is the visual marker of caste in the United States.

The central thesis of Caste is that the United States is a race-based caste system. Wilkerson’s argument that the United States comprises one of history’s major caste systems demands a complete rethinking of race in America. The United States is not commonly associated with caste, and racial discrimination in post-Jim Crow America is typically framed as a matter of bias on the part of individual perpetrators. To expose racial division in the United States as foundational to its caste system, Wilkerson first specifies that race is just one arbitrary marker of caste among many. Only after showing that America’s racial hierarchy was created by a system that is neither unique to America nor limited to race does Wilkerson move on to debunking the assumptions about race that caste has enforced. To this purpose, many of the early chapters of Caste are concerned with Wilkerson’s argument that race and caste are distinct though inextricably linked concepts in the United States. 

Wilkerson asserts that racial hierarchy is an artificial ranking system that the United States uses to enforce the fixed boundaries of a caste system that has been in place since slavery. Far from a dire but distant period in America’s past, the practice of enslaving people of African descent, Wilkerson argues, still exerts its influence over all Americans by virtue of the unspoken rules of caste that race-based slavery embedded in American society. As a result, while race determines what caste ranking a person has been assigned, Wilkerson posits that this assignation is only the surface of a much larger system. After hypothesizing that race is not the principal cause of racial discrimination in the United States, but rather a visual shorthand for caste, Wilkerson then moves to the broader contours and implications of her argument. This includes comparing and contrasting the United States with two other societies built on caste systems—India and Nazi Germany—to argue that caste explains patterns of behavior in America that race alone cannot.

Nobody within a caste system is spared its detrimental effects.

Though Wilkerson claims that a caste system disproportionately affects members of its subordinate caste, she maintains that people at all levels of caste suffer as a result of being trapped in its restrictive structure. To maintain itself, Wilkerson asserts that everyone must be complicit in the project of dehumanization, which means sowing cruelty, rivalry, and distrust. When members of the dominant caste are coerced into committing acts of discrimination and violence, Wilkerson argues that it erodes their humanity and agency, though they may perceive themselves as reaping social benefits in exchange. As Wilkerson maintains in the later chapters of Caste, the impact of caste on health and quality of life can also be disastrous across the board. For example, Wilkerson attributes the fact that the United States saw more deaths from COVID-19 than any other country to the problems caused by its caste system, which encourages an individualistic rather than collective mindset. Wilkerson’s final plea to her readers is for awareness and radical empathy. This is a first step, Wilkerson says, in the process of freeing everyone from caste, not just those that caste oppresses most harshly. Thus, it is essential to understand the all-encompassing impact of a caste system.

Most of the responsibility for addressing caste lies with the dominant caste.

In the final chapters of Caste, Wilkerson expresses her hopes for how readers might begin to fix the problems caste has caused, particularly in the United States. While waking up to the realities of caste is vital, it is not enough on its own, and Wilkerson says it must be followed by the refusal of everyone across caste’s hierarchy to follow its rules. Wilkerson suggests that members of the dominant caste must reject the myth of their own inherent superiority, and members of the subordinate caste must resist the limits placed on them. People from across the caste rankings must look past the assumptions of caste to see each fellow human being as an individual. However, because of caste’s very nature, this is not a symmetrical problem that can or should be fixed through everyone’s equal participation, Wilkerson asserts. As the group that has historically benefited from caste and still lives with the privileges of being at the top of its hierarchy, the dominant caste has a greater responsibility to break down its boundaries and barriers. 

There are two aspects to this responsibility. Wilkerson argues that historically, members of the dominant caste have not tended to want to dismantle the system that has granted them so many advantages. However, because the caste system empowers members of the dominant caste at the expense of those in the subordinate caste, the dominant caste is more capable of effecting the change necessary to end caste inequity. Similarly, while nobody living today created the caste system, members of the dominant caste still reap the benefits of it. Wilkerson hints at this dynamic repeatedly throughout Caste in her persistent comparison of America to an old house. In her analogy, just as the new owner of an old house did not cause damage to its foundation but must still repair it, Wilkerson suggests that Americans in the dominant caste must put in the work to solve the problem even if they did not start it.

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