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It was in the process of ranking that we were all cast into assigned roles to meet the needs of the larger production. None of us are ourselves.

At the end of Chapter 4 in Part Two, Wilkerson cites an unnamed Nigerian-born playwright who tells her that people in Africa are not Black until they step into societies like the United States. Rather than being known by a racial marker, the playwright says, people in Africa are simply themselves. This moment has a lasting impact on Wilkerson and leads to her the conclusion that the opposite is true under a caste system. Caste, she argues, forces all of its subjects to play specific roles based on the rank they have been assigned at birth, preventing them from full self-actualization.

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