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Caste presents its argument in a hybrid style that combines traditional academic writing with generous use of personal and historical anecdotes, as well as persistent metaphors that anticipate any reluctance readers may feel about engaging with Wilkerson’s claims. The anecdotes that pepper Caste from beginning to end have the dual purpose of providing additional evidence for many of Wilkerson’s points and accentuating how crucial personal stories are to dismantling caste. Though anecdotal evidence is often devalued compared to other forms of data, it is important to Wilkerson’s depiction of caste that individual stories and encounters be given the same weight as broader statistical trends. Because caste must dehumanize its subjects to establish and maintain its hierarchy, Wilkerson says, the project of solving caste inequity demands the re-humanization of those who suffer under it. Wilkerson repeatedly emphasizes that seeing the individual humanity in each person, regardless of caste ranking, is key to breaking down caste divisions. Her own decision to include so many personal anecdotes in Caste serves to model this behavior for her readers.

Wilkerson also employs two central metaphors throughout the text, both of which she establishes early on in Part One. The first compares America to an old house, and the second likens the history of a nation to a person’s medical history. Both of these analogies address the potential for kneejerk resistance to Wilkerson’s ideas on the part of the dominant caste, which may feel unfairly burdened with responsibility for a caste system that they did not create themselves. To preempt and mitigate this anticipated response, Wilkerson couches her argument about dominant caste awareness and responsibility in the morally neutral terms of home repair and disease. In this way, she uses metaphor to show that while members of the dominant caste do benefit individually from their caste privilege, the harm perpetuated by caste inequity is not necessarily the result of their own individual failings. Rather than responding to Wilkerson’s call to action with guilt or defensiveness, members of the dominant caste today should, therefore, take matter-of-fact stock of society’s ongoing injustices. It is largely their responsibility to set things right, as if they are the new owners of an old house or the inheritors of a genetic marker for disease.

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