Ever since I started reading a history of the United States, I’ve been thinking long and hard about how our past has led to our present. I am reassessing many of my assumptions about our core values. This provocative book is challenging me even further. Wilkerson argues that “Just as DNA is the code for the instructions of cell development, caste is the operating system for economic, political, and social interaction in the United States from the time of its gestation.” If she’s right, then everything I once took for granted needs to be questioned. The story has to change.
Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Random House, 2020, p. 19.