Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

To describe the emotional and intellectual labor caste demands, Wilkerson notes that “people at the margins have had to study those at the center of power, learn their invisible codes and boundaries” (282), to understand possible threats and tools for their own survival. Wilkerson states:

The ancient code for the subordinate caste calls upon them to see the world not with their own eyes but as the dominant caste sees it, demands that they extend compassion even when none is forthcoming in exchange, a fusion of dominant and subordinate that brings to mind the Stockholm Syndrome (282-283).

The term takes its name from a hostage situation in the Swedish city, where those captured during a robbery came to identify with those who held them captive.

Wilkerson cites a famous incident from 2019, though she identifies the protagonists only by caste and not by name. A White female police officer who murdered a Black man in his own apartment, claiming she mistook it for her own, was shown compassion from the dead man’s brother and the judge, both of whom were also Black. Around the same time, a Black man in Florida was thrown in jail for being late to jury duty, as his failure also made the deliberative body less diverse; “he alone was being blamed for the inadequacies of a system that happened not to have enough people who looked like him” (285). These scripts of suffering followed by atonement help to reinforce the myth that “political suffering builds character” (285).

Wilkerson recalls another incident from 2014, when a young Back boy who looked unspeakably sad held up a sign offering “free hugs” at a protest against police brutality. The boy was embraced by a White police officer, and their encounter “went viral” as proof of racial reconciliation. Wilkerson notes that her own gaze offered something different, as no Black parent would have insisted on such a gesture. Later, it was found that the boy, Devonte Hart, had been systematically abused and tormented by his White foster family, and that repeated warnings about his mistreatment and that of the other children were ignored because of the caste status of the two women. In 2018, Hart and his siblings were murdered as their caregivers drove an SUV off a cliff. They had implicated the entire nation in their toxic and deadly commitment to caste, and few recognized it until it was too late.

To underline the moral horrors of forgiveness narratives, Wilkerson cites the author and essayist Roxane Gay. Gay argues that White America clings to narratives of forgiveness, as it did after the 2015 Charleston church massacre, because doing so allows racism to be seen as “merely the vestige of a painful past” (287). White Americans do not recognize that such forgiveness is more often about “survival” and that when we demand forgiveness, as people did from a black nine-year-old child who was falsely accused of assaulting a White woman in a deli, they are demanding “a privilege” (288), not a right.

Tuning back to caste in India, Wilkerson notes that very few Dalits are represented in the US, compared to those from other castes, and they find that the trauma of the system moves with them. Wilkerson met a talented scientist who struggled even to address those he knew were of a higher caste based on their surnames. He feels intense pressure to succeed as he represents his entire family and everyone like him. He, like Black Americans in the US, has some anxiety about visiting stores and encountering aggression from dominant caste people. He has been conditioned never to ask the price of an item and, if he has more questions, to come back with someone of a higher caste. In America, he wears shoes that are the wrong size because correcting the clerk felt too daunting. When Wilkerson asked the man what would help his anxiety, he answered her, “what I need is to feel better inside my own skin” (291).