Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

by Isabel Wilkerson

Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. They can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.

The idea of caste being the bones and race the skin came to me as I was trying to invoke imagery not only to refine the definitions but to make these ideas come alive for the reader. Throughout the book, I was seeking to build upon the work of the anthropologists who went into the Jim Crow South and lived and studied it, people like Allison Davis and Burleigh and Mary Gardner, John Dollard and Hortense Powdermaker, who emerged from their fieldwork using the language of caste.