I’ve just finished reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of our Discontent. It’s not just a good book, it’s a great one. Not just instructive and helpful, it’s downright essential. Nothing I have read before comes close to it in making sense of the present situation we confront as Americans.
If it gained currency in our public discourse, it could shift the focus from “racism” to “caste-ism.” And that’s all to the good because that’s the deeper, more pervasive, more consequential reality.
I’m trying to imagine what an impact it would have had on how I approached my life and thinking if I had read this 60+ years ago. And what impact it could have now if all courses on civics, American history, and political science used it as the basic textbook, whether at the high school or higher education levels, or even in police academies and in the continuing education of people working in government, from the local to the national levels.
Every ordinary citizen would be challenged to become extraordinary if they take to heart what Ms. Wilkerson offers here so beautifully, with such tough yet tender wisdom.
Fred Reklau
Oak Park
