Book Content:
Isabel Wilkerson, the genius author, with absolute mastery of her quill pens an impressive book about the cruelty of Nazis and Anglo-Saxons as they killed millions. The Nazis gassed the Jews and the Anglo-Saxons lynched, burned, and shot the Americans of dark skin and the natives. Sadly, the author tries to equate the practice of India’s separation of labor practice which has never killed either the Dalits or Adivasis, the groups called the lower castes by foreigners, in the evil acts of these Nazi or Anglo-Saxon heinous atrocities. India has never burned, gassed, whipped, or starved any of its people in the form and proportions of the Nazis or America’s colonizing armies or privileged whites. India has many problems. It has many inequality and social ills but mass killings of their own in the pattern of German of American killings are fortunately completely missing. The author compromises her authenticity and integrity in trying to make unequal events equal.
What’s the Core Message?
The race is a made-up construct that allows the privileged to control the lesser privileged so that the privileged ones can exercise power and control the resources. The dominant caste keeps the order and adjusts it to remain in power.
What the Book Does Well.
The book does a masterful job of punctuating milestones and connecting the dots to support the author’s thesis. Her thesis for the crimes committed against the Jews by the Nazis and the brutality and injustices against the slaves and people of color in America are a pattern of the evil that resides in the privileged superior or dominant castes. The stories from Germany and America are well researched.
What Could Have Made This Book Better?
Wilkerson, an immediately likable author was not served well by the research she conducted about India. Where did the system of occupational specialty arise? It comes from the Vedic thought. She never mentions the Vedas. What was the reason for the specialization? It was to map skills, traits, and strengths to the work that a man may perform. The same applied to women. This never appears in her thesis. When did the system of fluid skill mapping become a rigid protocol that the foreign colonizers termed the cast system begin? What were the temptations that broke thousands of years old traditions to make people of India hate other peoples of India? The colonizers sowed hatred along the lines of hierarchy and the Indians took the bait. How did the different varnas, jatis, and gotras stay together or separate? No discussion in the book. This aspect of the book, the context of ancient philosophy to the modern-day practices is missing. How do the castes vary in daily work, practices, foods, habits, and interaction? How are these integrated into Indians’ lives? No information.
The author also forgets to consider if India’s lifestyles had an impact on life benefiting technologies like Yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, and the concept of Karma. Isabel Wilkerson completely missed the nuances of the life ancient Indians lived and the evolution to the modern India.
The author overreaches to connect the brutality of the Nazis and Anglo-Saxons to Indians. Her research is shallow in some places and wrong in others. The overreach seems so contrived that it raises the question whether someone was paying her to paint the Indians with the same brush as the Nazis in Germany or the Whites in America. The New York Times’ articles on India seem to lack the cultural nuances, are off base, or are completely wrong.
However, her lack of research does not dismiss the suffering of the lower caste people of India, many of whom have and continue to struggle in life at the whim of the privileged. The question whether the suffering is due to a rigid caste structure or poverty is not investigated, however. The rich of the same Jati exploit the poor just the same. The crushing weight of poverty prevents children from attending school limiting upward mobility.
How it affected me
I am most disappointed in the lightweight conclusions of the brilliant and skilled author. She does not give a weighty prescription to cure the ills of Casteism. Empathy and speaking up are not sufficient. Empathy does not lift people from poverty, prepare them for a sound education, or give them the foundations for a good character. The activism and speaking up got Rev. Martin Luther King killed. John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy got shot too, for wanting to make reforms. These are tried and failed measures.
Fortunately, the cruelty in the hearts of the privileged and the evils of poverty can indeed be outpaced.
If you are a person of limited means and influence:
- Listen. Most people find their own path when they talk out and answer questions about their reality. Listen without judgment. Draw out the embedded fears and doubts for the oppressed to express their reality.
- Educate. Educate, mentor, support, and guide those who are marginalized. Education need not come from formal schools alone. Life education does not need to come from classrooms. Educate everywhere. On the playground, at a coffee shop, around the baseball field, on a hike. Remove fear and anxiety.
If you are a person of means and influence:
- Sponsor youth to attend good schools. Mentor them.
- Ask faith leaders, priests, rabbis, mullahs, and pandits to preach compassion and unity.
- Reject narcistic protocols, behaviors, and practices in all forms and places.
One action at a time. Help people reach escape velocity to rise above poverty and desperation by skills, education, or confidence.