by Isabel Wilkerson
“Wilkerson’s central thesis is that caste, while a global occurrence, achieves its most violent manifestation in the treatment of American Blacks, set at the lowest level in society through historical and contemporary oppression, marginalization and violence — all legally maintained through systems of law and order. “The English in North America developed the most rigid and exclusionist from of race ideology,” Wilkerson writes, quoting the anthropologists Audrey and Brian Smedley.
Wilkerson establishes a correlation between American Blacks, whom she names the “American untouchables” and the Indian “untouchables,” or Dalits, as the lowest caste; while whites in America are the dominant, highest caste equivalent to the Indian Brahmins.”
(from NPR review by Hope Wabuke, August 10, 2020)