This SDG seeks to examine the unspoken caste system in America and how a hierarchy of human divisions shapes us. The core book is the highly acclaimed Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabelle Wilkerson (Pulitzer Prize winning and best selling author of The Warmth of Other Sons.) Caste has been deemed in the New York Times review an "instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far...one of the most powerful nonfiction books...ever encountered." Wilkerson gives a masterful and lyrical portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores through an immersive, deeply researched narrative about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
1. Chapters 1-4 (53 pages.) Toxins in the permafrost, the afterlife of pathogens, an old house, an american untouchable, a long running play and the emergence of caste.
2. Chapter 5-9 (45 pages.) The container we have built, the measure of humanity, through the fog of Delhi to the parallels in India and America, the Nazis and the acceleration of caste, and the evil of silence.
3. Part Three: The eight pillars of caste. (67 pages.)
4. Part Four: The tentacles of caste. Chapter 10 (58 pages.)
5. Chapters 15-20 (54 pages.) The urgent necessity of the bottom rung, last place anxiety, on the early front lines of caste, the illogic of caste, the consequences of caste, the euphoria of hate and the invisible narcissism of caste.
6. Chapters 21-26 (53 pages.) The German girl with the dark wavy hair, the Stockholm Syndrome and the survival of the subordinate class, shock troops on the borders of hierarchy, the lethality of caste, backlash, a change in the script, turning point and the resurgence of caste.
7. Chapters 27-31 and Epilogue (58 pages.) The symbols of caste, democracy on the ballot, the price we pay for a caste system, awakening, shedding the sacred thread, the racialization of the dominant caste, the heart is the last frontier and a world without caste.
Isabelle Wilkerson, Caste The Origins of Our Discontents , New York, Random House, 2020.
Sunil Khilnani, "Top Down." The New Yorker," Aug. 17, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/17/isabel-wilkersons-world-historical-theory-of-race-and-caste
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