Isabel Wilkerson

A journalist and the first African-American woman to earn a Pulitzer, Isabel Wilkerson made a name for herself with The Warmth of Other Suns, a book and a public inquiry published in 2010. The book is a treatise on the Great Northward Migration, the movement of millions of Black Americas from Jim Crow south to the rest of the US.
In 2020, Wilkerson released Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, which inspired Ava DuVernay’s film Origin screening at the Venice Film Festival in the main competition. The book’s thesis is that to understand racial themes, one needs to analyse the caste system. “Caste is the bones, race the skin.” To describe the unseen, though powerful, influence of the near-invisible caste systems, the author reflects on an incident that took place in 2016, a year when in Siberian tundra, temperatures rose to the point that permafrost melted, and researchers were able to recover spores from reindeer that died in the 1940s. the spores once caused an anthrax epidemic in the population. The caste system is within us – says Wilkerson – and is ready to emerge at any time.
America is put under a lens, a rendered in a detailed picture and a theoretical apparatus that includes Alexis de Tocqueville. In 1830, Tocqueville wrote that only the surface of American society is painted with democracy. Also, Wilkerson dedicated great attention on the caste system of India, whose historical origins are still debated. It is speculated that the Arii, a lighter-skinned Indo-European population coming from the north, pushed India’s existing population south. The author will then examine Nazi legislation against Jews and other ethnic groups, drawing a parallel with American-originating white supremacy theories.
Caste also lists curious incidents, like Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visits to a university in Kerala, India, in 1959. During this visit, the university’s chairman introduced him to the students in these words: “Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America.” A meaningful moment that shed light on the living, present connections between the idea of caste and racial discrimination that exist all over the world.
The book is also rich in accurate historical and sociological analysis, beginning with a research on the bases of the caste system and a reference to religion in Noah’s cursing of Canaan (Genesis 9:24).
There are also modern references, too. In The Matrix, the Oracle says “A program was written to watch over the trees and the wind, the sunrise and sunset. There are programs running all over the place”. The essay is, overall, an appeal to reflection. According to Isabel Wilkerson, “A world without caste would set everyone free”.