In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, author Isabel Wilkerson explores the U.S. caste system that evolved from the trans-Atlantic trafficking of African captives to the American colonies. While many European immigrants were relegated to periods of indentured servitude in this colonial period, Wilkerson captures the marked difference in the status occupied by enslaved Africans as compared to other forced laborers: “ … colonial laws herded European workers and African workers into separate and unequal queues … the caste system that would become the cornerstone of the social, political and economic system in America. … [and] lead to the ritual killings of thousands of subordinate-caste people in lynchings that destabilize the country to this day.” (Wilkerson 41). With her apt use of extended metaphor, Wilkerson draws a comparison of the white supremacist, stereotypical roles assigned to enslaved African people and the American colonists who lorded over them, and the assigned, pre-written roles of scripted character performances. Indeed, wielding the metaphor with razored precision, Wilkerson effectively demonstrates that the structures of the caste systems of American and Nazi society rested upon stereotypes so deeply ingrained that the societies were populated by citizens who had become caricatures of themselves, their performances becoming the pillars of caste: “Day after day, the curtain rises on a stage of epic proportions, … that has been running for centuries. The actors wear the costumes of their predecessors and inhibit the roles assigned to them. The people in these roles are not the characters they play, but they have played the roles long enough to incorporate the roles into their very being, … with their inner selves and how they see the world. … The cast members become … typecast, locked into either inflated or disfavored assumptions. They become their characters.” (Wilkerson 39).
With this extended metaphor, Wilkerson aptly captures the hypnotic powers of prejudice as she effectively argues that the scripted roles to which each caste is assigned at birth provide cover for the dominant caste to inflict unspeakable acts of violence and injustice upon its subordinate caste. Wilkerson proves that as long as these scripted roles typecast the dominant caste as moral, while the subordinate caste is defined as subhuman, there is no genocide bloody enough to cast the crimson shadow of a doubt upon the dominant caste’s goodness or the subordinate caste’s depravity – and thus, fueled by the assigned stereotypes, the caste system endures.
Through endogamy or the prevention of intermarriage among the upper and lower castes, Wilkerson effectively demonstrates that cast members’ disparately cast roles bar White Americans from developing a sense of shared destiny with members of the subordinate caste, thus guaranteeing the survival of the caste system. Wilkerson asserts: “It makes it less likely that someone in the upper caste will have a personal stake in the happiness or well being of anyone deemed beneath them or personally identify with their plight … that the dominant caste will see those deemed beneath them … as a threat that must be held in check at all costs” (Wilkerson 109). In the extended metaphor, the author asserts that without a sense of empathy or unity with outcasted members of society, the dominant caste monopolizes society’s center stage, without reason to regard those assigned to subordinate roles. Instead, the cast members in this societal production “begin to believe that the roles are preordained, that each cast member is best suited for their assigned role … that they are meant to be cast as they are currently seen” (Wilerson 39-40). The author further builds her case that these assigned roles were intended to prevent unity between the castes as she explains that the marriage laws of the U.S. enslavement era and beyond did not typically extend to sex. Indeed, the non-consensual sex acts in which many white people engaged with enslaved and subordinate members of the lowest caste were not perceived as a threat to the caste system, as the subordinate role assigned to Black people was not elevated through forced sex acts, but instead, reinforced as an act of violence and domination, “which is why endogamy … was strictly policed and rape of lower-caste women ignored” (Wilkerson 111). Wilkerson’s analysis makes it clear that it is only through marriage, in which two parties forge a partnership of equality, that a sense of allyship, camaraderie, and shared fate may emerge and disrupt the roles assigned within the caste system, potentially dismantling it. As Wilkerson argues, endogamy stood as a central pillar to the integrity of the caste system itself.
With the casting of white Americans as the righteous moral authority, while the subordinate caste was depicted as sub-human, Wilkerson illustrates how the dominant caste maintained a facade of innocence in the Jim Crow south, even through the widespread lynchings of Black Americans. In a clear case of cognitive dissonance, the heinous acts that should have disqualified the dominant caste from flattering global perceptions as Christian and morally just would actually have no negative impact on their good societal standing. Instead, sadistic acts of terrorism committed by the dominant caste invited praise and careful study from the architects of another budding caste system. Wilkerson recounts the history: “The Nazis were impressed by the American custom of lynching its subordinate caste. … Hilter especially marveled at the ‘American knack for maintaining an air of robust innocence in the wake of mass death’” (Wilkerson 81). With this endorsement from Hitler, the author proves that the integrity of the American caste system was, indeed, maintained by the pre-ordained roles assigned to Americans, as the lynch mob was afforded a heroic, vigilante status which naturally cast its Black American prey as threats to public safety themselves, rather than victims of crime – thus justifying their extermination. It is through Wilkerson’s examination of the overlap between the American and Nazi caste systems that the tremendous impact of these assigned roles becomes irrefutable. As Wilkerson writes of the Nazi’s embrace of eugenics, she explains the emergence of the German word “Untermensch,” or “sub-human” in the national vocabulary as an epithet describing the Jewish population (Wilkerson 80). The notion reverberated through the social fibers of another nation, where the subordinate caste had been assigned to this same role with such finality as to justify the widespread lynchings of Black people – America’s Untermensch – in broad daylight and with women, children, and Christians to bear witness. If only members of the dominant German and American castes were able to perceive their fellow countrymen outside of these “caste blinders” which Wilkerson describes, the elite may have been enlightened to challenge the genocide imperiling the lives of Black Americans and Jewish people. Alas, with the inability to see one another outside of their assigned roles, no act of eugenicist terrorism was nightmarish enough to break the spell.
Indeed, in Wilkerson’s extended metaphor, the fixed nature of society’s casted roles becomes clear to the reader, as the author introduces the purpose of the subordinate-caste scapegoat. As Wilkerson explores, even in instances of white-on-white violence wherein no segment of the lower caste is involved, the dominant society spurs witch hunts for the “deviants” of the lower caste – an ever-present scapegoat – rather than confronting cases of clear white criminality (Wilkerson 194). Yet again, Wilkerson demonstrates that the scapegoated role assigned to the subordinate caste plays a central role in maintaining the caste system itself, as the collective hate harbored by the dominant caste against its subordinates unifies the elites in both behavior and belief. A 1989 murder case, recounted by Wilkerson, captures this dynamic. The crime involved a dominant-caste man and his pregnant wife, who was slain, according to both the husband and pre-ordained notions held by the American public, by a fictitious Black man whom the murderous husband placed at the scene of the crime in his false account to police (Wilkerson 194). Even for all the inconsistencies in the surviving man’s story – who had himself shot his wife and staged a robbery – Wilkerson explains that both law enforcement and the media were singularly focused on the capture of this caricatured Black villain who never was. In the face of the heinous murder of a pregnant white woman, and unified by blood lust, the dominant society had chosen its scapegoat: “In the end,” Wilkerson concludes, “the husband alone was responsible for the death of his wife, but the caste system was his unwitting accomplice … he knew he could count on the caste system to spring into action as it was programmed to do, that people would readily accept his account if the perpetrator was black ... and see the scapegoat caste as singularly capable of any depravity … and deflect any suspicion from him” (Wilkerson 196). In a pre-ordained twist of fate, the symbolic roles of deviant and criminal with which the lower caste had been animated on the societal stage took precedence. In 1989 Boston, the gears of the caste system turned automatically, with no need for a live Black person to personify this depiction of the lower caste as armed and dangerous. Indeed, that this depraved Black man was, in truth, a part of a fictitious tale mattered not. The city sent the dogs after him all the same. Wilkerson recounts: “The city went into action and began a massive manhunt. Mayor Raymond Flynn ‘vowed to get the animals responsible.’ … Officers stopped and strip-searched … almost any Black man on the streets, hundreds of them.” (Wilkerson 194).
Indeed, as Wilkerson demonstrates, the scapegoated subordinate caste assumes a role of symbolism – typecasted by the scripted roles of the stage play – rather than that of live human beings. In an ethnically cleansed Nazi Germany, the negative symbolism assigned to the subordinate caste lingered, even in the absence of the Jewish scapegoat. As a result, the dominant caste was left to cannibalize itself in pursuit of eligible prey. In a World War II-era anecdote, Wilkerson takes readers back to a time marked by this hysteria: “ … during World War II almost every Jewish resident had vanished from German life. … their absence left a vacuum and a paranoia among the Aryans who remained. Without a scapegoat to look down upon, the people had only themselves to regard … and they scanned their countrymen for someone else to be better than” (Wilkerson 279). In recounting the sense of paranoia that pervaded the purged German society, Wilkerson proves that the deeply ingrained nature of the scripted roles ensured the survival of the caste system, even once the lowest caste was physically removed from society. A German girl of the time whose hair was suspiciously dark and wavy, animated by Wilkerson in an anecdote, was photographed measuring the widths of her nose and eyes in an attempt to quell hysteria surrounding her olive skin and textured hair (Wilkerson 278). Indeed, the pre-written roles of the caste system ensured that the system would endure, and members of Germany’s dominant caste stood at the ready, enforcing a societal surveillance to ensure that, should any member of either caste “Veer from the script … other cast members will step in to remind you where you went off-script.” (Wilkerson 40).
From Nazi Germany to 20th century Boston, Wilkerson effectively compares the stereotypes assigned to members of Nazi and American caste systems to the scripted roles portrayed by cast members of a stageplay. Through this extended metaphor, Wilkerson brilliantly demonstrates that the fixed nature of these scripted roles is so ingrained in both societies as to persist even in the face of overwhelming evidence of their untruth. What’s more, as the scripted roles of both castes remain unchallenged, the pre-written roles ensure the survival of the caste system itself. The social, political, and economic reign of the dominant caste and relentless death, poverty, and misfortune of its subordinates are perceived as the natural order of society, rather than cause to investigate caste lines.