Summer Book Club: Caste discussion continues (please join us!)

We're continuing our review and discussion of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson this afternoon (July 15). The section to focus on for this discussion is Part Two.

Visit the VP Finance site for the full schedule of our discussions and suggested questions: https://vpfinance.virginia.edu/resources-dei

If you are unable to read the book (or haven’t started), please still join us. You will still be able to contribute to and learn from the discussions without reading it. We really hope you will join us for this discussion, and please share the invitation with other UVA colleagues. These sessions are open to anyone who is interested!

The zoom link for all of the discussions is: https://virginia.zoom.us/j/95163051737?pwd=TlZ0WVF4VUl4cnpyZ3dTRVl6U2w3dz09. If you have any questions regarding the Sprint discussions, please contact Patty Marbury or ToShun Campbell.

See this afternoon's discussion questions after the jump!

Here are the discussion questions we'll tackle this afternoon:

1. There’s a lot of discussion in this book about the horrors of slavery and the history of lynchings in America. Were you aware of this history or was some of this new to you? How does it compare with what you were taught growing up? How does it relate to current discussions about the inclusion of this history in public schools?

2. What do you think of Wilkerson’s comment that slavery was “…not a chapter in its (America’s) history, but the basis of its economic and social order. For a quarter millennium, slavery was the country.” (pg. 43)

3. Race is a social construct, not based on biology and science. Wilkerson writes about the "construction of whiteness," describing the way immigrants went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to "white"—a political designation that only has meaning when set against something "not white." Irish, Italian … people weren’t "white" until they came to America. (pg. 49) What does this "construction of whiteness" tell us about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste?

4. James Baldwin said: “No one was white before he/she came to America.” (pg. 49) Discuss what this quote means to your understanding of our current caste system.

5. Did you study Jim Crow laws or redlining in any American history class? If not, how does this information inform your perspective on current events around housing, evictions, mass incarceration, and police shootings?

 6. Harold Hale, an African American man, helped his daughter defy the "rules" of their caste in 1970s Texas by naming her Miss. As Wilkerson illustrates throughout the book, the dangers of being seen as defying one’s caste can range from humiliation to death. What do you think of the lengths he felt he needed to go to assure dignity for his daughter? What are the risks he put her in by doing so? Should Miss have had a say in her father’s quietly revolutionary act? Explain. 7. Discuss the differences and similarities between how Miss was treated in the South, where racism and casteism have historically been more overt, and in the North, where they still exist, but can be more subtle. Do you think these various forms of racism and casteism must be fought in different ways?

8. On pages 59-61, Wilkerson tells a story about when she met with a Chicago retailer for a piece she was writing on when she was a reporter with the New York Times. What do you think
about her decision not to reveal the name of the retailer? Have you heard of similar experiences?

9. Wilkerson writes about the "construction of whiteness," describing the way immigrants went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to "white"—a political designation that only has meaning when set against something "not white." Irish, Italian … people weren’t "white" until they came to America. What does this "construction of whiteness" tell us about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste?

10. Wilkerson discusses three major caste systems throughout the book: India, Nazi Germany, and America. What are some of the differences that stood out to you among these three systems? What are the similarities? How did learning about one help you understand the other? For instance, did the fact that the Nazis actually studied America’s segregation practices and Jim Crow laws help underscore the depth of our own system?

11. Did you know that Nazis developed their laws regarding Jewish people, gypsies, and other undesirables by observing and implementing American caste laws? When did you learn this?

12. What did the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer mean when he said, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”