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I completely agree. What a disappointment from a book that I was disposed to agree with and wanted so much to like.

I had so many of the same thoughts. I found the topic immensely interesting, and when I started the book, I thought Wilkerson was going to revolutionize the way I think about race in the US. She didn't. It makes no practical difference whether you frame US race relations as "race" or "caste." If the lowest caste is black, then does it matter if the problems are caused by racism or casteism?

She started to raise so many points that I wanted her to explore further. She started talking about how poor white are the most insecure about their status so they are the most likely to see themselves as "above" the lower castes--so that there's at least someone they can be "better than." I found that extremely interesting. I've heard the argument before that the "elite" in the past intentionally pitted poor whites against black people in order to maintain their own power, and I thought maybe she was going somewhere with that, but then she just went to an unrelated anecdote from the 1940s. I would think that would help her thesis--elites intentionally using a caste structure to stay in power to the detriment of others in the "upper caste," but she didn't go there.

Some of her stories had me scratching my head, like the one where three white women are discussing their ancestry. Apparently, Nordic is the "best" white you can be, followed by Anglo Saxon. Somewhere in the middle is Celtic and Central European, and then the bottom is formed by Eastern European and Southern European. Well, that's the first I've heard of any of that. For the most part, other than recent immigrants, the only people I know who know their ancestry have taken DNA tests, so I really don't see how there's a hierarchy there at all. Maybe it's more of an "upper class white" thing?

I also really wanted to see where the middle castes fit in. She discussed it a bit to say that they try to imitate the higher caste in order to distance themselves from the lowest caste. She gave some examples, like a South American claiming a blonde-hair, blue-eyed relative. But surely there are better examples of brown immigrants imitating whites than that? Also, she barely mentioned Native Americans, but put them in the middle caste. I think arguments could be made (I'm not personally making them, just observing that they could be) that Native Americans could be placed in the lower caste with African Americans. They weren't enslaved on the same scale, but is mass genocide really better?

She raised a lot of good points about unconscious bias and systemic racism (or casteism, I suppose), but I was left with "now what?" What difference does it make if we change the framework from racism to casteism?

Thank you. I agree with all three of your points and I am struggling to finish the book. I have great admiration for Wilkerson's writing ability, but I too keep asking myself why not mention SA or Japan, New Zealand or Australia, etc. I was shocked when she dropped Native Americans from the caste system, when she ignored the second class station of women in many cultures even today... Her thesis is fascinating, but she delivered a book about racism not caste ... sad to say, this is one example where I felt the movie was better than the book.

I wonder does she ever deal with the term "racism" as a barrier to discussion of bigotry and bias? I find sometimes that people simply cannot get past the term, they cannot see their own bias and simply go nuts when their prejudice is labeled racism. That would be one reason to approach it as caste instead. It should allow some people who cannot otherwise look at these issues, to see them from a new perspective.