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Racial Justice “Big Read” Is a Big Hit

03/16/2021 06:38:16 PM

Mar16

On February 2, more than 40 members of Temple Beth El joined in what we hope is the first of many “Racial Justice Big Reads.” The group gathered to reflect on Isabel Wilkerson’s extraordinary book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent. The book grew out of the author’s research into three major caste systems in India, Nazi Germany, and America.

We began by watching a 7-minute video of Trevor Noah interviewing the author, which you can watch on YouTube. After the video, we split into Zoom chat rooms of seven or eight people with five group facilitators: Charles Cohen, Mary Fulton, David Seligman, Beth Kaplan, and Jim Youngerman. Group members shared their own reactions to the book and then responded to questions prepared by the book’s publisher. We discussed the different metaphors Wilkerson uses to explain the caste system imposed on African Americans, and explored the distinctions the author draws between “caste” and “race.”

Wilkerson offers an interesting take on the “construction of whiteness,” describing the way immigrants have gone from being Irish or Polish to “white”—a political designation that only had meaning after those groups came to America and were contrasted with those who were “not white,” revealing a lot about the validity of racial designations and the structure of caste.

One of the topics provoking the most discussion was Wilkerson’s research into how the Nazis systematically created a caste system. She learned that the Nazis actually sent teams to study America’s segregation practices and Jim Crow laws and used those as a basis for creating the Nuremberg laws. These shameful facts underscore the breadth and depth of the American caste system. 

Each group ended by discussing what steps we can take, as individuals and as a Temple community, toward dismantling the caste system. As Wilkerson quoted: “Evil asks little of the dominant caste other than to sit back and do nothing.”

April 25, 2024 17 Nisan 5784