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ABOUT THE BOOK: Wilkerson gives a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon as she explores how America, all throughout its history, has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Wilkerson’s book points to our entire social structure as an unrecognized caste system.
Most people see America as racist, and Wilkerson agrees that it is indeed racist. She points out that we tend to refer to slavery as a “sad, dark chapter” in America when, in fact, it lasted for hundreds of years — but in order to maintain a social order and an “economy whose bottom gear was torture” it was necessary to give Blacks the lowest possible status.
Whites in turn got top status. In between came the middle castes of “Asians, Latinos, Indigenous people, and immigrants of African descent.” Such a caste system allowed generations of whites to live under the same assumptions of inequality whether their ancestors were slave owners or abolitionists. And the unspoken caste system encouraged all to accept their roles, Wilkerson writes.
The Anti-Racist Formation subcommittee of the Racial Justice Commission has chosen five other books to explore over the next year:
• September 21 and October 5: The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
• October 19, November 2 and November 16: Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez
• December 7 and December 21: The Asian Jesus by Michael Amaladoss
• In 2027, Dates to be Determined: Yet With a Steady Beat: The African American Struggle for Recognition in the Episcopal Church by Harold T. Lewis and Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman.
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