We are not responsible for the sins of the past, but we are responsible for the society we live in now.Isabel Wilkerson
Caste is insidious and therefore powerful because it is not hatred, it is indifference.Isabel Wilkerson
A caste system is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups.Isabel Wilkerson
Caste, along with its faithful servant race, is an X-factor in most any American equation, and any answer one might ever come up with to address our current challenges is flawed without it.Isabel Wilkerson
It is not about feelings or morality alone, but also about the logistics of power which groups who wish to retain power deploy.Isabel Wilkerson
The health consequences of caste are the same for people of a low rank in a society whether they live in the United States, India, or Japan.Isabel Wilkerson
In a caste system, your place is fixed, and nothing you can do will lift you past the perceived worthiness of your birthright.Isabel Wilkerson
The last century’s genocides showed us what happens when people are separated into mutually hostile groups by rigid and arbitrary boundaries.Isabel Wilkerson
A caste system builds rivalry and distrust and lack of empathy toward one’s fellows.Isabel Wilkerson
What if, beneath the mortal wounds of racism, there pulsated a deeper injury? What if the code words had been signals to hide its true nature, to disguise an unmentionable term that lay beneath all the others? That term was caste.Isabel Wilkerson