Jackson: A 2016 study found it would take Black families 228 years to reach the wealth that white families have today. Two hundred and twenty-eight years. But what if the problem isn't just about money or race? What if it's an invisible operating system we're all running, one that was studied by, of all people, the Nazis? Olivia: That's a staggering thought, Jackson. It points to something much deeper, a structural problem we don't even have the right words for. And that is exactly what today's book is about. Jackson: It feels like we keep treating the symptoms without ever getting the diagnosis right. Olivia: Exactly. Today, we're diving into Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson. And Wilkerson isn't just any author; she's a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who spent a decade on this research. Her work was so groundbreaking it even inspired Ava DuVernay's recent film, Origin. She argues that for 400 years, we've been misdiagnosing the sickness in American society. Jackson: So if it's not just race, what is it? What's the real diagnosis according to Wilkerson? Olivia: She argues it's caste. An ancient, powerful, and invisible hierarchy that dictates everything. And to explain it, she starts not with a lecture, but with a house.

Jackson: A house? I like that. Tell me more. Olivia: Wilkerson asks us to imagine America as a very old house that we've all inherited. We didn't build it, we didn't lay the foundation, but we live here. And you know how old houses are—they have their quirks. A door that sticks, a floorboard that creaks. Jackson: Sure, you get used to it. You tell yourself it has character. Olivia: Right. But what if those aren't just quirks? What if the beams are rotting? What if the foundation is cracked? You can put on a new coat of paint, you can remodel the kitchen, but if the underlying structure is failing, the whole house is in jeopardy. Wilkerson says that's America. We've been busy with the surface-level stuff, while ignoring the fundamental structure. Jackson: And that structure is caste. Olivia: Precisely. She has this incredible line: "Caste is the bones, race the skin." Race is what we see, the visible cue. But caste is the unseen skeleton, the rigid framework that gives the body its shape and determines where everything fits. It’s the infrastructure of our divisions. Jackson: Hold on, that's a powerful line, but what does it actually mean in practice? How is that different from just talking about racism? Olivia: It’s about a pre-ordained hierarchy. Racism can be about individual prejudice, but caste is a systemic ranking of human value. It says that just by being born, you are assigned a role in a long-running play. You are either in the dominant caste, the subordinate caste, or somewhere in between. And this ranking determines your assumed competence, your beauty, your intelligence, and your access to resources. It's a script we're all handed at birth. Jackson: A script we don't even know we're performing. Olivia: And sometimes it takes someone from outside the system to point it out. This brings me to one of the most powerful stories in the book, about Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson: I'm all ears. Olivia: In 1959, he and Coretta Scott King take a trip to India. For him, it's a pilgrimage to the land of Gandhi. He's a global figure, celebrated and welcomed by the Prime Minister. He feels, for a moment, like he's escaped the American hierarchy. Jackson: He can finally just be a man, not a symbol of a struggle. Olivia: Exactly. But then they travel to the southern tip of India, to a city called Trivandrum, to visit a high school. The students are from the lowest caste in India, the group formerly known as "the Untouchables," now called Dalits. The principal gathers the students and introduces his esteemed guest. And he says, "Young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America." Jackson: Wow. That must have been a gut punch. Olivia: Wilkerson writes that King was, in her words, "peeved" and "shocked." He was a Nobel laureate, a respected leader. How could he be an "untouchable"? But then he sat with it. He thought about the 20 million Black Americans living in a country where they were segregated, dehumanized, and locked at the bottom of the social order. Jackson: And he realized the principal was right. Olivia: He realized the principal saw the bones, not just the skin. Later, King said, "Yes, I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable." He saw, in that moment, that America didn't just have a problem with prejudice; it had a full-blown, deeply entrenched caste system. Jackson: To have someone from another continent see your struggle that clearly... that must have been both validating and devastating. It’s like someone finally giving you the correct diagnosis for a disease you've had your whole life. Olivia: And that global connection King felt is actually darker and more direct than most of us can even imagine. Wilkerson uncovers how the American system became a blueprint for history's most infamous regime.

Jackson: Okay, you can't just leave that hanging there. A blueprint for who? Olivia: For the Nazis. In the 1930s, as the Third Reich was formalizing its ideology of racial purity, its lawyers and bureaucrats looked around for a model. And they found one in the United States. Jackson: Come on. You're saying the Nazis looked at America for inspiration? That feels... wrong. We were the good guys. Olivia: Wilkerson documents it meticulously. Nazi eugenicists were in dialogue with American eugenicists. Hitler himself praised America's model of conquest and racial subordination in Mein Kampf. When they set out to write the Nuremberg Laws—the laws that stripped Jewish people of their citizenship and forbade intermarriage—they literally studied American laws. Jackson: What kind of laws? Olivia: Jim Crow segregation laws. Anti-miscegenation laws that specified, with scientific-sounding precision, who was forbidden from marrying whom. They were particularly fascinated by the "one-drop rule," which defined anyone with even a single Black ancestor as Black. In fact, Wilkerson points out the Nazis thought the American system was, in some ways, too harsh. They considered the one-drop rule too extreme for their own purposes. Jackson: Wow. That's a hard thing to hear. It completely flips the script on how we see our own history. This is the point where some critics push back, isn't it? I know the book was widely acclaimed, but some have argued the comparison between America and Nazi Germany is a stretch. How does Wilkerson justify such a provocative claim? Olivia: She does it by identifying what she calls the "Eight Pillars of Caste." She argues that all caste systems, whether in India, Nazi Germany, or America, are built on the same foundational pillars. Things like Pillar One: Divine Will, the idea that the hierarchy is God-ordained or natural. Pillar Three: Endogamy, the rigid control of marriage and mating to prevent mixing. Pillar Seven: Terror as Enforcement, using lynchings, pogroms, and public cruelty to keep the subordinate caste in line. She shows that the architecture is the same, even if the paint on the house is different. Jackson: So it’s not about saying they are identical, but that they share the same underlying DNA. The same blueprint. Olivia: Exactly. And seeing that blueprint helps us understand the kind of courage it takes to defy it. There's a story she tells about a man named August Landmesser. You've probably seen the photo. It's 1936, a shipyard in Hamburg. Hundreds of men are standing, arms outstretched in the "Heil Hitler" salute. But in the middle of the crowd, there's one man, arms crossed defiantly over his chest. Jackson: I think I know that picture. He stands out so starkly. Olivia: That was August Landmesser. He had been a Nazi party member, but he fell in love with a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. Their love was deemed a crime—"racial infamy," they called it. His personal experience, his love for one person who the system deemed "inferior," allowed him to see past the lies. It gave him the courage to stand alone in that crowd and refuse to salute. He was breaking caste. Jackson: He was choosing his humanity over the script he was given. Olivia: He was. And Wilkerson's point is that this is what caste demands of us—the immense, almost impossible courage to defy the roles we are assigned. Because the system isn't just an abstract idea. It affects us every day, right down to our very bodies.

Jackson: So we have this invisible architecture and these dark historical parallels. But how does this system actually affect people today, on a physical, day-to-day level? Olivia: Wilkerson makes this incredibly concrete by talking about the biological consequences of caste. She discusses something called the "black tax." Jackson: A tax? What is that? Olivia: It's the immense, unending psychological and emotional labor that people in the subordinate caste have to perform every single day just to navigate the world. It’s a constant, heightened vigilance. Jackson: Can you give me a real-world example of that? What does that look like on a random Tuesday? Olivia: She tells this story about a middle-class Black businessman. He lives in a nice suburban neighborhood. His wife asks him to run to the store to get a gallon of milk. He's in casual clothes, maybe sweatpants. But before he leaves the house, he stops. He goes back to his closet and puts on a nice jacket and a tie. Just to go to the grocery store. Jackson: Why? Olivia: Because he knows that as a Black man, he could be perceived as a threat. The jacket and tie are his armor. They are a signal to the world: "I am not a danger. I belong here." He has to consciously manage the perceptions of others in a way his white neighbors never have to think about. That's the tax. Jackson: That is exhausting just to think about. It's like having a second, invisible job you never get paid for and can never quit. Olivia: And it has a real, measurable physical cost. Wilkerson cites studies showing that this constant stress leads to chronically elevated levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. And that, in turn, leads to what scientists call "weathering." It literally wears down the body. It shortens telomeres, the protective caps on our DNA, which is a sign of accelerated aging. Jackson: So this isn't a metaphor. The stress of the caste system is literally taking years off people's lives. Olivia: Yes. The data is stark. There are higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease in the subordinate caste, even when you control for income and education. In fact, one of the most shocking findings she presents is that the life expectancy gap is wider among the college-educated than among high school dropouts. Jackson: Wait, that's completely counterintuitive. Why would more education lead to a worse health outcome? Olivia: Because educated members of the subordinate caste are more likely to be in integrated, high-stakes environments—corporate law, academia, medicine—where they are constantly pushing against the boundaries of caste. They are on the front lines, dealing with the daily microaggressions and the pressure to prove they belong. The stress is more acute. They are paying a higher tax. Jackson: It makes total sense that it would literally wear down your body over time. It's a slow-motion crisis. Does Wilkerson offer any way out of this? An awakening?

Olivia: She does. And it's not a simple, feel-good solution. It's a profound challenge to our perception. She argues that the first step is to see the house for what it is. To stop pretending the foundation is sound. To develop what she calls "radical empathy." Jackson: What's the difference between regular empathy and radical empathy? Olivia: Regular empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes and imagining how you would feel. Wilkerson says that's not enough. Radical empathy is putting in the work to understand how they feel from their perspective. It’s listening with a humble heart, without projecting your own experience onto theirs. It’s about believing someone's truth, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Jackson: It's about acknowledging the different houses we all live in, even if they're on the same street. Olivia: Beautifully put. And she grounds this in the words of another person who escaped a caste system: Albert Einstein. After fleeing Nazi Germany, he came to Princeton and was horrified by the American caste system he saw. He befriended Black intellectuals, he campaigned against lynching, and in a 1946 speech, he said something that gets to the heart of Wilkerson's book. Jackson: What did he say? Olivia: He said, "The separation of the races is not a disease of the colored people, but a disease of the white people. I do not intend to be quiet about it." Jackson: So the book is really a call for everyone, especially those in the dominant caste, to see the 'house' we're living in and recognize our shared responsibility to fix it. It leaves me wondering: what's one small crack in the foundation that I've been ignoring in my own life? Olivia: That's a powerful question for all of us. And it's the kind of question that, if we all start asking it, might just be the beginning of the repairs. We'd love to hear your thoughts. Find us on our socials and share one thing this conversation made you see differently. Jackson: Because a world without caste, as Wilkerson writes, would set everyone free. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.