The Dimensions of Social Inequality in America
Reflecting on my Goodreads review of Caste by Isabel Wilkerson in light of latest SCOTUS decisions on affirmative action.
In August 2020, I posted a critical book review of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson on my Goodreads account. It was met with equal parts praise and criticism, receiving hundreds of likes and hundreds of critical comments. The criticism was especially fervent, inciting an extended discussion of race and inequality in America.
Given that discussion and debate about racial politics are topical due to the recent SCOTUS decisions in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina (UNC) cases, I felt it was worthwhile to return to my review of Caste and the subsequent squabbles in the comment section. For the convenience of readers, I’ve copied my Goodreads review below in its entirety. For those interested in reading the lengthy associated comment thread, it can be found below the review here.
Goodreads Review of Caste
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, makes the case that America is a caste system analogous to that of India's but organized on the basis of race. She strongly implies that the 2016 Presidential Election was somehow evidence for this claim and then outlines what she posits are the features of the American caste system (8 pillars of caste):
Wilkerson's 8 Pillars of Caste:
1) Divine Will and The Laws of Nature
2) Heritability
3) Endogamy and the control of marriage and mating
4) Purity vs pollution
5) Occupational hierarchy
6) Dehumanization and Stigma
7) Terror as enforcement, cruelty as a means of control
8) Inherent superiority vs inherent inferiority
Wilkerson's thesis is ostensibly ridiculous as a description of contemporary America, which is actually organized as a hierarchy of competence where competence is roughly determined by free market forces (any serious discussion of political economy is strikingly absent from Caste), a meritocracy in other words. Wilkerson's claims are also reckless, especially given the media attention given to her work (i.e. Oprah's recommendation). This is not a work that is seeking to achieve the racial reconciliation and harmony of a post-racial America where all races and creeds can cash the promissory note of the American founding and the American dream. It wallows in the racial sins and misery of America's past (slavery, lynching, and Jim Crow) and labels those evils as America's essence rather than the chronic disease that America has always aspired to eliminate.
I would be more inclined to take her arguments seriously if she didn't assiduously avoid all the aspects of American life that plainly contradict her or at least mitigate against such a stark perspective. For instance, Wilkerson completely ignores Asian American minorities in her book. She fails to address why in a caste system organized by race with "whiteness" as the dominant identity that Asian Americans are the most educated, wealthiest ethnic group. Of course black/African Americans historically suffered much deeper, more severe iniquities than Asian Americans, but her thesis is predicated on the claim that society is systemically organized to ensure dominant status for white Americans. It's just sloppy to have such a glaring omission, a white elephant of sorts that lurks behind every line. Moreover, Wilkerson's seeming aversion to sociological and economic data is evidenced as she opts for the telling of emotive anecdotes of racial iniquities. Wilkerson is a moving writer; however, the lack of rigor, specificity, data, and analysis belie her true intentions, which are those of an activist rather than a scholar (activists don't have time for pesky facts or to dissect a delicate, hot-button topic in a balanced, dispassionate fashion).
There were some aspects of Wilkerson's discussions of race that I thought were accurate. For instance, she does point out that there is no biological (i.e. genetic) definition of race, making it decidedly a social invention. I think this is an important insight, but Wilkerson does not follow this understanding through to its conclusion. Given the harm caused by the arbitrary use of skin color as a historical system of oppression and disenfranchisement, we should aim for a future where skin color is no longer a meaningful measure (a color-blind egalitarian society where one's merit entirely determines one's place in the social hierarchy). Despite Wilkerson's vagueness on how this supposed American racial caste system can be remedied, it is clear that this is not the vision she has for America's future or even believes that such a future is possible.
I could belabor my critique, but I think a recommendation to readers interested in this topic would be better. Political Tribes by Amy Chua, although not as directly engaged on the issue of race, is still far superior in its discussion of similar issues, a balanced, reasonable analysis of the tribalism in contemporary American society.
Reflecting on the Fallout
I’m sure that some current readers will find parts of my review objectionable or off-putting. It is a brief review with an unvarnished tone. It doesn’t take the pains to illustrate the abundance of empirical support behind the compressed claims lobbed at Wilkerson. The review also doesn’t demonstrate the typical meekness that one bearing heterodoxies typically must in order to avoid ostracism. So I understand why the review generated some negative attention and engagement in the comments, especially considering how incendiary the issue of race is in our body politic.
In some ways, I was eager to embrace those challenging my claims as an opportunity for persuasion. And I did find some of the exchanges to be enriching. They allowed me to detail the deeper rationale behind my critique, qualify some of my claims, and highlight salient empirical findings on the question of race, inequality, and social status in America. However, the general tenor of most the criticism I received reflected an inchoate, mostly emotional investment in successor ideology, critical theory, and standpoint epistemology. To dispense with the fancy terms, this basically means my identity disqualified me from levying criticism on this subject. No matter how robust and ideas- and fact-based my argument, my identity alone renders it null and void.
Despite this failure in forensics, there were some second-order critiques of my review that were worth engaging. These generally had more to do with my claims about meritocracy or market capitalism broadly. Despite all the quite obvious things like intense domestic and international competition to gain admission to elite American colleges and graduate programs and despite the robust positive correlations between socially-valued cognitive/non-cognitive traits and professional and social success, it is for some reason incomprehensible to many that we live in something that approximates a meritocracy. These denials usually amount to gesturing at nepo babies in Hollywood (or some other industry), citing scandals like Varsity Blues, or throwing out buzzwords with political valence (white privilege, systemic racism, implicit bias, etc) without much of substance attached. In other cases, the whole conception of meritocracy is impugned, but this is a separate ethical debate orthogonal to the question of whether or not America is a meritocracy (most respected critics of meritocracy do identify America as one, e.g. Michael Sandel).
All Simple Narratives Are False (Including This One)
There’s a saying in science, “all models are wrong, some are useful.” It underscores the fact that any model of a natural phenomenon will fail to capture it in its entirety, yet it still may capture something that is accurate enough to be of value in the pursuit of truth. Under the safe assumption that we live a material world, this same idea inevitably extends to the scientific study of social phenomena, and, due to the additional complexity at play, the wrongness of explanatory models here will generally be orders of magnitude greater than models of nature.
So it is only worth having such incendiary conversations as an opportunity to introduce and discuss compelling and relevant scientific research and philosophical ideas that complicate our overly simple explanations of social phenomena, which so often are boiled down into even more facile political narratives. I think the foundation in any of these discussions should start with the biology of human nature.
What relevant information can we derive from known biology? Well it illuminates some of the fundamental inputs and constraints on human behavior. Plus, science builds on this and explores how human nature plays out in group dynamics. For instance, like all other mammals humans construct social hierarchies that are entangled with our neuroendocrine biology. Additionally, humans, as small-band, hunter-gathering apes, demonstrate a default kin and in-group bias, which is likely part of our evolved psychology. Plus, Humans obviously vary genetically and human groups exhibit relatively even greater cultural variations, and together this variation affects socially relevant outcomes. Taken together, it is already trivially easy to sketch theories about how our biology and environments will interact to create inequalities and injustices. In fact, we can look back at the past four centuries of civilization as an attempt to respond to these constraints in ways that aims to optimize and distribute material flourishing through institution wise to human nature and group dynamics.
Thus, in any debate about a controversial political topic, the first step to reduce the emotional stakes should be to acknowledge that no social phenomenon has a single cause. Everything in this realm is multi-causal. And any alleged causal relationships warrant skeptical review. This, again, is simply a function of the complexity involved. Think of all the possible variables, both past and present, and their possible interactions. Subsequently, not only will there be many variables with some measure of explanatory power that power will be sliced and diced into small effect sizes because of the sheer number of inputs. Additionally, think about how fuzzy it is to quantify social phenomena. How exactly should racism be measured? We can barely settle on a consensus definition let alone construct an index that everyone agrees on. Most studies of these topics have to use proxy measures and other fancy metrics to even indirectly approach the problem. Despite this, simple narratives will be appealing and will feel true, but they’re definitionally and inevitably false. Let’s strive to remember that.
More Nuanced Conversations About Race in America
Given the above comments, it is impossible to satisfactorily summarize in brief the dimensions of social inequality and the influences that race does and doesn’t have. However, there are a lot of ongoing interesting conversations on this topic. I’ve included a non-exhaustive list below of individuals who are more directly focused on and experts in race and inequality topics. These individuals tend to engage more thoughtfully and reflectively on this controversial topics. I recommend listening to the conversations they have with those who agree and disagree with them and reading their published work.
You should have come back to the SCOTUS decision to come to a conclusion regarding social inequities and racial iniquities.