Isabel Wilkerson

This is an excellent book, a must-read for anyone who wants to really understand what American society is really about.

Highlights for me include:
- A lengthy description of the "pillars" of any caste system, and how American society qualifies.
- A comparison of the American system with those of India and Nazi Germany. (Was gob-smacked to learn that the Nazis modeled their subjugation of the Jews on America's Jim Crow laws.)
- A description of the price America pays because of it's caste system (compared to other "developed" countries, we have relatively high infant mortality, poor scholastic scholastic achievement, shorter life expectancy, huge prison population, etc etc etc).
- The author's personal examples of how lower caste people are treated in America. Some are pretty devastating, all made me feel ashamed.

I felt the book had one weakness: there was very little discussion of where Native Americans, Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans fit into the system. This doesn't spoil the book, far from it, but I would have enjoyed the analyses.

Overall, this is a very engaging read, without being pedantic and with no detectable filler. It's an eye-opening challenge to thoughtful White readers, implicitly asking "how can people, who claim to be compassionate and fair-minded freedom lovers, allow such a system to exist?" This book has a permanent place in my shelves, and I will read it again.
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