Claire Conger

My sister thinks the New York Times favors Black people when choosing photos for the front page of their Arts section. In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson provides an answer for that seeming favoritism. She explains that Black people are over represented today in entertainment because under the Jim Crow laws, entertaining was one of the few jobs they were allowed. Black people had generations of practice: When they were actual slaves, they were required by their masters to sing and dance and appear to be happy.

Ms. Wilkerson informs us that the idea of “whiteness” originated in the United States. It was codified in 1790 when congress restricted citizenship to immigrants who were “free white persons.” At the time, most Europeans did not qualify. “For most of American history, anyone not Anglo-Saxon fell somewhere on a descending scale of human ‘pollution.’” (page 187)

“Whiteness” morphed. Race became a social ranking based on a nebulous combination of skin color, hair texture, and facial structure that makes no sense to most of the world. Europeans become White and Africans become Black when they become Americans. “[Race] is a fiction . . . seen [by us in the U.S.] as a sacred truth.” (page 107) Yes. I would be one who thought of race as a part of all of us, as universal, as fact, in spite of also knowing that all human DNA is essentially identical. Ms. Wilkerson has schooled me.

Ms. Wilkerson explains further: Some black people, coming to the U.S., try holding on to their accents so as not to sound American because if they don’t sound American they have a better chance of not becoming Black. I tested this idea the other day, quite by accident, when I asked a friend what he thought of Ms. Wilkerson’s concepts. My friend, an immigrant with dark skin and dreadlocks, waved his hand dismissively and said all societies have hierarchies. It’s as Ms. Wilkerson posits: He is not Black because he is French.

There is so much more to Ms. Wilkerson’s book. It’s a must-read for all of us.