What are you reading, Mr. Tano?
Jean-Yves Tano has been at the Max Delbrück Center since 2018, offering guidance to postdocs who are planning their next career moves. In our reading tip, he presents the audio version of “Caste”, a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.
With less time to read than I used to, I have switched to audio content, which is easier to consume on the go. Podcasts such as “Pod save the world” and “Freakonomics” accompany me when I am on the way. Audiobooks have also become a favorite. Recently, I listened to “Caste: the origins of our discontents”, written by Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist from the United States. As a person of African origin who has lived in the US and in Europe for a long time, this book peaked my interest – even more so when African students who were trying to escape the war in Ukraine were treated badly at the borders of Europe. Media coverage of that war vs many others around the world (also the refugee crisis, and many other current world events) was also quite different.
“Caste” advances the hypothesis that racism in the United States can be viewed in the same light as other caste systems – notably those of India and the one in place during the Nazi regime in Germany. All three revolve around “an artificial construction, Wilkerson argues, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of ancestry and often immutable traits. Traits that would be neutral in the abstract but are ascribed life-and-death meaning. The book discusses much of the history of the United States starting with slavery, the civil war, the Jim-Crow laws in the south, the civil rights movement and the more recent political changes with the election of Barack Obama and Donald Trump. She shows that Black (and other non-white) Americans are treated inferiorly by the government and their fellow citizens. It demonstrates why many white Americans vote against their own interests to maintain this system.
Moving through dominant-caste spaces
Chapter 24 of the book was in particular interesting from a biomedical point of view. She describes how the American caste system affects the health of members of the lower caste. Following the story of discrimination faced by a Nigerian who moved to the US at the age of 17 to attend university, Wilkerson focuses on the lethality of the caste system. For example, people from subordinate castes have higher blood pressure and levels of the stress hormone cortisol due to the constant fear associated with moving through dominant-caste spaces. Various studies have also compared the telomere lengths of Black people versus White people in America and it comes as no surprise that members of lower castes experience disproportionately high levels of hypertension and stress that significantly shorten their telomeres. Blacks on average die five years earlier than whites.
Importantly, Isabel Wilkerson discusses at the end of the book the support of Albert Einstein to the civil rights movement following his exile to the US after the Nazi regime came to power. Einstein behaved as one would call today “an ally” by chairing a committee to end lynching, speaking out in favor of civil rights activists and hosting a black opera singer (Marian Anderson) who was denied a room at a hotel near his home in Princeton, New Jersey.
“Caste” is an excellent audiobook that reminds us of unequal systems of oppression and how they affect the lives of the oppressed. It is clear that “people of color” around the world still face inequalities embedded in the fabric of many societies. As companies and many of us think about diversity, equality/equity and inclusion, this book can help us understand the monumental task of breaking up such systems. The book received much acclaim after its publication; Netflix is currently producing a film adaptation. The director will be Ava Duvernay, who produced other great documentaries such as 13th and “When they see us”, which deal will racial disparities in the US. I can also highly recommend them.
Isabel Wilkerson: “Caste – The origins of our discontents”, 2020, Random House Audio