By Isabel Wilkersen
This important nonfiction narrative is a thunderclap. Like the tension before a summer storm, each chapter builds a thoughtful, measured straightforward presentation of increasing pressure to see the invisible forces at work that have kept our society unnaturally fractured.
The contrast/comparison of the African American experience with Nazi Germany and India’s caste system helped me see how caste works and how/why it’s kept in place.
The personal stories sprinkled throughout as well as the heinous historical illustrations were painful to read, but so important to demonstrating how these systems in our society are not academic but inhumane and deadly. I could not put this book down.
It is a masterful, elegant explanation of how and why racism has persisted, and the possibility for recreating a world without it.
This is a gamechanger, a must-read, for all. I’m in. Moment by moment. I am more aware.