Reviewed by Carol-Lyn McKelvey, FAUSA & AIWC Cologne
With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day just celebrated and Black History Month upon us in the US, it seems an appropriate time to dig deeper into the history of African Americans. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson is a masterpiece of research into past and present realities, yet easily accessible. Juxtaposing slavery and the subsequent fallout with Nazi Germany and India’s caste system, Wilkerson reframes what most of us were taught in history class through a much larger, systemic lens. In doing so, she shines the light on many of the inequities that SDG 4 strives to rectify – equal access to educational opportunities, literacy, continuing education – and builds a strong case that none of those things are easily attainable when a system built to demean, judge and hold down a person based on the color of their skin exists.
