The origins of our discontent

“Origin” offers a blueprint for a better world

Nazi book-burning scene from “Origin”

I’m not sure how many times I picked up Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, with the thought that I’ll “get to it,” but that feeling changed after watching Ava DuVernay’s masterful biopic, “Origin.” I’ll be diving into the book this week.

The movie opens with Trayvon Martin walking through a white neighborhood on that tragic night. Importantly, it humanizes the boy, an essential theme for understanding Wilkerson’s thesis. There are many reviews of the movie; what concerns me here is the main idea.

It is this: Wilkerson (played brilliantly by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) is in Europe conducting research for the book that would become Caste. She explains her thesis while eating dinner with friends: there’s a similarity between the ways that castes emerge in societies that transcend race. At that moment, she’s connecting the dots between American slavery with Nazism.

Her friend claims the thesis is flawed: slavery was the result of capitalism, with Africans used for labor; the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews. There might be similar mechanisms at play, but the end result is vastly different. Wilkerson considers this, unable to respond in the moment; the following day, her cousin, Niecy, tells her she always thinks of the perfect response—a day later. Still, an important moment for Wilkerson to evolve and defend her thesis. 

Which she does. She’s worked through the logic by the time Wilkerson is with Niecy at a BBQ, where she explains that yes, the end goal was different, but actually, slavery wasn’t about race. Her cousin asks her to explain it in plain, simple language, not the learned speech of academia. Wilkerson continues: every human society has some form of ostracization. In America, everything is viewed through the lens of race, but in both Nazi Germany and in India, where the term “caste” is most well-known, skin color isn’t the indication of class. It’s caste.

Wilkerson then connects the dots between:

• American caste divisions as expressed in Jim Crow south, based on the book, Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class

• Nazi Germany, with extensive footage from the Holocaust Museum and Holocaust Memorial, as well as through the incredible story of August Landmesser

• India’s caste system and the Dalits through the work of BR Ambedkar, guided by Dr Suraj Milind Yengde (who plays himself in the movie)

Wilkerson walks through the Holocaust Museum and passes this quote by Holocaust survivor and author Primo Levi, which the camera hangs onto for a moment.

It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say.

“Origin” is really a cautionary tale: it is happening again.

Reading the blueprint

One piece of criticism we routinely received after writing Conspirituality concerns our research around yoga’s ties to eugenics as it emerged in Western culture. How could something so seemingly innocuous—a stress reliever, really—be connected to the fascist notion of a master race?

The fact that those ties exist doesn’t mean that people who attend asana classes to get limber are eugenicists. And yet some underlying themes by which the practice was introduced persist: the notion of an “ideal” body; a hatred of obesity in wellness spaces, which sometimes turns into disdain for fat people; a plethora of optimization and wellness products and routines marketed by exploiting vulnerabilities people have around their bodies. 

No, none of these apply to everyone, or perhaps even most yogis. Yet if you don’t understand these connections, it’s easy to become indoctrinated into an absolutist mindset with what a body “should” be, which can lead to ostracizing bodies that don’t live up to that perceived ideal. The language of wellness is aspiration, and as people ascend the ranks of this industry, they have a bad habit of looking down on those choosing a different path or born with a different set of circumstances.

Wilkerson faces her own criticisms for this thesis. In one scene, DuVernay clips a speech by MLK Jr, given after visiting India. The inspiration King received from Gandhi, which informed his own path of nonviolent resistance, is well-known. Less so is King being introduced in India as an American version of a Dalit, a title that at first enraged him. Only after reflecting on the role of Dalits in Indian society and that of American Blacks did it dawn upon King that the connection is sound.

The study of history only matters if you understand how to use it to change the present, and therefore influence the future. This is why we focus on the dehumanization of transgender people and fat people on Conspirituality so often, and why modern-day Israel is pertinent to this theme. Complex topics that take time and care to unpack become trapped in the vicious cycles of social media. Nuance becomes a victim in this process.

Let me briefly unpack, knowing that the space allowed won’t be sufficient.

• Two topics about transgender people are worthy of discussion: trans athletes and the age of consent for transitioning. Debating whether or not “trans” is real is a technique for dehumanization. Unfortunately, those who won’t partake in honest debates often bundle everything together and find edge cases (such as one person on TikTok) to place everything transgender into one bucket called “evil” or “wrong.” They also magnify these discussions to make the “problem” existential, when really, people just want their humanity recognized. Meanwhile, transgender allies can brush past actual good-faith debates by demonizing those unwilling to accept anything but total compliance. That said, in terms of social hierarchy, those dehumanizing transgender people wield the most power, which places their targets into an “untouchable” caste reminiscent of the Dalit. Horrible consequences are possible when any group is considered “less than.”

• Obesity is a complex biological process that fitness enthusiasts and wellness folk sometimes simplify with statements like “don’t eat so much” or “work out more.” America suffers from a chronic hatred of obesity, which often comes out in the rhetoric of “fitness” (notice the eugenics ties) that doesn’t consider the social determinants of health or individual biology and genetics. Bottom line: losing weight and keeping it off is really hard, and may not even be possible for some people. On top of that, “skinny” people sometimes suffer far greater health problems than fat people. In an image-driven society, however, that’s often glossed over. Fat people have been dehumanized for generations, and the shame passed down through that lineage makes it difficult for those born without the “ideal” genetic profile. This isn’t to overlook the importance of a good diet or the necessity of exercise, or to pretend that obesity doesn’t have negative health effects. It’s simply to say that not everyone has access to those options, either financially, socially, or genetically.

• Israel is an impossible topic to discuss in online spaces: there’s no “winning” in our communications networks (where positions can be viewed as purity tests). I’ve generally stayed out of this conversation because my voice won’t affect change a half-world away. That’s not defeatist; it’s being real. Nothing is treated as binary as this situation right now. Examples: the lack of humility expressed by some Palestinian supporters when it turned out that Israel didn’t bomb the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza on October 17, and the similar lack of humility by some pro-Israel advocates when Anat Schwartz’s career was scrutinized. None of this excuses Hamas’s terrorism or Netanyahu’s war-mongering. What matters for this story is that Palestinians have long been dehumanized in Israeli society and are now experiencing a famine that will certainly kill many more innocent people—the exact tragic consequence that “Origin” and Levi warn about. (At the time of publication, the UN has just passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire.)

These are three current instances of dehumanization. There are more: the Uyghurs in China, forced slavery in the Thai fishing industry, the slave labor that built the World Cup facilities in Qatar (mostly overlooked because people care more about football than poor construction workers). We’d be hard-pressed to find any country that doesn’t practice some form of this.

Perhaps, then, we have to recognize that this is who we really are: animals that, given a chance, scale societies by demonizing other humans in order to justify our own existence and reap the rewards of their subservience. This too is not defeatist, because by coming to terms with this fact, we have an opportunity to course correct.

Is this even possible in our extremely online world? Such a correction will be challenging. We have to contend with a communication medium in which everything is flattened and everyone is at constant risk of dehumanization—we’re all content fodder now, as Charlie Warzel writes regarding Kate Middleton.

This afternoon, the memes about Middleton shifted—from jokes about her whereabouts to jokes about how awful it was that everyone had been making fun of a cancer patient. Feeling bad about the memes tweets immediately became a meme unto themselves. Despite the tone shift, the reason for these posts is the same: They’re a way to take a person and repurpose their life for entertainment and engagement. If this sounds exhausting and depressing, it’s because it is.

Warzel then writes that the apologies did, at least, offer some hope. That in even the most trollish of social media spaces, a light can break through.

One thing is certain: by pretending the history of caste doesn’t exist, and overlooking how it persists in the present, we’re doomed to repeat these injustices, and perpetuate many more. It’s why comparing MAGA to Nazism, for example, is flawed: America isn’t going to look like that. What will happen if it continues to fester and grow is beyond our imagination—yet what can be imagined can be accomplished. That should frighten us all.

Isabel Wilkerson has given us a blueprint for understanding how to change. The only hope is that we use it.