Part 3: The Eight Pillars of Caste Summary

Part 3 consists of eight short, separately numbered chapters that each introduce a “pillar” of caste, a feature that Wilkerson has found to be consistently important across different caste systems. The pillars, in order, are:

1. Divine Will and the Laws of Nature: Caste structures are presented as the will of God or the natural order of things, sometimes both. Defenders of caste systems appeal to myths or sacred texts to justify the strict hierarchies they support.
2. Heritability: People are assigned their caste at birth and pass it on to their descendants. Caste cannot be changed during an individual’s lifetime.
3. Endogamy and the Control of Mating: Caste-based societies enact laws to prevent intermarriage or intermating between different castes. The penalties for violating these laws are often harsh.
4. Purity versus Pollution: Members of lower castes are seen as having the ability to “pollute” dominant-caste persons with their touch, their presence, or even their shadow. Bodies of water, such as beaches and swimming pools, are vigorously policed to prevent such “pollution.”
5. Occupational Hierarchy: Caste dictates the range of occupational possibilities for each person in a society. Lower castes are typically assigned to “unclean,” physically taxing, or servile labor. They form a “mudsill” that protects higher castes from having to perform menial tasks.
6. Dehumanization and Stigma: Lower castes are treated as less than human. Myths are invented or adapted to rationalize this treatment and explain why subordinate-caste persons are not “really” human to begin with. Individuals in subordinate castes are referred to by nicknames or even numbers.
7. Terror as Enforcement, Cruelty as a Means of Control: Violence is used preemptively to keep subordinate castes from rising up. Torture and murder are employed not only as punishment but as a proactive means of asserting control.
8. Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority: Media and culture are enlisted to perpetuate the idea that castes reflect an inherent hierarchy of beauty, intelligence, morals, or worthiness. Laws reinforce this supposed hierarchy by restricting the dress and manners of the subordinate caste.

Part 3: The Eight Pillars of Caste Analysis

In describing each pillar of caste, Wilkerson identifies and compares examples from the three countries she is studying in detail: India, the United States, and Nazi Germany. She shows that, for instance, both Dalits (the lowest caste) in India and Black people in the United States were historically assigned to the same “low” occupations, such as farm labor. In both countries, the kind of clothing available to the lowest castes was long restricted by law; prisoners of the Nazi camps, likewise, were forced to wear uniforms. Another striking commonality is the dominant-caste preoccupation with keeping water “pure,” whether by racially segregating swimming pools in the United States, barring Jews from beach access in 1930s Germany, or banning Dalits from waters used by the Brahmins.
Although Wilkerson identifies eight distinct pillars of caste, her examples show how these pillars are in fact interconnected and how the same repressive practices can serve multiple ends. For example, heavy fees for Black business ownership served to exclude the subordinate caste from an important sector of economic activity in the post–Civil War South. This propped up the myth of inherent superiority for the dominant caste (Pillar Eight) while also reinforcing the notion that Black people were supposed to work for white people (Pillar Five), not compete with them. Restrictive marriage laws, likewise, have directly prevented caste intermixing (Pillar Three) while also serving dominant-caste narratives about the “purity” of one’s bloodline (Pillar Four).