Isabel Wilkerson’s CASTE

I recently finished reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. The book is an education, filled with stories about Wilkerson’s life, as well as stories about others, some from her past and many she has heard or read. All have to do with race, as that is the major topic of the book. Wilkerson is African-American, but very adept at navigating mixed race situations. Her writing, for the most part, is absent anger, resentment, disgust, or any other negative reaction so often found in the works of Black authors. Instead it is clear, effective, informative, and most enlightening.

One of her stories described an incident in which she was lunching with a white friend in a nice restaurant in an American city. They were chatting, asked for water and menus, but eventually realized that the server, a woman, was ignoring them. They watched while nearby tables filled with white people were being served promptly while their requests were ignored. Eventually, after quite a time, her friend, furious, raised a fuss, making enough commotion within the room, stating that she knew why they were being ignored, it was because her guest was black. Wilkerson says that she, much more used to this kind of treatment, was embarrassed, and tried unsuccessfully to calm her friend.

Her story reminded me of an incident in my life. Quite a few years ago, the mid ‘60s, I think, I was entertaining my mother, her sister, their cousin, and my younger sister on a day trip to the Monterey peninsula. They were all enjoying their first visit to California, and we had done a fair amount of sight-seeing. We found ourselves in downtown Carmel, a charming small community right on the Pacific coast.

We decided to stop for lunch. We chose a small attractive restaurant, went in and were seated promptly by the hostess. The restaurant was fairly empty as the prime lunch hour was past.

As we pondered the menu, a nice-looking African-American family came in, Mother, Dad, and two children, ages eight to twelve or so. They waited quietly near the cash register for the hostess to seat them.

When the hostess, whom we had determined was probably the owner, approached the family, she took on an entirely different attitude than we had seen. She had been pleasant and polite to us as well as to others who had come in after us. Now she was anything but polite.

She shook her head and said loudly, “We are full. We have no tables available.”

We were astonished. The room was at least half empty!

The family was surprised, too. The father pointed to several empty tables and said something like “what about one of these?”

“No,” the hostess said firmly, “Those are all taken.” The family looked confused, but the parents quietly turned and shooed the children out the door.

I had never witnessed a situation like this, but I recognized the overt racism. I stood up and said to my family “I think we should leave too, as this place is clearly too busy to serve us.”

They looked at me is some surprise, but caught on, stood and followed me out of the restaurant.

The hostess said not a word. Our food was just being delivered to our table.

I have no idea where we had lunch, or if we did. Our appetites were spoiled.

That was my first experience with overt racism. My hometown in Pennsylvania was mostly white, but definitely had a small black neighborhood, a collection of small homes scattered across a hillside out on the edge of town. Race was rarely mentioned in my circle. There were very few black children in the local schools.

A year or two before this incident the local Social Security office appointed a new head, who happened to be black. He found that the real estate establishment in the town, population 10,000 or so, would not sell him a house inside the town. They urged him to buy one of the generally rundown houses in the black neighborhood. My mother worked for the Chamber of Commerce as general secretary to the Director. She and the Director tried to help, unsuccessfully. Finally, with approval from the Chamber Board, they spoke with the man, suggested that he choose the house he wanted to buy, and they would see that he got it. The Chamber bought the house and then sold it to the black family.

I don’t know if the race situation has improved much in my hometown. I certainly hope it has. By the time of the California incident, I had married and moved to the Bay Area. California was much more racially mixed than my town, especially Oakland, where we lived. I realized in reading about Wilkerson’s life that I hadn’t paid attention to the African- American population, even though I was friends with one younger student. I knew that he and his family went to church in a small city about 25 miles away, and that despite opportunities he never dated white girls . But I was shy about asking him about his decisions about dating and just assumed his parents preferred a different religion.

Wilkerson’s book opened my eyes. It is beautifully told, and definitely worth everyone’s time.

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