Isabel Wilkerson’s ‘Caste’ Reveals the Other Kind of American Exceptionalism

When Paul Fussell published Class in 1983, its subtitle aimed at one of the time’s more cherished and rigidly adhered-to American lies: A Guide Through the American Status System. A wry literati whose research was probably mostly limited to what he could discern from his office at Rutgers, Fussell nevertheless discovered something fundamental about Americans and class distinctions:

When, recently, asked what I am writing, I have answered, “A book about social class in America,” people tend first to straighten their ties and sneak a glance at their cuffs to see how far fraying has advanced there. Then, a few minutes later, they silently get up and walk away. It is not just that I am feared as a class spy. It is as if I had said, “I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.”

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