Unintentionally Complicit — Viewing Incarceration Through the Lens of “Caste”
A Look at Three Books in the Washington State Law Library Collection
Sometimes a book is published that helps one connect different views of society and history into a more comprehensive story. Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is one of those books.
In 2017 James Forman, Jr. released his book Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. This book reviewed the Black rights movement’s support behind the war on drugs, gun control, minimum and mandatory sentencing, and pre-textual searches and seizures. Forman’s premise was that many of the individuals and organizations fighting for Black rights were also supporting the enactment of laws that had the unintended effects of continually increasing the incarceration of Black Americans.
The Feminist War on Crime: the Unexpected Role of Women’s Liberation in Mass Incarceration was published in 2020 by Aya Gruber. Her book looks to the history of the feminist movement and the outcome of their campaigns to deal with domestic violence and rape against women. She proposes that the emphasis on mandatory arrest, prosecution, and incarceration not only increased incarceration generally, but it disproportionately devastated Black Americans and poverty stricken communities.
Black rights and feminist groups responded to increased crime with demands for more authoritarian and punitive measures. They felt there was not time to waste limited resources on pursuing economic support, employment, and mental health treatment. Their response to crime was a reactionary “eye for an eye”.
Looking at Wilkerson’s Caste, published in 2020, one can see that as feminists and Black rights advocates tried to fight crime with increased incarceration, they provided more opportunities to solidify the informal caste system into formal laws. These laws further oppressed those same groups, even though on their face the laws were supposed to help.
As an example, one of the tools Wilkerson notes as necessary to maintain a caste system is dehumanization and stigma of the out-group. The feminist groups fighting domestic violence would depict the perpetrator of domestic violence as an irredeemable monster that must be locked away, perhaps even for life. And the victim of the attack is described as a permanently traumatized woman, incapable of making rational choices in the face of systemic violence who must be infantilized to protect her. The Black rights advocates behaved similarly in their push to treat all suspected criminals, even juveniles, as “career criminals” who must be locked away for life and who could not be changed without harsh punishment.
These activists did not intend to create an America where nearly 1% of the population was incarcerated. Unwittingly their attempts to reduce crime made them complicit in caste enforcement. As Wilkerson states, “The enforcers of caste come in every color, creed, and gender. One does not have to be in the dominant caste to do its bidding. In fact, the most potent instrument of the caste system is a sentinel at every rung, whose identity forswears any accusation of discrimination and helps keep the caste system humming.”
For information about how to check out these titles, please contact us at library.requests@courts.wa.gov or 360–357–2136. (LJ)
