![In Wilkerson’s view, racism is only the visible manifestation of something deeper, a hidden system of social domination.](https://ibw21.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/isabel-wilkersons-world-historical-theory-of-race-and-caste-1-910x512-1.jpg)
By comparing white supremacy in the U.S. to the caste system in India, her new book at once illuminates and collapses a complex history. By Sunil Khilnani, The New Yorker — As the summer of 1958 was coming to an end, Martin Luther King, Jr., was newly famous and exhausted. All of twenty-nine years old, he had been travelling across the country for weeks promoting his first book, “Stride Toward…