David Player

“Both occupy the lowest positions on the status hierarchies in their societies,” wrote Harvard political scientist Sidney Verba and his colleagues in a study of Dalits and African-Americans. Both have been “particularly singled out from other groups” based on characteristics ascribed to them.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“One of the tenets was “Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“The human impulse to create hierarchies runs across societies and cultures, predates the idea of race, and thus is farther reaching, deeper, and older than raw racism”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents

“Caste is the granting or withholding of respect, status, honor, attention, privileges, resources, benefit of the doubt, and human kindness to someone on the basis of their perceived rank or standing in the hierarchy.”
― Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents