In the introduction to this chapter of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson compares anthrax to the poisonous hatred that has run rampant throughout our society in recent years. I believe, like many others, the election of the first Black president, Barack Obama, ripped the bandage off of the hidden-under-a-rock (or behind a white sheet) racism and race hatred of the faux postracial society of the 1990s. She writes that “The anthrax, like the reactivation of the human pathogens of hatred and tribalism in this evolving century, had never died. It lay in wait, sleeping, until extreme circumstances brought it to the surface and back to life” (p. 3). She mentions that even though many of us do not want to believe it, America has always been this way even though we feign ignorance and pretend not to recognize it. I say, some of us pretend because our privilege allows us to; others of us pretend so that we can put one foot in front of the other in our daily walk among the minoritized populations who have to keep on keeping on in spite of the collective, cultural trauma of our present circumstances and histories.
Wilkerson goes on to summarize the presidential contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, although she does not call them out by name, instead providing easily recognizable details and character traits.
This blog post is part of a series of personal reading responses to contemporary and traditional literature written by Black fiction and nonfiction authors.