Confronting caste
ISABEL WILKERSON ARRIVED IN Detroit after an early-morning flight, eager to get to work. With just a day to complete interviews for a piece to be published in the New York Times, the journalist had little time to lose, but the workings of the universe had other plans. As she made her way through the terminal, a pair of strangers hounded her with questions. What were her travel plans? Where did she live? Why was she there? When would she leave?
Ordinary solicitors these were not. After following her to a rental-car shuttle, the strangers finally revealed themselves to be U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents. Their job was to protect the country from drug offenses, but all they’d accomplished was harassing a Black woman on a business trip.
In some ways, the story, from Wilkerson’s highly anticipated book, will sound unexceptional to many people of color—just one of the myriad experiences of injustice that must be swept aside in order for us to get by in our everyday lives. “These things are so much a regular feature of life for people of color in this country
