Summary

In Chapter 30, Wilkerson describes a boy born in India to the Brahmin caste, the highest one. As a young boy, he went through a second birth: a transcendent rite of passage only for upper-caste boys. The priest gave him a sacred thread to wear around his chest at all times as an extension of his Brahmin body.

Pressures of being Brahmin led to his father’s insanity, and as he grew up, he believed in caste less and less. As an adult, he worked with many brilliant Dalit people, and realized they were just as capable as he was, if not more so for having to overcome obstacles he never did. He decided to rip off his scared thread, believing it was toxic. Wilkerson calls it his third birth.

In “The Radicalization of the Dominant Caste,” a preface to Chapter 31, Wilkerson describes going...