— HERB BOYD, NEW YORK AMSTERDAM NEWS
If nothing else, Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, has resurrected a longstanding debate among scholars about the relevance of the term, particularly when caste was defined by the sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox. While Wilkerson only quotes Cox once, it was enough to arouse a platoon of scholars, eager to challenge what they deemed a misapprehension of Cox’s conclusions.