One shortfall of Wilkerson's "Caste" is a serious engagement with the historical geographies of capitalism: how, in distinct but also related ways, capitalism in both India and the U.S. is predicated on--and draws value from--racialized and "casteized" social hierarchies. 1/n

To explicitly trace histories of capitalism and colonialism would have also been to show that caste, like race, is not static and rigid (like Wilkerson claims), but has been molded through both old (pre-colonial) and modern racial projects and political-economic prerogatives. 2/n

The missing analytic here is *racialization*--the continuous process of ascription for the purposes of maintaining political and economic power--and an analytic that I find most generative in comparative discussions of race and caste 3/n

It is not that race is collapsible to caste, but rather that they each work through the continuous *logics of racialization* contingent on the generation of capitalist value & political power. This is especially true of unfree labor reliant on slavery and untouchability. 4/n

To recognize the workings of racialization in capitalist accumulation and labor exploitation would be to better connect and build solidarity for global struggles against racism and casteism in more nuanced and non-reductive ways. 5/5