While the enslaved formed a minority in North America, Dalits (who were then considered untouchable, positioned outside the caste system and confined to occupations such as tanning, scavenging, and handling the dead) and Shudras (occupying the 'lowest' tier of castes and serving as cultivators, barbers, and oil-pressers) together constituted the majority in India. The reader is also left wondering about the diverse ways in which race and caste were institutionalised in law, society, politics and culture, and how Wilkerson's argument about race and caste relate to the experiences of, for instance, Native Americans in the United States.