Caste: Isabel Wilkerson

Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us. You know, since I started my book club back in 1996, I've chosen... 86 books and my latest selection number 86 is cast the origins of our discontents by isabel wilkerson It's one of the most profound and important books I've ever read. And I've been reading since I was five years old. And I think it is an absolute...

must read for all of humanity. And by humanity, I mean people who care about our humanity. And I think this will be a catalyst actually for a real awakening for everyone who. reads it. So when you read Cast, you will never see our country, our culture, even our individual selves the same way again. But first, let me tell you a little bit about Isabel Wilkerson.

while writing for The New York Times.

she became the first black woman to win a pulitzer prize for journalism she's the recipient of the national humanities medal she's been a professor at princeton at emory at northwestern and boston universities And she won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first nonfiction work, The Warmth of Other Suns, which... is another spectacular read and it is just an honor for me to to welcome to apple books miss isabel wickerson hello hello so happy to be here with you well i'm excited about

being able to talk to you about the content of this book and also about having this format to do it, reaching people around the world. You know, I read Dwight Garner's book review in the New York Times. And he describes Cast as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote... nonfiction book of the American century thus far the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far and he went on to say that

I was reading one of the most powerful nonfiction books I'd ever encountered. And, you know.

I've been talking to authors for years, and I know that to get a great review, and especially a great review from the New York Times, means a lot. But I want to know how you felt when you read Dwight Garner's review. I was overwhelmed. I was so thrilled to have this recognition and someone who really, truly immersed himself in the book and got what I was trying to do. It was just so fulfilling to spend so much time

in something myself and then emerge from this and not know how people are going to see it, how it's going to be received, hoping for the very best, hoping that people can connect with your goals. And I was thrilled to see it.

Well, I would have to say that getting a review like that is spectacular, but I would think that also getting review, being on the New York Times bestsellers list, all the bestsellers list, that's quite an accomplishment. But for me... I would think that the real accomplishment is that so many other people, the people's reaction to the book. Well, you know, when I write, my goal is to reach not just the minds of people but the hearts. I feel as if I can reach the heart of people.

by telling the stories that allow people to see themselves in whatever the phenomenon is that I'm describing, then that is, to me, the true success, because reaching another person's heart is the goal of the work I do. Yeah. When I finished reading this... I felt that it was an offering for our hearts.

and our minds and to open the spiritual aperture so that we could see things differently if we chose to. And I think a lot of other people are feeling that way. So congratulations that it's a New York Times bestseller. But so many readers have posted on... I had Oprah's Book Club Instagram page, which I love reading everybody's comments, because I love being affirmed that I was right in making this selection. But I love how people are posting, how it has actually impacted them. Someone named...

Vic said, Cass left a mark on me like no other book has. Heather wrote, I cannot stop thinking and processing this incredibly powerful work. Maria said, I am humbled by her. meaning yours, fierce intelligence and bravery, and telling us the truth about ourselves. And one reader, Meredith, asked what I think is a great question for you. Is the book having... the kind of impact and effect that you had hoped for in the writing of it.

It absolutely is. I mean, I have been talking about this nonstop. My days have been so full in interviews and conversations that I can barely process all that people are saying and responding. responding to. I can hear the sense of... The heart connection, the emotions that are sparked, the recognition that there's so much about our country's history that we did not know. And people are responding with a sense of, how could I not have known these things? How could I have gone this long?

studied history or whatever it might have been and not known. You know, with The Warmth of the Suns, there was a similar response where people said, I had no idea. And with this one, it seems as if it's going even further, where people are making these... what you call the aha moments over and over and over again with this book? Well, in the acknowledgments, actually, this is the first time I've ever read not only the acknowledgments, but all the notes, because there are a lot of notes.

multiple pages of notes, but in the acknowledgements you wrote that this is a book that you did not seek to write, but had to write. When did you know you had to write it? Well, you know, you could say I've been working on this ever since I finished The Warmth of the Suns because it was there that I discovered and began to explore and use the term cast. The book, The Warmth of the Suns, doesn't have the word racism in it.

cast and so I've been working on it you might say mulling this over distilling what that word means and what and and how we can see it in our lives today but I would say one of the sparks was the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 that was a reminder of one of the characteristics of a caste system which is

that people are to remain in their place, that there are certain places that certain people are expected to be and places that they're not expected to be. And that really was one where he was seen as not appropriate to the location where he happened to be. And this was not a police officer.

this was a citizen who rose to the occasion and decided that this was a person who shouldn't be there and acted upon it. And so that was the beginning of my really thinking seriously about this might be something that deserves further exploration. Then Charleston happened. And then there was Charlottesville. So those three events just propelled me forward with this. Charleston with the nine church members being murdered. And then Charlottesville with these are some very fine people.

marching out here, said our president.

so you've said that in this time of division we need a new language to wake people up and i find it so interesting you know reading the warmth of other sons and i first read it back in 2010 i think and then i now just re-read it again because i thought i want some more isabel uh when i finish cast i actually noticed the word more now as i reread the warmth of other sons but i now understand why you feel that we need

a new language to talk about race and why you don't even use the word race, racist, racism. So anyone who says or accuses you, as I've heard some people say, oh, she's talking about America being racist. it's actually the opposite, because you say we need a new way of talking about it. It's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite, because that is pointedly.

a word I never use. I haven't used the word in decades. I mean, in the stories that I did for the New York Times, I didn't use the word. In the warmth of the suns, the word does not appear, I pointedly. stand here, sit here, stating that I don't use a word. And it's for a reason. I think that it's a word that is often misunderstood. It's a word that has many different meanings to different people, even though social scientists have a singular definition for it.

would be prejudice plus the power to enforce that prejudice institutionally often. But I don't use the word because I think that we stop hearing what it means when we've heard something for so long and which can be misinterpreted by so many different people. believe that this is a focus then on the infrastructure of our divisions. It's a focus in on what lies beneath what we think we see.

and it focuses us on the structure of a thing. And that allows us to see how race has essentially been the cue and the signifier of... where a person fits in the hierarchy. It's a signal and a cue. It's a tool of something much larger. I think you're so onto something profound because some people... are having a reaction to the book and calling it racist and you never even use the word racist you purposely

don't use the word racist because you know that that word has such a charge to it and so the reason why y'all, I loved this book so much is because I thought it opened up another aperture, another way of talking and seeing and responding to the inequalities that have been pervasive in this country and allowing people to actually hear it. I think there's a way to hear it. There's a way in to hear it. And yet there are still so many people who say, why dig all this up?

I know you're getting that. I'm getting that. Why dig all this up? Because I'm not responsible for what happened in the past. My ancestors didn't enslave anybody. But you provide, I think, such a beautiful analogy that comes early, I think, in chapter two.

where you explain the analogy of buying an old house. And I just want to read a bit from it. You say, we in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside. but whose soul is unstable, loam, and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched, but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even. Many people. may rightly say

I have nothing to do with how all this started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves. And yes, not one of us was here when this house... was built, you say. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are. The current occupants. of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation we are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it we

did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now. And any further deterioration is in fact on our hands. Drop the mic I say. Drop the book. Tell me how you came up with that analogy. Well, I love old houses. I love old houses, but old houses always need work. And the old houses that I've lived in have always needed work. And just when you think you've fixed one thing, there's something else that needs attention. old house you know

to expect those things. You know that the work is never done. And if we think of our country as being like an old house, then we recognize that it should always be open for re-inspection, for additional inquiry, for checking things out if we want it to be healthy and to stay. for a long time, helpfully. Yeah. I think that metaphor of using the house, that analogy, actually allowed a lot of people to see it...

inequalities and the systemic racism in a way that they never had before. I think that was like...

divinely called when you wrote that in some way. And I think that this book is going to cause a lot of uncomfortable emotions to surface, particularly for black and white readers, but for everybody, really. And you address this. on page 13, you say, Looking beneath the history of one's country is like learning that alcoholism or depression runs in one's family or that suicide has occurred more often than might be usual.

or as human genetics become more widely in use, discovering that one has inherited the markers for the mutation for breast cancer. You don't ball up in a corner with guilt or shame at that discovery. You don't, if you are wise, forbid any mention of them. In fact, you do the opposite. You educate yourself. Do you see the evidence now that people are starting to wake up and educate themselves?

I believe that the events of the last few months have awakened the minds and the attention, certainly, of people who don't have to deal with the consequences of this on a daily basis, people who might have been what would be presumed to be the putative beneficiaries. of the caste system as it had been originally designed. But I'd like to say something to your point about the house. I mean, the idea of that old house is that after rain, you often don't want to go into the basement.

after there's been a rain. You don't want to see what the rains have wrought. But if you do not go into that basement, it does not mean that you won't be dealing with the consequences. You will have to deal with them whether you go into the basement or not. And the same goes for another metaphor in the book.

lots of metaphors, is one of going to the doctor. When you go to the doctor, you're handed this clipboard where you're asked all these questions, and you're asked all these questions about your own health and history, but you're also asked about your parents often, and even your grandparents, because...

The doctor won't even begin to hazard a diagnosis until they know what runs in your family. What have you been dealing with? And not knowing does not protect us from the consequences of inaction. Not knowing does not protect us from... having to deal with what we would wish we didn't know. Knowing is really the only way to begin to identify what is wrong so that you can begin to first name it.

diagnose it, and then address it. And those are things that are necessary. And as difficult as it may be, it has to happen in order to be healthy as a person, as a body, as a country. And that beautiful quote that you have about us not continuing to live in ignorance. you know, going forward in ignorance. And even though you are a critically acclaimed author with a long list of accolades and awards, you write about how the caste hierarchy has intruded on your own life.

with what you describe as disturbing regularity and consequences. Why did you decide to include yourself in the book? You know, I was trained in journalism in such a way that we were to never include ourselves in anything, never to be part of the story. That was something that you never did. And so I had to think long and hard about whatever I was going to include.

And I only included not the most spectacular things, not the biggest or even worst things, but the things that I thought would be of use to a reader, in some ways the mundane nature of some of these intrusions. And so that's one of the reasons that I included them. the one out of Chicago where I made several appointments to interview several people on a particular day for a pretty routine story. And everyone over the phone was excited to be able to talk with The New York Times.

But, and I had had no problems during the day with most of the people I interviewed, but when I got to the last one, I arrived at this retail establishment, this shop, and the person I was there to interview, the store manager, wasn't there. And I was told by the clerk was very empty.

There's no one else there. I told by the clerk to just sit and wait for him, and I did. And in walks this man, minutes later, who's flustered, anxious, fretful. He's taking off his coat. You can see that he's running late, that he's very upset.

and anxious about whatever the situation is. And so I'm told by the clerk to go up to him, introduce myself, because this is the person I'm supposed to interview. And so when I go up to him, he immediately says, I can't talk with you. I can't talk with you right now. I'm expecting a very, very important appointment. very important interview. I don't have time to talk with you. And I said, I think I'm that interviewer. I'm Isabel Wilkerson with The New York Times. And he said, how do I know that?

And I said, well, I made the appointment with you. I mean, we're actually late for the appointment, and I should be interviewing right now. And he said, well, do you have a business card? And it so happened it had been a long day, and this was the last interview of the day, and I was out of them by that time. And so he said, well, I need to see some ID.

I'll need to see some ID. And I said, well, I shouldn't have to show you ID. I, you know, I have the appointment. There's no one else here. I shouldn't have to show you ID to do the interview. You know, I said, well, I'll give you the driver's license. I hand him the driver's license. He looks at me and says, you don't have anything with The New York Times.

on it and i it was just i said we should be interviewing right now there's no one else here there's you there's me i've got the notebook ready to interview you i may be important with you and he said I'm going to have to ask you to leave because the New York Times will be here any minute. And so I left, walked out the door. He didn't get the interview. He didn't get in because I didn't get it. He didn't let me interview him. I hope you send him a book. Lee and I include that.

I sent him the story afterward. But the thing is that... I want to say that I included it, because if you multiply that times millions of people whose lives are intruded upon in that way as they're trying to go about their job, go about their work, and you multiply that times millions of times of transactions that might have occurred...

might not have occurred because of misunderstandings, assumptions such as that. And then you multiply that times the many hundreds of thousands of companies and organizations that are affected because their workers are not able to do basic jobs such as that. the impact that it has on not just an individual on either side of that situation but also on companies and and the society and economy at large it's so interesting and and you're right the those microaggressions that happen

on a regular basis. And, you know, it's so fascinating to me having read this book and I've been a student of African-American history my whole life. I grew up reciting Sojourner Truth and Bannie Lou Hamer and. doing plays and poems and all that. And yet I found this book to be eye-opening. And I think about now reading your stories, what my life would have been like.

had I been raised in the South in a segregated environment and every day told you have to do better, be better, do more, you know.

Well, one of the other metaphors in the book is one of being on a stage to understand caste. One of the things in the process of working on this, I became fascinated with the way that the word caste works in our language. So you have the caste on an arm that holds the...

bones together it's about remaining in a fixed place keeping everyone in their place and then you think about the cast of a play where you have the people everyone knows their lines and if you're really into it you know the entire script And there's a person who's stage left, stage right, someone in the background, someone in the foreground. And when there's a change, when there's a change in the placement or assignment of anyone on that stage, there is a corresponding effect on everyone.

on the stage and everyone knows that someone's out of their place and so everyone has to figure out what does that mean. It's an adjustment. And that's what you're describing to me sounds like. Yeah. So I want to know, how did you decide to focus the book on three caste systems? India, Nazi Germany, and the United States. I think a lot of people get riled up and offended. that you're comparing the caste system here to Nazi Germany. Yet we discover that we were the template for Nazi Germany.

Well, let me say that in exploring the idea of caste, this is a book about the United States. This is a book about our country. And it's squarely focused on our country. What can we learn about ourselves through a different lens? Language that in some ways can be... liberating if we choose to see it that way, from the heaviness and assumed expectations that come from language that might be used otherwise, away from the emotions of guilt and shame and blame.

see ourselves through a different lens. So in looking at it, this is about the United States, squarely about that. But in doing so, I was going to have to look at the originating, oldest, most easily recognizable caste system in the world, which was India. So that was a given. I knew it was going to be. be doing that and then after Charlottesville happened

That is when I had to look at what was going on in Germany. That wasn't the original focus. But I had to look at what was going on in Germany because the people who were rallying in the protesters in Charlottesville... They brought together the symbols of the Confederacy and of Nazi Germany in their banners and all the things they were doing. They merged those two.

societies and cultures together in their protest. They recognized a connection and they made that connection. And so that's what brought me to the idea of looking at Germany. primarily to look at how they had reconciled with, began to educate the population on, and to begin to atone for what had happened during World War II. But, you know, little did I know, I mean, I had no idea.

the things that I would discover, the idea that German eugenicists were in constant contact, dialogue with American eugenicists in the years leading up to the Third Reich. No idea. I had no idea that American eugenicists were writing best-selling books. books that were bestsellers in Germany. Germans were reading that, reading it voraciously. The Nazis themselves were reading about that in the years leading up to the Third Reich. And, of course, the Nazis needed no one.

to teach them how to hate. They absolutely needed no one to teach them how to hate. But it turned out that the Nazis actually sent people, researchers, to study the Jim Crow laws here in the United States, to study other laws, mainly anti-miscegenation laws and other segregation laws. that the United States had used to subjugate African Americans. And so they actually sent people to study these laws and then went back and debated.

what they had found in the years leading up to and as they were forging what would ultimately become the Nuremberg Laws. I had no idea. It was wrenching and wrenching to discover that. I'm glad you had no idea too, because as you disclosed it to all of us, I've run into so many people who share my sentiment too, that we had no idea that Hitler was...

watching what was going on in the Jim Crow South and using it as a template. So some reviewers question why you didn't address the well-known caste system in Africa. Tell us why. In the work that I do, my goal is to go deep rather than wide. So if I had added some additional hierarchies, I would still be working on this book into 2030. So that was one of the decisions. I wanted to go deep.

as it would allow us to be able to understand ourselves better. Also, you know, as it turns out, our system was older than that of South Africa.

So, you know, when you're looking back at history, there's actually a longer history about what happened going back, obviously, for 400 years in the United States. I wanted to also clarify, you are not saying in this book in any way that... you know these are the only caste systems in the world you're saying i'm dealing with these three so i've heard some criticism people saying well how how dare you say there's only three you're not saying there's only three you're saying

I'm talking about these three. I want to know what your writing process was like, because even though you are known for researching and being so thorough in all of your work, I don't even know, how did you even know where to begin? again. Well, you know, I had, like I said, I had been actually, this had been distilling in me for quite some time and I collect along the way my experiences with other people as I move about, you know, working and talking.

people after the warmth of the suns, people would come and share stories with me. They were often anxious to share things that had happened to them. And I could begin to see a through line that helped to clarify what it was that I was needing to do with this.

Then I began the work of trying to figure out how I could get to these other countries that I had decided to look into arriving essentially cold. I didn't know people in any of these places beforehand. And then also reading as much as I could from the...

histories of these other places because the subtitle means something the subtitle is the origins of our discontents so i was looking at the origins of these three totally of three hierarchies how did they begin what were the characteristics that gave them similarities these cultures and societies

very different in many, many ways. But what are the points of intersection that we as Americans can learn from? And so that meant books, books, books from all over, books from the early 20th century, whatever books I could find. gathering as many as I could and doing the intensive work of trying to understand how we got to where we are.

That's really it. That's what this book does, is helps us understand how we got to where we are. And in the middle of writing, I know you lost your beloved mother and you're... your soulmate, your husband, they both passed within a short period of time. And you wrote at the time that it was an incomprehensible vanishing of the two people. after my father's death that I had loved most in this world. And I want to know how you were able to continue writing and move through the pain of it.

You know, I think that the writing is what helped me through the healing of this process, you know, through the grieving. They were in my heart and in the forefront of my thoughts throughout the process. I know that they were with... throughout this. I know that they are so proud of this. They lived through this. My parents, in particular, were survivors of the Jim Crow South. And so this was, in some ways, an homage to them.

an homage to the people that I had loved the most and who spirit carries me through in everything that I do, but in this book in particular. Your father was a civil engineer, which is why I think you've said, I'm literally the daughter of a bridge builder. And now you see your work as your own bridge building. Well, I should say, you know, that he had been a Tuskegee Airman. And he, along with the other Tuskegee Airmen, had not been permitted after the war as talented as they clearly were.

They were not permitted to pursue their life's dream. They were not able to get hired as pilots. And so they all had to go back and find a second career or something else to do. And my father went back to school to get another degree, and that was in civil engineering. And so what he ended up doing was building bridges and tunnels, being on teams that built bridges and tunnels. And I am literally the daughter of a man who built bridges for a living. And I've inherited that legacy from him.

and that is what I seek to do in everything that I write. Everything that I write is about reaching out to people across the divide and to show us how much we have in common if we can just look past the barriers that have been erected between us, these false artificial... barriers that have been erected between us. And everything that I write ultimately is about love. It's about love of family, love of community, and love of country. Love of all of humanity. And to recognize that.

that we as a species can only survive if we recognize that these barriers and divisions have been created by man and thus they can be dismantled by man if we have the will to do so and the desire. to truly show love for our fellow man and woman, if we can show love for all of humanity.

One of my most meaningful, all the chapters were meaningful, but one of the most impactful for me was the euphoria of hate. And in it, you described Hitler's returning to Berlin after the Germans have seized. paris in the battle of france and the way you describe the crowd you say those gathered on that day in berlin were neither good nor bad they were human insecure and susceptible to the propaganda that gave them an identity to believe in to feel chosen and important and you go on to say that

germany bears witness to an uncomfortable truth that evil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than we would like to believe when the right conditions congeal and it's easy to say if we could just root out the despots before they take power or intercept their rise if we could just wait until the bigots die away it's much harder to look into the darkness in the hearts of ordinary people with unquiet minds needing

someone to feel better than, whose cheers and votes allow despots anywhere in the world to rise to power in the first place. It's harder to focus on the danger of common will, the weaknesses of the human immune system. the ease with which the toxins can infect succeeding generations, because it means, this is my favorite line, it means the enemy, the threat is not one man, it is us.

all of us lurking in humanity itself. I just feel like nothing more powerful than that. And the only antidote for that is what you call radical empathy. which says it's our moral duty to act when we see another person treated unfairly. What would that look like today? Radical empathy, I make the distinction from... regular empathy and also of course from sympathy and pity which are even less helpful.

Pity meaning looking down upon someone and feeling sorry for them. Sympathy meaning, it can be well-meaning, looking across at someone and feeling sad for them. And empathy, as we typically view it, is trying to imagine ourselves in someone else's place. Radical empathy demands of us to do the work of truly understanding the experience of another person.

to understand and see things not as we would imagine ourselves if we would be presumably in a position that we never will be and never have been, for example. but that we understand what they've been through. I mean, it takes a lot of work to do that. It takes learning the history. It takes the time to listen with a humble heart and an open mind to the experiences of another and to...

recognize that it's a gift to be able to experience that of another human being. But to see the experience of another, not as we imagine ourselves what we would do. but what they would do, given that we now can better understand the position that they're in. I'd like to also say that the passage that you read is so powerful to me. Personally, you asked about my writing process. That passage... was written as I was watching the reel of that tape, that image.

of the crowd responding to Hitler in that moment. I sat in that museum listening and watching. I couldn't remove myself from it. It was just so powerful and so sickening to watch the euphoria. Yes, it was wrenching and sickening, gut-wrenching to be able to see it. And that passage was written, it just poured out of me. What you read there is pretty much what I wrote while sitting there. I could not stop.

processing in that moment I was so stricken by so stunned by what I saw it envelops you with the euphoria of ordinary people when you know that this is a horror that is happening and you wonder what could it be How could people be programmed to begin to believe?

in what we now know to be a horror. When they know what has happened. Yeah, and they know at that moment that they're doing that and doing the hailing and celebrating him. They know of the atrocities. They know what's happened to the Jewish people.

They have seen them removed from their neighborhoods and put into the camps, and they know what has happened, and they still are there. And what I love that you were able to show us is that it was just ordinary people. There were mothers and... pharmacists and teachers and people who went about their ordinary lives the same way we do yeah and so the message of that is that if we want to have a make a difference in reaching

beneath what is lurking, beneath all of our divisions. It means doing the work, and it means recognizing that there is no one single person that you point to and say, this, aha, this is the person. That it's part of the... DNA the potential to be swayed and in some ways cast under a spell that's what it seemed to me I think it's a reminder that

What does evil look like? We think that we would know it when we see it. And maybe it's not even a thing. It's something that can surface when the circumstances arise. Because these were ordinary people who found themselves susceptible. to what we now know to be a horror. And, of course, we always say that this should never, ever, ever happen again. It should never, ever happen again in any form, anywhere.

within our society, within our species ever again, in any form. Well, thank you, Isabelle Wilkerson, for your brilliance. Thank you. for writing what I believe is the most important book for our time, to do exactly what you said, to help us understand the origins of our discontents, and more importantly... why we are where we are.

and an ability to look at ourselves and be able to move forward with radical empathy. Thank you so much. If you want to dive deeper into this remarkable book, Isabel and I are hosting a multi-part conversation on cast, the origins of our- discontents and you can find it on apple podcasts and i hope you'll join us then

If you haven't already, head to Apple Books to get your copy of Cast. You can get the audiobook, too. In an instant, if you'd rather listen, you can get the audiobook. Bye, everybody.