Transcripts For CSPAN QA Isabel Wilkerson Caste 20240712

Monday, fourtime governor of new york and the first catholic candidate for Major Political party. On American History tv, on cspan3. Isabel wilkerson, near your new book is entitled tapped. What is its main thesis . Guest the main thesis is that we live in an old house. We often cannot see the pillars and the beams in the structure beneath it. We often focus on what we think we can see, but we may not be focusing on the structure underneath. We may have inherited a hierarchy that harkens back to enslavement and live today with the consequences of that hierarchy in which people at the very beginning were put into assigned categories, that were part of creating what would become the United States and that we live with the aftereffects to this day. When we think about the United States, the word caste language that we apply to other civilizations, human creation that give us away viewing ourselves in a different lens. Host you write in the acknowledgments, this was a book that i had to write in the air the era that we find ourselves. Can you talk more about that . Guest using the word caste in which i was writing about the migration of 6 million African Americans fleeing the jim crow south. I came to realize through my research that i was not running about leaving, but they were defecting a caste system. I use that to describe the jim crow south and in doing so, i realized that i would find that readers would truly understand and see what people were living under in the jim crow south from a for much of the 20th century. It was after writing that book and going on and talking about the book that i then begin to think about the idea of caste. The words i was using all the time when i spoke to any audience about it. But then, trayvon martin, the young man in florida who was killed as he was coming back from the store wearing a hoodie. He was seen as someone who did not fit in that suburban subdivision in florida. He was suspected based on what he looks like. I wrote about how these assignments and assumptions about who people are, where people belong, whose expect it and viewed as worthy, and so i wrote a piece connecting caste to that experience and i have been thinking about that ever since. We have seen a metronome of names of people unarmed People Killed at the hands of police or homegrown vigilantes who have taken upon themselves to take the lives of people, unarmed people in places where they were not expected to be. This became an era that seems to suggest that there was a way of looking at what we were going through through a different lens. You write that the idea was germinating, and the two conferences that you attended at amherst and london, coalescing the ideas. Can you tell me more about that . Guest the case in amherst was when i was invited to give a keynote about caste and race. That was a result of people of the research i was doing. People beginning to hear that this africanamerican woman was researching this topic, have been in india and they had heard about it and invited me to the conference. It was there at amherst that i began to test out some of the thinking that i had come to recognize as a result of the research. They were quite fascinated with the idea that i had written about the africanamerican experience in the south without using the word racism, a word that does not appear although people would assume that, the word that i used was caste. It was there that i began to get a chance to explore and share the views that i had come to recognize, not only is someone who has researched it, but also was experiencing it as well. All of these things came to coalesce in that space and as i talked about it, it turned out that i had a deep connection to people who were formerly known as untouchable. The conversations came with such recognition of shared experiences across time, across oceans, a shared experience. Those were some of the experiences that led to my feeling that this actually was something that needed to be written. Host we talk about warmth of other sons celebrating its 10th anniversary. I wonder about your thoughts on its enduring popularity. What do you think the secret sauce is for that book . Guest i think that people always feel drawn to a much larger phenomenon in our country that does not get much attention as it should. A time period between the end of reconstruction to the civil rights movement. That era does not get as much attention as they might otherwise. This is a way for people to understand it. The beauty of narrative nonfiction is that, and i think the warmth of our sons reflects that. It is the process that a reader will get to being another person. I spent 15 years on that book getting to know three people, very deeply, providing them with getting to know them deeply and being able to share their experiences from a well of deep understanding because they share so much with me and being able to go along a journey with them and in going along in that journey, you get to experience what they experience. To see how and why they made the decisions that they did, and to see the ways in which a human being response to the circumstances that they might be born into and they may have to this pivotal decision. These are all deeply human circumstances and a human being can identify with the yearning to be free, the yearning to break from the restrictions that they might have been born into. The hopes and dreams that they might carry as they make it across the country. The deeply universal story that there is always someone in our background no matter where we might come from, to experience some type of migration, so i think that is what speaks the speaks to people. Narrative nonfiction is the closest we might get to being another person. We know that fiction allows us to build empathy as we get drawn to the characters we are learning about and experiencing that unfold in the story of a novel. But in narrative nonfiction, we seek to allow the reader to experience that journey that comes from that we often associate with fiction, but it is true, it is real, it is verifiable. This gives people the best chance that they ever will get to be another person, to be inside the heart and mind, the spirit, the dreams, heartbreaks and setbacks that people might go through. So that is one of the reasons why people are drawn to it. The experiences of people who were survivors of jim crow, and were part of the great migration, their experiences become deeply familiar to those of us who may see what happens with george floyd and many others. A lot of people look at the warmth of sons suns, so there is the combination of story and truth unfolding before us. Host how would you describe the style of caste . It is very different in your approach. Guest there are many pcs pieces that i explored and researched. In many disciplines. History, of course, but also philosophy, anthropology, all kinds of in order to better understand the phenomenon that is very old and an ancient phenomenon, one that can surface in other cultures where we might not be looking for it or expecting it to be. I was pulling from different disciplines, many previously written works, many different ways of looking at it, references to the old testament, to einstein, pulling all of this together in order to create a quilt that would give us another way of looking at ourselves. Host how did you decide on the subtitle . Guest the subtitle was actually the working title for most of the time that i was working on it. It was the immediate purpose and goal of the work, and that was to understand what was unfolding around us. In the recent years, to understand what was unfolding around us and to try to understand how and why and where how to better understand the origins of our discontent. That is the goal, the purpose to try to get underneath the divisions and tensions that we are living in now. Host the word caste is one that you are wanting readers to use to change the lexicon, but other words that you use our race and racism, which you write as one of the most contentious and misunderstood words in american culture. What are you saying there . Guest i am saying that racism is a word that is a phenomenon that is real and has affected our country for as long as there has been a country. There is no question about that. What i am saying is that that word has become so contentious and i think a lot of everyday people may not even realize that there are formal sociological definitions that many scholars have created their lifes work to understand this phenomenon, but because it has so many different meanings to different people, it is a misunderstood term that has come to be confused or conflated with hating someone or just or all of these words that get pulled together. What this book is saying is that underneath all of that is the infrastructure of a division to begin with. Meaning the originating hierarchies, the greatest ranking of human value that has been assigned to people based upon where they were born. What group they were born to. And where that group is positioned in the hierarchy from a time that was even before the country was founded, owing to colonial virginia. Because those hierarchies have them with us all the time, what i am doing is shedding a light on, holding up an xray to the country to show what is underneath these divisions. What is underneath what you call racism, that there is an infrastructure of division that predates race as a concept. Race has a concept is a fairly new one in history, dating back to 400 or 500 years, before there was this coming together of people either by choice or by force onto this line. Onto this land. Human beings did not think of themselves in terms of what we now call race. They were irish, they were polish, they were lithuanian, they were from the area known as senegal or gambia, but they were not identified primarily based on what they look like. In europe, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you would not have needed to identify yourself as a basis of your skin color. You were surrounded by people who looked like you. It was not the identifying characteristic. It was only when people are brought together, and what we now know as the United States, the new world, do these external characteristics that would have been neutral or had very little meaning or then have meaning here, once people came together. This is a creation. We also hear that race is a social construct, and this is a way of understanding how it became a social construct. How it became an arbitrary characteristic to use to rank people in a hierarchy that was requiring that there be people to do the work, to build a colony, and then the country. And there had to be people to do that, of course the great tragedy is that the people who were here, the Indigenous People whose land this was was driven off the land and numbers decimated, and then they brought in africans to be enslaved, to build this country. In doing so, they created a caste system on what was really a bipolar caste system, originating from the africans brought in as slaves to be at the bottom. The Indigenous People were excluded and out casted in their own land. This was the framework for how the country, the hierarchy that we had lived with throughout the centuries. Host you write in caste that the human impulse to create hierarchies runs across societies and cultures. What did you learn in your research about the genesis of that human instinct . Guest i came to the process of compiling eight different characteristics, pillars of caste. They are the common thread, the point of introspection in the hierarchy that i saw occurring wherever it happened. I would say that one of the originating characteristics, which is pillar number one, would be world religion. Finding the laws of nature, the way that culture must find or chooses to find justification from the laws of nature or from received wisdom from on high to justify the degradation, the positioning of putting people beneath your group. There is this desire to find justification for these things that are arbitrary. One of the goals is to remind ourselves of how arbitrary these divisions actually are. But to overcome the recognition and natural recognition that one would have come about a culture needs to have some justification, that is one of the things that i found and made reference to that as a pillar because that is the essential framework for convincing entire groups of people that they are above others and that others are beneath them, and from that, all of the other characteristics and mechanisms that are then used to keep other groups in a particular position so that the group that deems itself above can maintain resources and the primacy that they have been told or come to believe are their birthright. Host i asked our producer to put those eight pillars onto a graphic that we can show to our audience. The question that i have as we look at them, do all castes share all these characteristics . Are they necessary to form a caste . Guest it is my contention that that is the case. I would say that in order to there was a tremendous amount of work to be able to make the case that its underpinnings, that there is an infrastructure of caste in order to make that case i identified these eight , pillars, which are present in any such hierarchy. They are present. I would say that sadly, they are present because some of them are very difficult to accept in many ways. Host in order to understand how castes function, your research took you to two places. India and germany. Castes exist in other places. How did you zero in and focus on those two places . Guest the entire book is really about us. It is about america, our country, and a better understanding our country. In order to better understand our country and these longstanding, these long shadows under which we still live, why are these things still happening . That was the originating goal, to better understand ourselves by looking at other places that had experienced what i am describing is caste. The first place you would think of would be southeast asia, particularly india. That was the original goal, to try to understand better how castes work, originated there, and to understand the framework for the caste system there historically. In the process of working on this, charlottesville happened. After charlottesville, we all could see the symbolism of the United States, the confederacy, and nazi germany in the regalia and symbolism that the protesters used, brought together themselves as they were protesting the potential removal of the statue of robert e. Lee. We saw the symbolism of another culture and another time reaching over to nazi germany in a way that we might not have seen before in such a big way because in recent times it was there that charlottesville where the protesters brought the symbols together and it was then that i began to think to myself about what is it that germany had been doing in the intervening time . What is it about germany and the protesters would see themselves in what we saw in charlottesville were questions about memory, questions about history, how do we remember our history . How have we absorbed our history . We are not on the same page about what our history has been. That is what set me on a course to look at germany and the 12 year concentrated creation of a caste system there, but the nazis did during that time. Obviously, the most terrifying, horrific crime against humanity that ultimately was called was culminated, and i wanted to understand how the german how did the germans work through their history . How did they reconcile that history . How are they atoning for that history . My initial goal was to see how they were dealing with history because we are dealing with history very differently. After i began to look into how they were dealing with it and then i came to realize that i had no idea one of them was that it turns out that germanys genesis was turning to dialogue with an american genesis leading up to the third reich, i had no idea about that. It turns out that american eugenicists were writing books that were popular among the nazis and nazis were using these as american books as their textbooks. The nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate. They needed no one to teach them how to hate. But it turned out that the nazis had researchers go to the United States to study exactly how the United States had subjugated africanamericans. The nazis sent researchers to study the laws that forbade marriage across racial lines in the United States. It turned out that there were 41 of the United States that had at some point or other barred marriage across racial lines, not just blackandwhite but also asian descent. They sent researchers to study how the United States had segregated with jim crow laws, segregation in public facilities, they looked for all of the ways. All of the laws in the United States and jim crow and segregation as they went back to debate those laws as they were forming what would ultimately become the nuremberg laws. That was stunning to me. I had no idea. That is how i ended up focusing in on these three places because they all spoke to this idea of hierarchy and creating these artificial boundaries and artificial rankings that would have such horrific for what the nazis did, obviously. Host i am sure many readers will be surprised about the parallels between the jim crow south and the development of the nazi code. Of course, the nazis ultimate goal was the elimination of a population. How far does the parallel go when thinking of American Society . Guest the subtitle of the book book wasal with the the origins of our discontents. With an emphasis on the origins. The focus for what i am looking at is where are the originating points for introspection and what can we learn from them . The focus when it comes to the origins for nazi germany would be the years of the 1920s, interaction with the eugenicists in the 30s as they were forming a government. And creating that was the interesting thing, to your point, the 12 year reign can be instructive for all of us because it started out as a way to begin to look for ways of legitimacy in the United States. But also, the fact that they took a group of people who were among the most successful and accomplished people in these countries and then converted them into aces a subordinated caste. That had to make them into a subordinated caste. [indiscernible] with each decision that they made, and ultimately the final decision that came later in the war. This is an effort to look at the origins of these hierarchies, with an emphasis on the origins so that we can somehow learn from them and obviously, to make sure that these things never happen again. Host thinking about indias caste system, it is still very different from the 12 year nazi reign. What did you learn about its structures and permanence in society and how that impacted your evolution of thinking about the american caste . Guest i wanted to understand this because it is such a complex, ancient system that is based upon four main dharmas, brahman at the very top and subcastes within each of the four. And then the outcast of the people at the very bottom, the untouchables. Then, an Additional Group that are potentially exiled in a different kind of way, similar to how Indigenous People in our country were treated. There is a complex system for which there are not exact analogs because they are so complex and so ancient. But there are points of intersection and things that we can learn as a result of the ways in which that caste system, ended up putting its people at the very bottom, using some of the mechanisms that were shocking to me that all three of these systems ended up using, independent of one another, across time, across space, cross ocean. There were continents that ended up using similar mechanisms and that was one of the things that actually reinforced this idea that caste as a phenomenon is something that can be applied once someone understands what caste is to begin with and the ways that it manifests along these different characteristics. One of those would be the idea of each one of these cultures made purity of the dominant caste one of the prime signatures of their hierarchy, meaning that to protect the purity, caste became a main focus to protect the dominant caste from presumed pollution by proximity or interaction with those beneath them, assigned to the bottom. Across these three civilizations, these cultures, water became the central symbol of purity. Water being an element of life itself on our planet that humans require, and yet, each of these cultures, water became the controlling factor. For example, the untouchables could not use the same well. They certainly could not drink from the same cup. It would be unimaginable. There were restrictions in terms of spacing that the lower caste people, many thousands of subgroups that were considered part of the lower caste, but there were some who could not be within 96 paces of someone of a higher caste. Many rules and laws and restrictions. But when it comes to water, the nazis as well restricted jewish citizens from access to water in schools that id have been near their own homes, so that water became a central feature and manifestation or symbol of. For the nazis as well. One of the many horrific things but the nazis did, but they took the time to make the distinction there and in our country, the focus of this book, water became a central dividing line where the many features were not africanamericans were not permitted to go to beaches, the pools that were controlled by or intended for the dominant caste, there are many examples of people who actually it could be a matter of life and death in many cases if you were to reach this central principle of caste. There was a case in 1919 were a young man, an africanamerican teenager was swimming off of a beach in Lake Michigan in chicago, and he was wading in the water and he waded into the whitet was viewed as the water, individual line separating black swimmers from white swimmers. He was stoned to death for having done so, and that set off one of the many race riots of that summer in which many, many people perished and not right, in that riot. Toch itself was a response what happened to africanamericans when they arrived there from the jim crow south. The idea of water is one of the intersecting point of introspection that was characteristic of all of these different cultures across time, across space, not necessarily knowing, but just doing this because that became one of the principles that seemed to be so important for maintaining the primacy of one over another. Host you tell us that Martin Luther king visited india. We found an archival clip of him telling that story in 1965 to the los angeles World Affairs council. It is audio, but lets listen. Then i would like to have you tell us a little bit more. One afternoon, i went down to speak in the southern part of india, in a school that was attended by and large by young boys and girls who were the children of former untouchables. I remember that afternoon that the principal got up to introduce me. As he came to the end of his introduction, he said i would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of america. For the moment i was shocked , that i would be introduced as an untouchable. Pretty soon, my mind ran back to across america. I started to think about how my living children were still judged on the basis of the color of their skin rather than the content of the character and i had to say to myself, i am an untouchable and every negro in the United States is an untouchable. Segregation is evil and sinful because it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system. Host what is it like listening to that 60 years later . Guest i studied and researched that experience that he described for quite a bit and hear his words and say that is stunning. Yes, dr. Martin luther king himself came to recognize that we in this country live under a caste system. That we inherited caste system and it is self evident him as well. It became evident, the connection between india and is ncient system, that that has held people back in this country for so long. Host looking for parallels, can you explain the inheritors of the untouchable class after it was outlawed and formed the basis of Political Representation in india . How much power have they managed to accrue in Indian Society and what might that tell us about progress in our own . Guest the parallels continue. One of the things that i often say is that people often ask why, will what is it that human beings do in circumstances . Because there are similarities in the way that people are treated, mechanisms for controlling these groups, and so there have been their system is different from ours. They have a Prime Minister and a president. There are those who manage to get education and go on to professions. As has been the case for africanamericans. In india, abolished untouchability in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and so that they actually abolished untouchability and outlawed discrimination before the United States actually did in the 1960s. But that does not mean that the laws that the change in the laws leads to changes in custom that have been in place for so long. What we can learn from both countries is that despite the advancements, there can still be the remnants, the residue of the shadow of the originating hierarchies that have been in place for so long. But they still can be animating forces in the current day. That is what has happened and so these countries and there was a black Panther Party afterward that the people, many of them saw the connection that created the Panther Party. Has been a call for lives mattering as well. Because of the atrocities that still occur, all too frequently, in india despite the laws that have been in place. I think that we have learned that despite the truth of many indications of progress, and the laws that might have been changed, there can still be this residue, this ongoing, this unresolved challenge because we have not really dealt with what is underlying all of this, which is the underlying structure of hierarchy itself. Host you remind us of the major reckonings of race in this country. With Martin Luther king, there was a large legislative yardstick, the civil rights legislation which ultimately passed in the mid 60s. Thinking about today in the United States what yardstick can this society use to measure progress and change . Guest i am not an expert in policies. I am like a building inspector who has presented the report. Im like the radiologist who has presented the xray. This is what i am presenting in this work. But i would say that the one metric is the numbers that we are seeing when it comes to people who die at the hands of police, mass incarceration, the number that we are seeing with the tremendous wealth gap and again, not rich gap, but wealth gap, meaning assets that are family or household has accrued and gap between africanamericans and their white counterparts where the gap exists regardless of the level of education achievement. The gap is just regardless of the professional standing of the individual. The advantages and disadvantages that were not a part of this, that nobody asked for, that you are born into a place of the hierarchy. You did not ask to be born in that place, but as a result of redlining and restrictive laws that allowed people in the dominant caste to purchase homes with governmentbacked mortgages which africanamerican families were excluded from, we have those descended from children or grandchildren who have been excluded from the American Dream and the end result is this wealth gap where owning a home is one of the most common ways that a family builds a legacy for their children and grandchildren and this has been denied to africanamericans for generations. The measures would be where we can look at how our people are faring. How are people faring, even factoring in the things that they may be doing to improve themselves . Getting an education, hoping to apply for jobs that are in accord with their education and still not being able to get ahead. There are many metrics that we have to look at now. Host your text references three milestone dates. It gives context to the story you are telling. I wanted you to explain more of their significance. 2022, 2111. And 2042. Guest 2022 marks year that the United States will have been an independent nation for as long as enslavement has been in existence. Host what is your thinking about that . Which of people take away from that fact . Guest people should take away the idea that there was enslavement so long that it actually went on for so long that the United States has been in existence for the same amount of time that there was enslavement. It lasted for 246 years and one on for 12 generations. How many greats do you have to add to the word grandparent to imagine how long enslaved lasted enslavement lasted . It lasted from before there was a United States of america and went into the founding of the United States and on for so long that it will not be until 2022 that the United States will have been a nation for as long as enslavement lasted. Host the 2011 date. Tell me more about your thinking on that date. Guest it means that no window no adult alive today to the point where africanamericans would have been free for as long as they were enslaved. That will not be until 2111. Host a date that is in our immediate future and frames the latter half of your book is the date 2042. What happens in our society in 2042 . Guest 2042 is a projected date when there will be no majority race in our country. In other words the majority race , or group in our country that would be white americans will no longer be in the majority. That is the moment of change in the demographics that no one alive would even begin to know what that truly because it has never been the case in our country. In other words, this is a historic demographic change in our country. It has ramifications for everyone because no one has experienced anything different than what we are accustomed to. It means that we have to reckon with who we are as a country might we need to recognize our connection to people who are descendents from outside of this era, we have to reach across these artificial boundaries and be able to find the things that we have in common. Being american is the thing that we may say that we have in common. What does that mean to be american when the american majority is not what it has always been until this point. It is a moment of opportunity if we are willing to see it as that. Host you quoted barack obama and called his election a change in the caste script. What were the consequences to his approach to race in society and what are the consequences of his eightyear presidency . And the election of Kamala Harris to the democratic ticket . Guest these are tremendous Historic Events that historians will be studying for generations to come. This was the first time that someone who is not from a historic dominant group was elected to the white house, elected to the presidency. There have been if you think about the symbolism of that, there have been enslaved people who built the white house. There have been africanamericans who worked as butlers and servants in the white house, but to have them come in in this way is just historic, obviously. It was a change originating from the originating hierarchy in our country, what i call the caste system. When there are changes in a caste system, there are affect effects that occur throughout. One metaphor in the book is the idea that there are many ways that caste is used in our language. One of the ways that it is used is a cast in the play. You have everyone in their assigned position and everyone has a script, their lines to speak. The roles that they play. And everyone is accustomed to that as long as everyone stays , in their assigned role, but if there is a change in that script, something that happens that is not expected, then everyone has to figure out what does that mean for them . Now, what is it that we do . That is what happens when you think about a cast, where roles and expectations and assumptions that are assigned or approved in a caste system, in a hierarchy. We have seen with this presidency, we also the pushback all saw the pushback and resistance that were put in place, that would in some ways not be unexpected when you look at it through a lens of caste. Host let me look at outcomes in the few minutes we have left. You write in the book the goal , of this work is not to resolve all these problems, but to cast a light on our history and his presence in our everyday lives and express hope for resolution. Let me think about your metaphors. Either the bones of the body, the infrastructure of a house. Those are impossible things to change. So ultimately are these metaphors pessimistic, that of caste system cannot be changed . Guest i would not have written it if i thought that this could not be changed, if there were not ways to push past these artificial boundaries. That is why i wrote it. I have another metaphor dealing with you go to the doctor. Before you even see the doctor, you are handed this sheet. These forms to fill out, and of the doctor wants to know before he or she sees you, they want to know your history. Not just your history, but your parents, your grandparents history. That is because before the doctor will see you, he needs to know your history in order to better diagnose your situation, in order to help you with that situation, in order to resolve whatever your problem may be. That is what this work is asking. That we look at the history because you cannot fix it, you cannot repair something unless you know what is going on. You cannot fix what you cannot see. This is asking us to finally see, to be able to know our history. One of the things i would hear time and time again after they read it was, i had no idea. I had no idea. I heard that from all kinds of people, from all walks of life, people whose lives overlapped with the time period in question. They have no idea. That means that we have a lot of work as a country in order to fully learn the full history of what is before us. To better understand what we are dealing with now, but has happened, what we are dealing with now to work toward a place of healing. These wounds, these divisions, these fissures that we are dealing with now. We cannot do that unless we get on the same page with what our actual history has been. Host the economic downturn, protests large and small, height heightened partisanship, is your frame of mind optimistic about this countrys future or are you concerned about the shortterm . Guest i am concerned, yes, but i have no choice to be optimistic. Because that is why i wrote this book i wrote this book in hopes , that those who read it and those who take it in with an open mind and a willing heart will be able to see where we have come from and the origins of how we got to where we are. I am hopeful that people approach this with an open mind and a willing heart that we will see very much how we have things in common and we will be able to reach beyond these artificial barriers and to do this not just for ourselves, but for our families, our children, our communities, our country, and ultimately for the species on the planet. Host Oprah Winfrey selected your book as a Book Club Selection and has sent it to , Public Officials across the United States. What is the impact of that going to be do you think . , guest i do not know. I can only help it will illuminate these truths to people who can actually be in a position to really do something about it. All of us has a role to play, but the more influence one has, the greater the responsibility and the greater the calling. I am hopeful that all of this will come together to make this a better place for all of us. Host you write in the acknowledgments about all the personal interactions you had with readers over the years after the publication of warmth. People sending you letters and emails. What did they want . What was the genesis of their connection with you . Are you anticipating that this book will have the same personal reaction from readers . Guest it already has. I have heard from people who are saying that this is opening their eyes in ways that they had never been opened before. There are people who have said that they are sending it out to people that they know and love. That was a similar response to warmth of our suns. It was very personal, particularly to anyone who was a descendent of migration, but also people who were descendents of immigration from other parts of the world. It has a special place in the hearts of many people because it was a chance to tell their story, to hear their story told in a way that it hasnt been before, because we often look at history with the big h. This is a chance to look at history through the eyes of the people who have lived it, through their perspective. One of the things that you ask, one of the things that is so deeply touching to me that i hear more often than you would imagine is that people were telling me with tears of gratitude that this was the last book that their mother or their father or grandmother had read before they passed away and these are often children or descendents of the great migration. And the reason they say that is because the people who endured this and survived jim crow often did not tell their children what they endured. They did not burden their children with what they had experienced. The posttraumatic stress, they did not speak about it. This book for many people ended up being the last book that they read before they passed away and that allowed them to come to a place of healing, a place of validation for all that they had gone through. It is a profound honor to be told this by the children of people who had spent the last days and hours with their loved ones with this book and feeling a sense of gratitude for. That is one of the highest honors anyone can ever receive. Host Isabel Wilkerson joining us to talk about her new book, caste. Joining us by zoom, which has the occasional bandwidth challenge, we apologize for that to our audience, but thank you for spending this hour with cspan. Guest thank you so much. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2020] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. 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