Copies at the link and the chat at the right of your screen and the link provided on the website. As isabel and john are talking please submit your questions there is a q a feature at the bottom of the screen and we have six or seven of them or until time allows, the pulse o pulitze in new york bestseller, her debut work when the National Book Critics Award for nonfiction and was named ten best nonfictions of 2010 as well as in your time nonfiction of all time. She has taught at princeton and Boston University and more than 200 other colleges and universities across the United States europe and asia, half the origins of her discontent receiving critical claim and no doubt want to accolades, interviewing this evening is john meeting appoints a prizewinning biographer he is a shooting writer for the New York Times book review and contribute in editor of Time Magazine in the New York Times bestseller the hope of glory, the american odyssey of George Herbert walker bush, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson in the white house and american gospel, he holds the american presidency at Vanderbilt University in nashville had be remiss if i did not tell you he will be joining us into an half weeks september 2 to talk about his new book the truth is marching on john lewis and the power of hope which is a partnership of the in jc and now i will think isabel and john for being here and i will turn it over to john. Thank you, i appreciate it and im delighted to be in atlanta virtually, it takes tennessee and is about to bring enlightenment to georgia so we want to see you all making good choices and Going Forward, there was a wonderful moment in the early 1960s when president kennedy made a visit to france and kennedy was so much more popular than he was that he simply said im the gentleman who escorted Jacqueline Kennedy to paris i am the guy who is here to run traffic a little bit, isabel is one of the most apart invoices in america in the broader republic of letters, it is an honor to be here and im just going to pitch some batting practice if you will. Isabel and why is this book not called race . It is not called race because first of all i want to thank you for being here and its an honor to be here with you and its an honor because this is where i was for the very first event that i ever had this is an experience for me and the one obviously about the migration in the south and the history that we often dont learn that many people might not have known and so in doing so i had to figure out what was the term i was going to be using and i dont use the word racism in that book a lot of people may assume that i did because many people talk about it in that way but i dont use that term, the term that i used to describe what the people were experiencing wherever they mightve been, whatever their background mightve been was a past system in a hierarchy in article of human value in a society and the more i spent time looking at what was it like in the jim crow south during the years of jim crow basically from the 1960s i came away with the move that it was the most comprehensive term to describe the world that was against the law for a black person in a white person and to put that together in birmingham it was a world in the very word of god, the bible was segregated in portland throughout the south and that means they had not been touched by different races and when you look at the originating system you find that the idea of keeping people separate and controlling and surveilling the boundaries to keep people separate from hallmarks in many of the things in our town about what life was like in jim crow and thats what led to this bo book. You had a billion fascinating questions, one of the things Rick Springsteen and the country now is a critique of liberalism, not in the red blue sense but in the classical john locke sense of rule of law individual equality before the law and opportunity, your canvas which is one of the things that makes the book so fascinating is not simply american, can you take us on a Global Survey if you would in terms of geography but also in terms of longitude, time, is this is cast innate to the Human Experience or is it an early force in the formation of tribes and nations that seems to me that the struggle against caste, its hard to imagine anything more elemental really. I think is deeply human when you want to categorize and simplify to make sure it is safe so is deeply human to categorize and among ourselves sadly, this can have consequences, one of the things i was looking for this book is about black america but in order to do that and to dig deep into understand how the hierarchy works in our country i wanted to look at the originating recognizable in the world which is in india into understand how that came to be, how the character is set up and how they came back and i would like to do a little bit about things that i found that was the main focus of my research was caste was determined the respect and access to resources or lack thereof or deprivation in confidence in beauty, all these things that accrue of no fault of ones own, nobodys lives today is responsible for the inherited ranking and infrastructure of the things that we now live with of them is shadowing originating that started with the founding of the United States of america on the british colony which is where the divisions and people occurred, in a caste system there could be any number of categorize people, in india for example there was an inheritance and it could have been the founding of the United States and the expiration of the world of europeans where they came in contact with people different than them and begin to categorize the people that they found and in building this country, bringing in people from africa to build a country in the process of doing that, that is what happened in this country, it could have been within a metric, religion and humanism was the first categorization to put one group over another, the colonists knew Indigenous People to be heathens and then africans arrived, the initial impulse is to delineate and categorize with religion and then it moved into what we now know as race as a construct its barely knew going back for 500 years as a race as we know it, color is a fact, it is a reality but it couldve been any number of millennials, and the book i make reference to that type as the designated category would divide human beings up that are also equally dependent upon genetic inheritance, these are creations but caste is the infrastructure of our division, the invisible phone, caste is the bone in races the skin in races the signifier, the queue of where one is assigned in our culture. Is caste intrinsic to the Human Experience that is going farther back in jamestown, is there idem a moment where there are societies, were societies rather that were a gala tehran and the economic demographic cultural forces corrupted that . Every country and culture im not suggesting that all is the same, i am saying there are religious origins and so much of the religions that we see in one of the reasons of the justification that is created here was the story of noah who one of his sons happens to have seen his father and for that reason he has been cursed and is viewed that the africans were the children, this is part of the justification that occurred in a caste system so there is a very longstanding patterns of the humanizing people categorizing people going back to biblical times if thats what youre getting at. What is been the most effective strategies for combating caste distinctions that limit justice opportuniti opportunities. I think i should probably say that one of the challenges of a caste system in one of the challenges that we face as a country we often have not known, we do not have the benefit of comprehensive history of our country and the tremendous part and clarify. I appreciate but as you say i have not done a good enough job. [laughter] we are trying. I want to say when people start to read it i started to hear the same thing over and over again from people no matter what their background was or age or what part of the country, people said over and over i have no idea that this is happening and i lived in the air and had no idea, there is probably someone reading it right now that i had no idea and ill probably get an email and that is because we have not had the chance to hear from all seven of our societies throughout history there are many voices that we have not heard from, i interviewed over 1200 people in the right role i was writing about, they have not been, no one has talked about their experiences of surviving the jim crow system so there is so much coming out now, once we become more aware then we can have a better chance at understanding, as i approach this book i viewed myself as a building inspector, what i would call our country and we are all people have inherited an old house with misshapen walls and cracks in the foundation and with an old house, none of us alive today had anything to do with the building of this old house that we now live in, none of us are responsible for the misshapen world or the broken beams that we might find but once we become aware of what the circumstances are, once we are able to see the bones in the infrastructure of the building, once we received a report then it becomes a covenant to take responsibility for, we are not responsible but what happened before but once we take it we are responsible so i would say thats one of the ways that i have approached this to try to say, it is not about a new kind of language to think about ourselves, it allows us to liberate ourselves from the language that we cant even hear anymore because its accrued so much. The idea of the focus on structure and the architecture and the bones take out the emotion of the guilt and shame and blame and allows us to see what we thought we knew. I view this as an xray as her country of what we could see beneath what we thought we mightve known and i think theres a great deal shining a light in these places that might not up before. Its a metaphor. I would argue a rhetorical device as i have heard as we go through this. A potential reckoning, we have the possibility of reckoning and we also have a remarkable capacity to move on quickly, one of my favorite moments in tom sawyer, a preacher came through town and tom sawyer said the preacher was so good that huck finn was saved until tuesday. [laughter] we have to figure out a way to get saved past tuesday. Talk a little bit about what inspectors from other cultures particularly the 20th century learned critically from the american south. One of the places that i knew when i was trying to unpack and understand this phenomenon and find ways that apply to us, india was one of the obvious places that was very deeply but then charlottesville happened in in charlottesville we saw before our eyes the merging of a symbolism of the confederacy and the people who were protesting the removal of the statue in charlottesville and we saw before our eyes people who were carrying these symbols, the symbols actually cause us to have to think about what is memory, memory as the civil war and of our country, how is it that we are remembering and what does it mean, these people the protesters were bringing the symbol together they were connecting to cultures across the ocean so i became interested in germany and realize that germany was significant, they made it significant by seeing a connection and i set out to try to understand how has germany remembered, how has germany dealt with its history and how does it reconcile it and how Going Forward . Thats what that was of germany and the deeper i looked i discovered things and came across them and one of them it turned out that german democrats actually turned and consulted in the years and decades leading up to their life. I found i discovered the american was providing books that were bestsellers huge sellers in germany now course the not these needed no one on this earth to teach them. What they did they sent researchers to america focusing mainly on the jim crow south to study how the americans have subjugated africanamericans they looked in research the nation law which i must have had existed in the majority of the american state that was not limited to the south so they came the not these came and they studied the segregation laws to see how was it that america segregated in subjugated africanamericans and then what they did, they went back and they debated these laws that were the american laws as they were crafting what was ultimately the common number of law, this is a shocking to the summer is. One of the beneficial global lessons if you go forward, just a few years when they went to india, is Indian Experience informing the movement that was so important in atlanta based on that there, can you talk about what we learned from india. We cannot be talking about anything related with doctor kings role in this, thank you for reminding me. , doctor king went to the work of the nonviolent approach that was taken that he wanted to go to india and he went in 1959, indians had been following the Civil Rights Movement and many were very interested in the people who are now called seles and when he arrived he was recognized on the street and he was greeted and had dinner with the Prime Minister of a lovely trip that he had there, during the trip he was invited to visit a school that was attended and run by people and upon arriving there the principal introduced him to the students and he said young people i want to introduce you to a fellow from america and when doctor king heard that, it couldid not land so easily it ws something he did not take of itself anyway, he had dinner with the Prime Minister and the dignitary and he was a bit pleased to hear that term and then he thought about the work that he was doing in the lives of the 20 million africanamericans, the 20 million black people that he was advocating for and marching in leading the Civil Rights Movement in the fact that that moment they denied the majority or allowed to vote and not use many public facilities that they would segregate in separate or great danger as they were with civil rights, he thought about it and said yes, i am and im every black person in america untouchable because he made that recognition any later spoke about it during the sermon in 1965 about his revelation, doctor king himself made the connection between the indian system in the hierarchy in the United States. What in your view as the most illuminating example of addressing the problems, the injustice of the caste system, is it india . I think because the work that they have done in the year after what happened in world war ii that the 12 years unimaginable of horror that occurred there, in the decades they have worked very hard to reconcile the history, nothing is perfect, there is no perfect answers to everything but they worked very hard to make sure the central part, everyone was on the same page about what exactly happened, how did this occur, they converted the former that their rights and locations into the museums so people would always remember and everyone can be on the same page about what happened there. They also have small plates, brass plates that are embedded in the cobblestone in front of the last known address for the people in the terrorists and the holocaust, they are seated there everywhere, theyre all over the city in berlin and when you come across them because they are embedded in honor of them and in such a believable tribute to people who lost their lives in that horror and theres things that can be learned how did one remember in getting on the same page about what happened. Where do you stand at this point on the capacity of the american experiment, the constitutional experiment in selfgovernment . Going back to the central metaphor of the book, there are lots of metaphors in the book but i would say you think about the old house and after it rains you dont want to go into the basement and you dont want to have to think about what is in the basement but if you do not go into the basement, whatever is in the basement you will have to deal with it whether you go in there or not and you have to deal with the consequences, whether you do or not, whatever you are facing, i would say, i would never give up because as we have seen in recent months we seem to be on the cusp of an awakening and awareness and we have to live with the consequences everyday and awareness of a sense of reaching out and there were protest and all different states after what we saw with george floyd several months ago, every state, south dakota, idaho, alaska, vermont, whatever state there was not necessarily, it was not about race, it was about humanity and as long as we recognize how much we have in common then there is a trance to transcend the barriers there is hope as long as we can recognize our common humanity. Im going to go to questions that have been submitted from our colleagues in atlanta. What were you most surprised to learn through your research . I have to say there are so many things that is hard to narrow it down, i think one of the things that stayed with me is how across century and oceans the have the same culture and find similar impulses is creating a division in the structure and similar approaches to enforcing, similar ways of policing the boundaries of them, what i mean by that, the importance of purity and protecting anyone being in the dominant caste from a potential collision of those who were supportive of the caste, the idea that water was essential feature that was being critical to maintaining the purity of the group so all of these caste systems ended up having that of many ways to maintain and for example in india formerly known as untouchable to not drink from the same cup as dominant caste people into all these places in the United States and they swim in the same pool with the rules and laws against that and there was a similar rule and law and the United States where in chicago a young boy was swimming in Lake Michigan and he happened to wade in a wide water and he was drowned to death as a result of that, there is a strict adherence for the centrality of water as an element of maintaining distance of purity between the groups and im struck by across time and space they come to the same conclusion. Fascinating. Related, what do you think perpetuates behavior and ideas i continue to lead to caste in human ranking . Again, these are not the creations of anyone alive today, it was not something that happened overnight, and evolution of ideas and law that the columnist refined or finetuned or clarified as they were building a new nation so these are the kinds of things that existed long before any of us and our ancestors were thought about this is an inherited that we have to deal with so my view, we are in a space, we are not responsible but were responsible for what we do with it, i dont know if that answers the question, im not remembering where the question. What we were talking about, Henry Kinzinger once said of the middle east there are some crises that simply must be managed, they cannot be solved so i guess one of the questions i would ask, can caste be solved or only managed . I would hope it can be solved but i presented myself at the building inspector in the building inspector can be brutal because they can find all kinds of things that you may not want to think about but they are important because they need to be better to doubt whether or not and a Good Building inspector is comprehensive and what theyre looking at, thats what i see myself the building inspector is not the one ultimately who makes the repair of whatever needs to be done, they make the report and in our country and it evolves to all of us wherever we might be in the hierarchy and the greater the investment that one has the more resources one has then the greater the responsibility and working towards a solution, i would like to believe that there is one but i am presenting this as a report so all of us who are collectively the owners of this old house can begin the work of coming together to see what we cannot see before and Work Together to heal. Related, do you believe we have a National Truth and reconciliation process before, implement the report, or is that part of the reporting process . These folks agree with you they think germany and south africa have done a better job with their history ill leave it to you, do we need that . Absolutely what is fascinating in berlin, and prime real estate, right in the middle of the city is a massive necessary and moving memorial for everyone who person the holocaust, it takes up a huge section of the prime space in the city as it should. It makes the point of address american architect who happened to be jewishamerican and he chose to not have any descriptor or designation or explanation of anything, it is there and we know what it represents because everyone knows the history, everyone must know the history so because they know the histo history, and additional explanation because everyone knows clearly what has happened, i think the challenge that we face, we have not all had the privilege and access to the full history of our country, the first thing is to get on the same page and to know what truly has happened in our country and how we got to where we are, i think the reconciliation can be one of the steps that will help us get there. I think one of the things that happen is that much of the legislation was passed and i dont know how good of job we did as a country and making sure that everyone knew why this was that everyone knew how we had gotten to where we are, do all americans no that most of our countrys history africanamericans had legally excluded from the most basic form of reaching the American Dream which is to get the institution as we hear about called redlining and specifically excluded africanamericans from being able and its a reason why we have a huge wealth gap in our country, africanamericans were the mainstream into the possibility, that is a very small and short window time it were in slavery 246 years almost by 150 years of jim crow, i would like to be recognized how very short this history actually is and how recent this idea that mainstreaming is being included in the whole ball body of politics in our country, its a very new thing and many adult americans are of today. You have written two remarkable books, you started out as a journalist, tell us a little bit of your story, what was the journey that got you to this point where you are widely doing all this to inspect the building. I am a daughter of people who were part of the migration and survivors of jim crow and being raised, they migrated to washington, d. C. And growing up in washington, d. C. Surrounded by people or children or grandchildren, the great migration, everyone around me where everyone was somehow cemented to the south, there is a deep personal Family Connection people were going back to wherever they were from and in washington, d. C. Many were from North Carolina and people were going back, i was surrounded by the experiences and the culture that they brought with them from the sou south, i was surrounded by the food and ways of worshiping, it was called, you might say a governor twice removed. You are never moved. I grew up without the people were not talking about why they left, they were not talking about how all these people were in that space, that was one of the things that propelled me ultimately to want to write about the great migration, i parents were not talking, some of them from landing in new york or washington where they happened the land is when life began when they came to the place that they had dreamt of and yet they kept the whole thing about cornbread baby, but sugar in the cornbread, you put sugar in the greens im not saying that the conversation, i was surrounded by that and thats one of the beautiful parts about being able to tell the story of the people who first came over to the country and carried with them the tradition in the folkways in the foodways in the culture in the south and basically culture became embedded in that respect. So that is what propelled me too want to understand the history and when i was a journalist of the New York Times and when i got the opportunity to provide a book the great migration was the one, im one of these people who would not have existed had there not been a great migration, my mother was from rome georgia. My father was from virginia so they never wouldve met if it wasnt for the great migration of many millions of africanamericans who would not have existed in the way they exist because of migration its an american story because thats a story of how Many Americans came to be and people came from different parts of the world and having my greatgreatgrandparents that met someone that they no would never have met otherwise, its a very american story and everything that i do to build bridges, my father was a Tuskegee Airmen and after the war as brilliant as they were in massive full as they were in flying it turns out that they were not permitted to work at what they loved and what they were so good at, none of them were able to get jobs out of the war after the war, none were able to get jobs as pilots and so most of them had to go and remake themselves, abandon their dreams and go back to school somewhat backtoschool and my father got a Second Degree and became a civil engineer. My father became literally a builder of bridges and im the daughter of someone who was a builder of bridges and thats what i do and everything that i write. When did you know you wanted to be a writer. I havent known a time that i wasnt, i think i always was i was always writing something, whatever it was i always wanted to write i dont know if there was a single type that i never did but its all that ive ever done. We benefit enormously. Last question and then we will let you go. This is a very basic one, how many years did you spend on the research for this . It is hard to say because i spent 15 years on the one and because of that i say if it were human being it would be in high school and dating, thats how long i spent. [laughter] its a rule to make that point. This when you might say began living with the ever since in using the term and readers went right with the flow of this and ive never heard from anyone saying that it naturally flowed so this began flowing one from the other and then it kicked into higher gear i was using the word caste in every topic and it was a part of my own personal language as a result it was a part of me and so this needed to be, this is not a book that i intended on writing but the book that i needed to write and now im presenting to everyone this is my report in the xray of our country and i am hoping that this will allow us to see what we could not see before and to be able to see past the barriers so long ago that we can come sow transcend them. One of the best definitions of a writer i ever came across was a duty of a writer is to try to teach people how to see, not what to think the how to see and youve done an amazing job, i dont know if you all noticed but isabel got i think she may have written the New York Times review because its the view that only authors can write but isabel is one of the most decorated writers over time and this will continue. Thank you for letting me spend some time with you and think you to atlanta, kate are you there . Im. Its an honor to be visible and with you all, thank you so much and thank you to isabel, by lots of copies, give them away, register for people to vote, do all of that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much and join us on september 2 to talk about the man that you can see behind him. It will be as interesting as this. Stick with wilkerson. Thank you so much, have a great night everyone. Weeknights this month we feature book tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. This year marks the 20th anniversary of book tv monthly Author Program in depth, tonight highlights from past shows including our interviews with david macola, shelby folk, toni morrison, tom wolf, grenell west and many others, that begins at eight eastern, enjoy book tv this weekend every weekend on cspan2. Book tv on cspan2 has top nonfiction books and authors every weekend, saturday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern from the recent virtual southern festival of books, Thomas Burton and lean winkler reflect on life in appalachia they discussed the jim crow era and the south. Then at 7 45 p. M. New york staff writer discusses his book joe biden the life, the run and what matters now, on sunday at 1 00 p. M. Eastern from the southern festival of books analyst matthew talks about his book deep justice about a civil rights case which helped to reaffirm the right to a trial by jury in most criminal cases and author Stephanie Gordon and chris hamby offer their thoughts on Investigative Journalism and its role in a democracy. Then at 9 00 p. M. Eastern on after words Professor John fabian talks about his book american contagions, epidemics in the law from smallpox to covid19 he is interviewed by georgetown law professor lawrence, watch book tv this weekend on cspan2. Good morning and welcome everyone to this book launch webinar featuring doctor lynn cheney and Vice President cheney about his newest book virginia dynasty. The president and the creation of the american nation. I am rob
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