In the weeks since Trump supporters assaulted the Capitol, the message has become increasingly clear: The country must examine and confront its underlying racism — its caste system — to move forward as a democracy. That was the theme Monday in “A Catalyst for Humanity,” a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winner Isabel Wilkerson hosted by the Forum at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health and presented by the Nieman Foundation and the Chan School’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
“You cannot heal what you have not diagnosed. You cannot repair what you do not see,” said Wilkerson, author of the recently released “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” which examines America’s history of inequity. Her award-winning 2010 book, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” told the story of the great migration of Black Americans out of South and to other parts of the nation. The Chan School forum, moderated by CNN anchor Don Lemon, kicked off a monthly series designed to harness “the power of storytelling,” according to Michelle A. Williams, Chan School dean of faculty.