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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. What if the word "racism," even the word "racism" doesn't fully articulate systemic inequality in this country? What term could be used instead, or in addition to that? What about caste? An artificial and rigid construction that ranks, separates, and assigns groups. Caste. I know you're thinking, "That's India, not the United States."

According to my next guest, however, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Isabel Wilkerson, understanding caste in the US is key to achieving racial justice. Wilkerson is already renowned for 2011 book, The Warmth of Other Suns, about the history of the Great Migration from south to north among descendants of people who were enslaved in this country. She was on the show at that time for that book. Her new book is being enthusiastically well-received already and is called, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Isabel Wilkerson, an honor. Welcome back to WNYC.

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Brian: Do we have Isabel? I think I can't hear Isabel right now. Can she hear me? Isabel, are you there? I know we're going to fix this problem in just a second because I can see her line on my computer screen. Isabel, can you hear me?

Isabel Wilkerson: Hello. Great to be here.

Brian: There we go. I apologize for whatever that technical problem was. Let's go over the key terminology here right from the start. How do you define caste and how is it different racism or classism?

Isabel: Great. Well, caste is, historically, an artificial hierarchy of graded ranking of human value in a society that determines standing and respect, the benefit of the doubt, often access or control of resources through no fault or action of one's own, you are born to. Heredity is one of the basic tenets of caste as it has been known. It's basically the infrastructure of our divisions, the ranking and boundaries that are set that determine who can do what in a society often historically.

Race, however, is the metric that has been used to determine one's place or assignment in a caste system. I often describe or think of it as caste is the bones, race is the skin, and then class, the third element that we often think of, would be the clothes, the diction, the accents, the education that we can change about ourselves as we position ourselves in a society. Underneath all of this is a framework for how we have been divided or have been historically divided since the founding of the country.

Brian: Certainly historically divided, but people might think, well, a caste system is supposed to be rigid as opposed to the United States where, at least after the civil rights acts were passed, we're supposed to have social mobility for the individual. Even if that's far from true universally, it's not official like it was in India, for example. It is the aspiration of things like the civil rights laws. Can you address caste in this country through those comparisons?

Isabel: Well, absolutely. What I'm looking at, this is a history, the subtitle is The Origins of Our Discontents. Over the course of time, we have made tremendous progress in this country. When it comes to racial justice, we've made tremendous progress with the civil rights movement, for example, of the 1960s and the civil rights legislation, I should say, in the 1960s.

Yet we still see in our current era, the automatic, it seems, efforts to keep people in a certain place. When you think about caste, the word "caste," when you think of what is used to hold one's bones in place when you have a fracture, a caste. When you think about the caste in a play, where you have everyone in a particular role and everyone is expected to remain in their place.

In fact, remaining in one's place is part of the language of the Jim Crow system that I wrote about in The Warmth of Other Suns. When we think about how far we have come, and yet we still have African Americans who can be going about their work, going about their day, and that someone could come in and call the police on them for such ordinary things as waiting for a friend on the Starbucks for trying to get into their own condo building for having a barbecue in a public park.

All of these things that we are seeing, not to mention, of course, the killings of African Americans at the hands of the police for often doing ordinary things, of unarmed African Americans, unarmed Black people at the hands of the police for doing presumably ordinary things. These are reminders that if you think of it in a certain way that these are the continuing shadow of what had been the originating foundation, the originating framework for where people would be in a caste system.

Brian: Throughout the book, you compare the US, not just to the Hindu caste system in India, but also to what you call a more accelerated caste system, that of Nazi Germany. Where does Nazi Germany come in?

Isabel: Well, what propelled me to Germany was Charlottesville, where there was the contention over the statues, the confederate and Nazi symbolism that fused among the protesters there who were protesting the potential removal of the statue of Robert E. Lee. We have a battle over memory of the Civil War and of slavery and of our history. That has what propelled me to look into Germany.

Once I got there-- Actually, we're looking into how they had worked through the decades after World War II to reconcile their history. Once I began to look into it and the deep research that discovered connections that I would never ever have imagined, the German eugenesis were in continuing dialogue with American eugenesis in the years leading up to the Third Reich. The books that were written by American eugenesis were big sellers in Germany. Of course, the Nazis needed no one to teach them how to hate.

What they did do is that Nazis actually sent researchers to study America's Jim Crow laws to see how Americans had subjugated and segregated African Americans. They actually debated and consulted these laws as they were devising the Nuremberg Laws. This was just gut-wrenching, incomprehensible, stunning, shocking things to discover. That is how I came to include that as a way of understanding hierarchy.

Brian: It's another way to look at the place of Jews in Germany in the Nazi era, but before the Holocaust as having a place in effect, the caste system.

Isabel: Or in some ways, assigned to a caste system because all of this is artificial. It means that these are arbitrary distinctions that any of these caste systems are making on the basis of whatever metric they view as the deciding factor that makes one group presumably superior to another. All of these are arbitrary. All of these are artificial and that is the reason why I think that caste is so helpful for us to understand. It gives us new language and X-ray to see what is the need this enduring effort or impulse to keep people on a fixed place.

Brian: Listeners, we can take your phone calls for Isabel Wilkerson. Her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. How much would you say unconscious bias upholds the caste system in the US today?

Isabel: Absolutely, it is probably the most powerful weapon you might say that caste, if you think of it as an institution, as a framework that operates beneath the surface. The fact is that the traditional, classical open racism of our forefathers is not what is at work. In so many things that we might see today, we don't have the same rigid as you mentioned before, the laws that say, "You cannot do this. You cannot go here." This is all autonomic, subconscious programming that the impulse in recognition that an individual who happens to be in a particular place, presumably, should not be there.

The messaging that we all receive as to who ranks where in our system. That's why it is so enduring and why it's so difficult to overcome. Not that it's impossible to overcome, but it's difficult to fight. Because if you can't see it and you don't recognize it and it's not named and people are in denial about it, then it doesn't get solved. It doesn't get addressed. This is a way of understanding the subconscious, almost sometimes invisible to our consciousness, invisible to us, what is underneath, what we often are seeing among ourselves today.

Brian: Do even some attempt at White allyship perpetuate the caste system?

Isabel: A lot of it has to do with how we perceive who should be doing what. Are we actually in-- Are we actually aware of what it means to be in a marginalized group? How sensitive are we? How empathetic are we? How much are we recognizing that we all have encoded the messaging from a larger society? I think it calls upon everyone to be mindful of how we have all been exposed to this. It's so second nature as to not question. There are many women who will say-- I was at a conference meeting and I made a suggestion.

No one paid attention when I made the suggestion. When a male colleague made the suggestion, then other people at the meeting said, "Oh, that's a wonderful idea. That's a wonderful idea. Let's do this." That is the way that it can be subconsciously unaware, subconsciously responding to the messaging about who is an authority figure, who should be in a position to be able to have the influence and authority in any particular situation. I think that it's something that everyone has to work on and recognizing that because we've all received the messaging.

Brian: Obviously, years of research went into this book. Now, here it gets released in August of 2020 with everything that has gone on this year. I'm curious if you changed anything or added anything in the book, down the home stretch here because of the events of 2020 or if you have a certain lens on pandemic or post-George Floyd protests through the lens of your research that might be unique.

Isabel: That is a great question. I actually did. Because of COVID-19, there was clearly a need to acknowledge that. In fact, COVID-19 is a window into one of what I call the pillars of caste. I indicate that I compiled eight pillars that are characteristics of any caste system. We saw caste unfold in some respects with COVID-19 where one of the pillars would be occupational assignment. In other words, African Americans throughout much of American history have been relegated to the bottom rank of whatever jobs there were.

Enslavement, of course, 246 years of enslavement followed by the Jim Crow caste system. Continuing even into the current day with COVID-19, we could see that the people who had been historically lowest-ranked in our country were relegated again to the most dangerous of physicians as we were trying to fight this thing. That means that these are people who were the ones on the frontline, stacking the shelves at a supermarket, driving buses or public transportation, delivering essential materials and packages to people.

Often without the protections that they might have needed. That meant that they were exposed to the public, most exposed to the public, and then had higher rates of illness and also higher rates of deaths as a result of their increased exposure to the public, exposure to the virus. Their role in this allowed others to shelter in place and remain in space. That became one of the ways that we can see caste at work in our current moment.

Brian: Do you think that reframing-- well, let me ask you-- Let me get into this this way. The rave review of your book in The New York Times includes this sentence. "Wilkerson has written a closely-argued book that largely avoids the word 'racism,' yet stares it down with more humanity and rigor than nearly all but a few books in our literature." Would you agree that you were making an effort to avoid the word "racism" as you reframed our racist history in this country in terms of caste? Is there something about framing it in terms of caste that can lead to a more successful set of solutions and outcomes with respect to being anti-racist?

Isabel: Well, actually, I did not use the word "racism" in writing The Warmth of Other Suns. I chose not to use the word "racism" because I felt that it was insufficient to capture the world into which they've been born and the repression that they were facing in the hierarchy into which they had been born. That was actually brutally enforced in the form of what we often see at the lynchings and other violence to maintain it.

I did not use the word "racism." I used the word "caste." Just to clarify, race is a tool of the larger infrastructure of caste. Race is the signal. It's the cue as to where one fits in a caste system. If we can see what's underneath the race and racism, then we have a better chance of being able to actually get to the core of our divisions in hopes of seeing things differently.

Caste gives us new language that takes us away from the emotion of guilt and shame and blame because we have inherited this hierarchy. No one alive created it. No one alive--

It was not the idea of anyone who's alive today, but we now live with it. This allows us to see ourselves differently and maybe to be able to find ways to heal from it, to heal from these divides.

Brian: Sick phone call. Alicia in Park Slope, you're on WNYC with Isabel Wilkerson. Hi, Alicia.

Alicia: Hi, I just wanted to share that, yes, I live in Park Slope and I have brown skin. I'm Latinx and Asian American. Something that frequently happens to me in this neighborhood in particular is that when I go into stores at the customer, I'm always mistaken for someone who works there. It just happens almost on a daily basis unless I'm staying inside from the pandemic. People are always asking me questions as if I work there. When I say, "I don't work here," frequently, I met with aggression. This is happening from White neighbors and people in my own neighborhood. That’s just one example of different ways that I'm policed by my neighbors in my own neighborhood.

Brian: Thank you, Alicia. Isabel, do you want to comment on that in the context of your work?

Isabel: That is a very definition of caste and how it works in our current era. That is exactly what I'm talking about. The idea that people are moving about their days and on the basis solely of what they look like. They are presumed to be in a particular place, a particular role that they are supposed to be in. This is autonomic. It is subconscious and it is immediate. Those people, what I'm saying is that the distinction between the old-school, classical racism of our forefathers that has now mutated into policing and surveillance of people.

I see an automatic desire to put them in their place and then resistance to one standing up to actually say who they actually are. In other words, it's not allowing people to actually be who they are. It's a refusal to recognize individuals for who they actually are and it's tremendously wearying. It is anxiety-inducing and it actually has an impact on the health of people who have to live with this every single day. The term is called "weathering," the shortening of telomeres at the cellular level. This is how deep this runs and it's a tremendous disservice and it's a tremendous stress on millions upon millions of Americans.

Brian: Alicia told some of her personal experience with this. You include personal anecdotes in the book. Many of these situations occur while you're traveling on flights or at airports. Would you want to share any one of your choice that exemplifies something?

Isabel: Well, one of the ones that come to mind as a journalist, as a reporter at The New York Times are based in Chicago. I had this fairly routine article I was working on. I've made the calls to all the people that I wanted to interview for that story. Everyone was excited and thrilled. I called them and set it up, so no problems. Everyone was excited. Going through my interviews and all had gone well until I got to the last interview of the day.

I arrived at the establishment and the person I was there to interview was not there. The place was empty and I was told to sit and wait for him to get there. When he walked in the door, they walked in the door. This man, very harried and rushed because he was late for this appointment. When I went over to him to begin to greet him and to start the interview, he said, "Oh, I can't talk with you. I'm very, very busy. I'm waiting for a very, very important appointment. I can't talk to you right now."

I thought to myself, "Well, this is the time of the appointment. There's no one else here. It's got to be me that he's talking about." I said to him, I said, "I think I'm here 4:30." He was late, so this was clearly the time. He said, "I can't talk with you right now. I'm about to be interviewed by The New York Times." I said, "Well, I'm with The New York Times. I'm Isabel Wilkerson. I'm with The New York Times." He said, "Well, how do I know that?" I said, "Well, I'm here to interview you."

He said, "Well, do you have a business card?" I actually did not happen to have any at that point because I had been interviewing all day and I'd given out the business cards, although that should not have been the issue. Most people didn't ask. In any case, so he said, "Let me see some ID." I said, "I shouldn't have to show you ID, but here it is." I showed him my driver's license. He said, "You don't have anything with The New York Times on it?"

I said, "No, but we should be interviewing right now. There's no one else here. Obviously, I'm the person here to interview you. You're expecting to be interviewed. We are minutes into what should be the interview and I should be interviewing you right now." He said, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave because The New York Times will be here any minute," and so The New York Times walked out the door and he didn't do the interview. I did the piece and didn't include him. He didn't get in there.

Brian: If I was the reporter who introduced myself that way, he would have never asked that question. Patrick in Canarsie-

Isabel: That is right.

Brian: - you are on WNYC with Isabel Wilkerson, author now of Caste: The Origin of Our Discontent. Hello, Patrick.

Patrick: Hello. Please, I want to ask this question. Does caste prevented Obama from being the president of this country? Does caste prevented Patricia Timmons from being a Supreme Court judge? Please, we are keeping fool of ourselves with this racism. We ruled then, the problem of us is we, the Black people. We ruin them in our community. We blame it on racism. No black live in my community.

Our community is so dirty. They throw garbage on the floor. We are the one ruling down on ourself. We keep ourself in that shit. Look at our hospital. We run it down. Our children are not passing in the school. We blame the teachers. We blame everything. We blame the racism. Everything we keep on blaming, so [unintelligible 00:22:02]. Answer the question, why our children not performing in school? We keep on buying video programs for the children instead of them reading their books. When they fail, you blame it on the teachers.

Brian: Patrick, thank you. Let me get a response from Isabel. Isabel, were you able to hear the question?

Isabel: I was not able to make out all of what he was saying, but I did catch the first part. I would say that throughout American history, in spite of caste system, there have often been people who have, despite the odds and with tremendous storehouse of energy, brilliance even, and fortitude, have managed to break free somehow. That does not mean that there are not exceptions to any rule.

There are people who've been able to rise to very high levels in our country. Yet in some ways, the people who rise the highest become one of the most significant or instructive measures of how caste works. The higher you go, in fact, you might run into more resistance. We saw the resistance that met President Obama as he rose. There was a congressman who in open session accused him of lying in front of everyone. This is something that we do not generally see in such agast convenings.

This is something-- It does not mean that just because there are restrictions and boundaries and walls and divisions that there are not people who manage to scale them. Another example of this is that no matter how far you might rise, there can be, in an instant, a reminder of the underlying framework and hierarchy that still percolates beneath all of this. The preeminent actor, Forest Whitaker, Academy Award winner, just happened to go into an upscale deli in Manhattan a few years ago.

He went in there, came out without buying anything as many people might do. He was essentially stopped at the door by the staff who then forced him down to be searched in front of all the other customers. How humiliating for this to have happened to one of our most preeminent actors in our country. This is the way that while one might rise to great heights, there still is this underlying impulse. It can happen at any given time, which is why this is such a corrosive aspect of how people interact even in the current day.

Brian: In our last minute, do you make policy recommendations in this book or ways to really make progress? I know you write about radical empathy as something that people should identify with and act on. It might be more at a personal level. Where do you go or is the point of the book as a historian to frame how we got here and then policy is for others?

Isabel: I do take the long view of a historian of first trying to illuminate and shed light on where we happen to be. I've described myself in some ways as like a building inspector. Here I am going up and down the framework and the systems and trying to say, "This is what we have inherited. This is where we are." If you have a building, an old building that's being inspected, it ends up being the role and responsibility of the owner of that house to figure out what is it that can be done once they now know.

Once you know, then you have the responsibility to do something about it. As it turns out, obviously, in our country, all of us are the owners of this old structure. We have inherited this old structure that we did not build ourselves, but here we are, the current people to deal with it. My hope is that this will illuminate where we happen to be, shed light in corners that had not been seen before, and with the recognition that it will take all of us to find a way out of a system that has been in place for 400 years and hopes that we can heal finally.

Brian: Isabel Wilkerson is the author now of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. She's going to be on a virtual book tour for the COVID era. One of the events is with the New York bookstore, the Strand. That is a ticketed event, but you can see all of Isabel Wilkerson's virtual tour dates on isabelwilkerson.com. Isabelwilkerson.com. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. We really appreciate it. Congratulations on this book.

Isabel: Thank you so much.

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