As we go about our daily lives, cast is the wordless usher in a darkened theater.

Flashlight casts down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for performance.

The hierarchy of cast is not about feeling or morality.

It is about power.

Which groups have it and which do not?

It is about resources.

Which cast is seen as worthy of them and which are not?

Who gets to acquire and control them and who does not?

It is about respect, authority, and assumptions

of competence.

Who is accorded these and who is not?

Hey, I'm Ramti Nara Blui.

I'm Ramda Nifatta.

And on this episode of Thulein from NPR, the origins of our discontent.

It's sacred work to be able to record the experiences of people who have been part of history

but not been included in the history.

This is Isabel Wilkerson.

I am author of The Warmth of Other Sons, which was about the outpouring of six million

African Americans from the South to the rest of the country seeking refuge from the cast

system known as Jim Crow that lasted from the end of reconstruction until essentially

into the 1960s.

Isabel spent a decade gathering research and conducting interviews for her book.

...