What we view as established almost natural law is in fact a creation of man.

It actually is not real.

It is an artificial hierarchy that was used in this particular hierarchy, this particular

caste system.

In other caste systems, there might be a religion that's used as a metric.

There could be geography that's used as a metric.

But in this case, it was race.

As the tool races, the signal races the queue as to where you fit in the caste system

that was created with the founding of the country.

Hello, and welcome to Wise This Happening with me, your host, Chris Hayes.

I'm very, very, very excited about today's guest, which someone that I've been looking

forward to for a while.

So back in 2010, this book came out that I read that blew my mind.

And there's a lot of books written about history.

There's a lot of books in America written about the specifics of African American history

and the sort of torturous story of race in America.

And obviously I'm a fairly voracious consumer of those.

And this book just stuck out immediately as one of the probably one of the five best

on the topic that I'd ever read in my life.

Because it was about the Northern migration.

It's funny.

The Northern migration, which is the mass exodus of African Americans from the Jim Crow South

...