Caste: Pillar Two

Oprah’s Book Club

Oprah and Apple Books

Society & Culture

3.7 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 15 September 2020

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Part two of Oprah’s discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Isabel Wilkerson and readers about the book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents. The second episode in the eight-part series focuses on the second pillar of Caste, “Heritability”; the idea that permanent rank in society is inherited and passed down through ancestry. Special guest Academy Award winning actor Forest Whitaker joins the conversation. Oprah and Isabel respond to questions and comments from readers on the second pillar.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody. Together with Apple Books, I wanted to welcome you to the Oprah's Book Club podcast.
0:09.3	This eight-part series is devoted to my latest book club selection cast, The Origins of our Discontents.
0:17.6	If you don't have your copy yet, really easy to get one right now. On Apple Books, you can also get the fantastic audio version if you would rather listen.
0:27.8	So I'm joined by Professor Isabel Wilkerson and readers for our eight-part discussion on cast.
0:33.9	I feel in my bones that the ideas presented in this book are so eye-opening and so revolutionary.
0:41.2	I just wanted to share them with as many people as possible.
0:45.6	So remember to post your comments on all of our Oprah's Book Club social pages, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
0:51.8	I love reading what you all have to say. So hello Isabel.
0:56.9	Hi. Great to be here. In cast, you describe how the pillars serve as a kind of invisible framework to hold up the whole cast system.
1:07.4	Can you give a quick explanation of pillars? What we're talking about here is we move through the eight pillars of cast.
1:16.4	Well, pillars are the shared characteristics that are endemic in any hierarchy that we're calling cast.
1:23.6	They are the eight similarities, parallel requirements that I discovered and compiled in the process of doing research for this book.
1:32.6	And these eight pillars together would be evident in any cast system.
1:38.6	So last time we discussed pillar one, how a cast system is based in religion, founded actually in religion.
1:45.1	And now we're on pillar two, which is called heritability.
1:49.6	Why it's necessary for the members of the dominant cast to believe that they have inherited by birthright their places on the ladder of cast.
2:02.2	Isabel, can you explain what heritability means?
2:05.4	Well, heritability dates back in the United States to the founding of the country and the colonies,
2:10.9	in which after there was this bipolar population of English colonists primarily and enslaved Africans,
2:18.3	there had to be, or they discovered or desired to have a distinction between them.
2:23.3	And they identified who could be seen as what based upon the mother and who had legal rights on the basis of the mother.
2:33.1	They were breaking with English tradition and the traditions around the world, which generally not all,
	...

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