Isabel Wilkerson argues that 'Caste,' not racism caused The Great Migration

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 24 October 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

Isabel Wilkerson followed her novel about The Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, with another book that looks at why it happened. Caste – recently made into a film by director Ava DuVernay – argues that caste and not racism is actually what Black people were fleeing when they left the Jim Crow South. Wilkerson told Throughline's Ramtin Arablouei and Rund Abdelfatah that the term racism is rooted in hate but caste is about "power and how those other groups manage and navigate and seek to survive in a society that's created with this ranked hierarchy."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh.
0:05.6	Isabel Wilkerson's cast is a big book in size and scope,
0:09.7	essentially cataloging the way societal hierarchies shaped the world.
0:13.5	So when I heard director Ava DuVernay was making a movie about it,
0:17.3	I don't know. I was suspect that you could cover this material in a movie that isn't
0:22.8	like 90 hours long. But what DuVernay decided to do instead was make a movie about Wilkerson
0:29.2	writing the book. It's an interesting reframe of the story that I could see answering a lot of
0:33.5	the storytelling problems when working with source material this meaty.
0:37.8	You know, instead of making a movie about a history book, a movie about a woman discovering
0:42.9	this history and refining her arguments is much more compelling.
0:47.4	So listen to this interview Wilkerson did with NPR's History Podcasts ThruLine right
0:51.4	when the book came out, laying out those arguments, and you get a sense
0:54.7	as to why she had to be the center of this story.
0:58.5	This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe.
1:03.1	When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with
1:07.9	no hidden fees.
1:09.1	Join millions of customers and visit wise.com.
1:12.6	T's and C's apply.
1:14.7	It's sacred work to be able to record the experiences of people who have been part of history,
1:21.2	but not been included in the history.
1:24.3	This is Isabel Wilkerson.
1:26.7	I am author of The Warrant of Other Sons, which was about
	...

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