Welcome everyone to the brooklyn book festival. Tonight is the seventh day of an eightday festival where we have presented over 100 programs and almost 300 authors. It has been a tremendous week of literary celebration as were very grateful to have his of the wilkerson and Michael Eric Dyson with us tonight. I would like to say one thing, show the love by purchasing their books in the link below. They are authors with books after all and going to turn over now to both of them to continue the conversation. Thank you very much. Thank you very kindly. Im honored to be here today with a woman who is among the 304 greatest writers in america, arguably the finest writer in america today. I am going to make that argument. So it is an extraordinary honor to be with you, ms. Isabel wilkerson, and to have this opportunity to chat with you. Theyre calling it a a conversation but im just going to fan boy out and as as a sayn the hood, ask you some questions. And see if we can stimulate the conversation. A Remarkable Book to be certain. I want to begin with a kind of the conceptual inquiry, if you will. So in the warmth of other sons, you take the Massive Movement and mobilization of like people from the south out, i kind of intraamerican diaspora, if you will. And the way with black people say my mom is in alabama come my daddy from georgia come i live in chicago. They aint nothing but a suburb of mississippi. Negroes in louisiana went over to california and from texas over to los angeles. Thats why snoop dogg talks with fake gangster link. The imprint of the great migration in the total patterns of the verbal tics and the rhetorical habits of black people, but you imagine in that book the Mass Mobilization in migration, both the push and pull of those instances black people fanned out, right . It seems in this book your taken it a step or two back, right, so that what lies behind that great migration, the warmth of other signs a magisterial tone that i would recommend all of you get your hands on as soon as you can and read it posthaste. But in that book you imagine against the canvas of american possibility, political and economic and social factors what is best black people do exist, but here are kind of back stop it. To back and say let me go way back. Let it go back to the beginning, right, on the extract come the extraction of african souls from the resting place on on the nae soil brought here in the mass migration of black people in the middle passage, but in here in north america now youve taken on something even larger, the notion of caste. I want people to understand this is a conceptual acuity and the philosophical argument that we dont want to miss because some people have talked about race and ethnicity and caste in class and the like. Tell us philosophically and conceptually why it is that you wanted to caste pun intended caste for your site across the intellectual horizon and give for us a kind of philosophical depth to a notion that for some people is rather interesting and offers a kind of purchase that initially they think, well, but when you read the book you go my god, how ingenious. So help us understand how you grasped hold of the notion of caste. First, let me say im honored to be your with you, and i can tell already we are going to have an interesting time, and a good time i think, i hope. I will start with that. So it really goes back to the warmth of other suns because in that book i had to look at what it was like to live in the jim crow south. What does that really mean . We all get exposed to the imagery of the black and white water fountain, the colored only restroom, white on the restrooms. We all know about that but in doing the research for the book and talking to the hundreds and hundreds, actually 1200 people i talked talked to in order to narrow it down to the three people who i would tell the story of, i came to realize that a lot of the language we are used to using did not really fully encompass all that they were dealing with. They were living in a world in which he was against the law for black person and a white person to merely play checkers in birmingham, state we ancestors come from. They were living in a world where courtrooms at the south the was a black bible and an altogether separate white bible to square tell the truth in the corporate that means the same sacred object could not be touched by hands of different races, the very word of god segregated at the jim crow south. So that said to me that it was a tremendous, there was a Huge Investment and not just this idea that they did not that they felt hatred for another group, but they had an investment in the degradation and subjugation of the group. They had an investment in keeping the boundaries fixed in their view minute in order to maintain the hierarchy that thy created. In doing the research i came across the work of anthropologists studied the jim crow south in the depth of the jim crow south and they came out of the Research Using the word caste. The use of this ancient language that described essentially this artificial, arbitrary ranking of human value, in which a society in which a person, an individual was granted standing, respect, benefit of the doubt, access to resources or lack there of, intelligence, beauty, the basis of the category that they been assigned to. That was essentially the caste system and that was language of the anthropologists emerged out of, those who would studied the jim crow south, that is the term i begin to use in the warmth of other suns. So people who read the warmth of other suns may not have realized come may be they are reading closer they would know the word racism persist procest really in the book. The word caste is in the book and people read through it and they begin to understand and absorb the meaning of that word as the experience with the people what theyre going to come what they can do it come what they suffered and ultimately what they were escaping. In the great migration. Thats how i came to the word. You dig deeper and it takes time. You take your time by going to different countries, by studying and anything different people, and then using the kinds of narrative impetus of a lived experience to articulate philosophical depth that are hard to understand with their esoteric and abstract to make it real plane. You put it where the ghost can get it, right . Where the folk can eat. I think that six in the morn because elegance of this construction and eloquence of the language, there is such power and such, you know, not only rhetorical force but philosophical depth to what you are saying. Having said that, so when you think about the fact that look, in the book racial formation come to talk about consciousness and this is a big difference between ethnicity and race in people get them mixed up. You could talk about a shared language and culture on one income talking about a biologically determined of existence, that you masterfully deconstruct year, is something thats artificial anyway. When you think about it and then i think about Orlando Patterson in his book slavery, we does a comparative analysis. He said we can look at these 16 slave societies and we will find out what makes the experience in our culture so different. Im bringing it down to what you do in your comparative analysis. You look at nazi germany, you look at india, with the intangibles and the caste system, the rigid regimentation and restrictions and rules and some would say ruin of life under the oppressive society, and then you look at the caste system in america. Southern apartheid, the homegrown terror that was introduced there. Some people be trip and, oh, my god, how can you dare compare what was going on here to what was going on in nazi germany and was going on in india . I defy anybody to read this tall and that instead of which way we did together but you know philosophical and even theoretical dogmatic to some people if not attend if not intellectual. Explain to us the beauty of the power of bringing a comparative analysis of looking at past through the lens of three different societies but that have core belief of a dehumanization and stigmatization, and as you speak about that characterize what caste is. Well, one of the reasons why the idea of caste is so eliminating for us, because we are accustomed to seeing ourselves in certain language and you can see yourself in a certain way. You can look at something for so long that you stop being able to see it. This is the way of learning from our other societies have been formed and how they operate, and see what we can learn about ourselves by saying the points of intersection with the other societies. One to societies i was looking at most particularly because isi was using the word caste was of course the hierarchies in india which are ancient, thousands and thousands of years old, extremely regimented, regulated, deep and complicated system four main and theres the outcast of what were formally known as untouchables are now known as which is what im saying is an analog to africanamericans in this country defense of enslavement in this country. That was one of the first places i was looking to be able to see what with the points of intersection. One of the things i found to be true across these three systems, india and the 12 year concentrated years of terror, and germany, without obsession with purity and pollution. Purity of the domination group at all cost or separation, boundaries from the need to the feeling of impulse to protect the dominant group from intrusion by or contamination by those seen as subordinate. So, for example, in india, and each one of different ways of enforcing it come different ways of metrics for how theyre going to do it, but in india for example, there were lower caste, would have to be 96 one way they interpreted it. There were many different ways put in the United States or many other ways but one of the things that was very similar among them all was this idea of water. Essential lifegiving element on our planet that has to it all cost be protected and controlled by the dominant caste so of course in india, indians who were subordinate caste could not draw from the same well as dominant caste people and, of course, not drink from the same in nazi germany there were restrictions that said that jewish citizens could not use the pool and the beaches, the water in germany because they would be viewed as polluting. And then and the United States of course we know that the race riot what would end up being called a race riot of 1919 in chicago had begun after a black boy in chicago was swimming in lake michigan, and he waded into what was called the whitewater. How to make the distinction between come how to draw the line in water what is white and what is black looks he was swimming and he happened to wait into what was viewed as whitewater and he was stoned to death for having done so. The idea of water as an intersection of protecting and policing and creating boundaries to the point of death, in other words, it could be a matter of life and death if you breached these berries pillars of caste. That was one of them. I found it was stunning to me that across time, across oceans come across continents these three hierarchies, these are three out of me in the world, but of these three hierarchies, turn to and relied on the same metric, the same mechanism of maintaining power, maintaining difference, maintaining the boundary to protect and preserve the purity of the dominant groups. I found that to be one of the many stunning ways that there were intersections. And the provisions of the spiritual intensity that would signify within water, cleansing, baptism, renewal, and the perverse inversion of those meanings so that the imposition on bodies, of both water and its human body, these perverted meanings showed the essential artifice of race of caste as you constructed here, and so very powerfully. Thats why to me metaphor is so important, right, of the comparative analysis that you do and the kind of analogical investigation. You are making all of these analogies between whats going on, like for instance, i love so that caste is the bone, the bones, and raise is the skin and got me to thinking, whats the blood . Right . If race, if caste is the bones and race is the skin come in what is the flow, the lifegiving impetus of i5 ideology, right . Racial mythology in the way in which you kind of help us understand, you know, in this book outcast operates. Its not just simply the imposition of an arbitrary physical distinction among people, a kind of anthropological assessment of them. Its also a kind of argument, a kind of mythological, almost mystical worth or dehumanization to other people generated out of something that people just essentially made up. Of course understand why even though it gets settled in bodies, caste systems, regimentation and rigidity, that is essentially a kind of formal ideal and its a mythical magical invention that is as arbitrary as anything we might imagine. Help us understand. One of the things i mentioned is race is a social construct. We know its a creation, that color is a fact that race is a social construct. Any number of metrics couldve been used in having used to create hierarchy in any society. Religion, ethnicity, birthplace, geography, any number of things can be used and then in our case in america happened to be seen at every have to to be what you look like to create hierarchy. Seen a type. These are neutral characteristics that people have and in this case you taking a a neutral characteristic and converting them into value and who should be position where in hierarchy. As i sit in a number things could have been used. In this case they use this arbitrary description. When we say race is, the caste is the bones and race is the skin we need to bring in that third which would be last, class would be the bearing and the a closing, the things we put on top of ourselves, education in order to help position ourselves differently perhaps how we were resumed to be born to. That is why i say if you can act your way out of it, its clasp it if you cannot act your way out of it, its caste if this is a reminder of the rigidity, the enduring, sadly the enduring power of this creation of caste, which is in my description here. It is the infrastructure of these other divisions. In other words, the impulse, the impulse to control, the impulse to regulate another group and to keep them in the fixed place so that you as a dominant group can stay on topic that is what im describing as caste. Any number of things can be used to assert that, gender, all kinds of other aspects of Human Identity can be used to control and to create a metric. I wanted sick little bit about the word caste because used the word caste in in a different rm and said thats an interesting how to link can be used. I want to call our attention to the idea that caste is something that is about boundaries and policing of the boundaries. What is the difference between this and racism as we know it . This is an obsession with policing boundaries. Thats one of the things weve been saying in these videos, how this is resurging up at how was it made so much progress in our current era, you can have to make people at a starbucks waiting for a friend and someone calls the police on been . That you can have a family barbecue in oakland in the park, public park and some calls the police how is it a man of Marketing Executive to be trying to unlock the door in his condo building lobby and it was one block his path, follow them all the way to the elevator, holding up the elevator, not afraid cannot afraid to follow him up the elevator onto the floor and to make sure it actually belongs in that building . Thats about the policing boundaries. Thats about this autonomic recognition impulse to control in to believe the people belong in in a certain place and that they should be returned to and kept in that certain place. They think about a caste on and are picky think about that mechanism that holds the fractured bones in place that they were used instead place. Thats one way the word cast issues in a language. Think about the cast into play in which theres a stage and the stage left, stage right come for a, background anybody knows where this post to be in that play. Each person knows their line. They know their line. If they really invested in that play, they will know the entire script they will know everybodys line. If you make a change in that script and you have someone whos been in the background into the foreground, everybody has to forget what does it mean for them. It can be viewed as threatening to have a change in in a script when i going has know what the script is. These are some of the metaphors and you mention metaphor in the book. These are some of the metaphors to be able to think about how this works in our society. I think its quite interesting that the word caste applies to all of these things about keeping people in the fixed place. Wow. Citing that can shes preaching over her. Shes giving you black preaching over. Thats what she is doing. Shes preaching the word to you. Talk about caste and caste, beautiful, you know totality of it, right. Or a philosopher say, multievidential. Oh bunch of stuff at the same time it counts as evidence in a bunch of arenas in ways. I love the autonomic system because they think about the nervous system and then a think about how it spreads, the messages are communicated. Help us understand the following. What purchase do you get intellectually and was the honest even culturally by having a kind of terminological shift in the midst of one of the greatest ethics of racial malaise in america to shift the term to caste . What do we gain come what do we lose, what are we afraid of losing the intimacy and familiarity, terminological he of race versus caste . And does that separate us from historical legacies of philosophical argument that we might appeal to in order to make our claims, or do we lose something in the process, or do we gain something, resource that we heretofore ignored that attaches us to cultures around the world . Nazi germany, india, and in your book what happens in south africa. Tell us what that is, what do we get from it, what do we lose with it. This is not to say racism is not real. This is not to say race is not real. Race is a social construct but it has been made real because of the consequences that kerry and attached to the meaning that been added to this defining aspect of human categorization. This is to say that theres something underneath what we think we see. That is, this not to say racism is not a factor in our lives. To say that the something underneath it that is even more deeply embedded and even in some ways more powerful because we do that seek him because would not recognize it, because weve not named it, because we do not see the way it operates. And some what you think is they work in tandem. They reinforce each other in ways that make each even more powerful. They make each more powerful. This is not to say one is it is think we have not been able to see. Weve not named. Weve not often seen the connections, part a whole idea of a