Isabel Wilkerson - "We all know in our bones that things are harder than they have to be."

In this rich, expansive, and warm conversation between friends, Krista draws out the heart for humanity behind Isabel Wilkerson’s eye on histories we are only now communally learning to tell - her devotion to understanding not merely who we have been, but who we can be. Her most recent offering of fresh insight to our life together brings “caste” into the light - a recurrent, instinctive pattern of human societies across the centuries, though far more malignant in some times and places. Caste is a ranking of human value that works more like a pathogen than a belief system - more like the reflexive grammar of our sentences than our choices of words. In the American context, Isabel Wilkerson says race is the skin, but “caste is the bones.” And this shift away from centering race as a focus of analysis actually helps us understand why race and racism continue to shape-shift and regenerate, every best intention and effort and law notwithstanding. But beginning to see caste also gives us fresh eyes and hearts for imagining where to begin, and how to persist, in order finally to shift that.
Isabel and Krista spoke in Seattle before a packed house at Benaroya Hall, at the invitation of Seattle Arts & Lectures.
[Content Advisory: Beginning at 21:16, there is a discussion of Nazi terminology and a quotation from Hitler with an epithet that is offensive and painful. We chose to include this language to illustrate the heinous nature of the history being discussed and Hitler’s admiration for it.]
ABOUT
Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize while reporting for the New York Times. Her first book, "The Warmth of Other Suns", brought the underreported story of the Great Migration of the 20th century into the light, and she published her best-selling book "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents" in August 2020. Among many honors, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal from President Barack Obama.
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[@marytrusel4885]

everyone needs to listen to this wise woman if indeed we wish to continue as a species. her metaphors make it easy to understand complex ancients means of basic sociological illness.

[@MrBrindleStyle]

The old house is exactly how I see "America" - from my own stance as an Indigenous woman living within younger more modern colonial systems and structures. What a terrific metaphor that is. Globalisation FAILS right there. It fails at the oldness and bogged-down shackles of slavery and militarism. Including the oldness of the leaders and the oldness of their educational and experiential backgrounds that informs their thinking and their policy and planning. I can also state from my experience that the house work and maintanance is no less whether it's a new house of an old one that was a real estate sellers dream.

[@18_rabbit]

can u define 'globalisation'? Many ppl mean very different things by the term.

[@natalie.natalie.natalie]

Listening from Switzerland... where 25% of the 8 Million peoeple cannot vote, but are a big part of the workforce and bearing children to the country. Thank you Isabel Wilkerson 👌🌳

[@cookingwithrosita6777]

In the United States, I wonder what is the percent?

[@18_rabbit]

@@cookingwithrosita6777 well, as a national total, a vastly smaller percentage of population is foreign residents without citizenship or illegal immigrants. But it's a not a tiny number either, iirc. I'm an american, a very liberal one who is quite pro immigration since we've badly needed immigration increasingly over the past forty years, to fulfill basic jobs. In past twenty we're chronically short of enough workers to get stuff done including basic agriculture, but also other jobs, many. Also high end work in STEM fields of course.

[@BlackCulturalPreservation2023]

Good over evil. God has everyone’s address. Fix what’s broken before God steps in and unleashes that can of whoop ***.

[@elainesmith7512]

@OAK Underground: It's too late because these are truly the "End Times" written of in the Bible. I think even the most secular heathen can see something is different, so the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, have already begun to "unleash that can of "whoop***"". In other words, we have not seen "nothing" yet, and things are only going to get worse! I always tell people to be ready for Jesus! May God have mercy on our evil, sinning souls. 🙏🙏🥺🥺😞😞

[@18_rabbit]

@@elainesmith7512 way to relinquish your personal responsibility, just another faux xtian, antihumanist fake christian american. Total b.s. on u! While the rest of us secular folks carry the actual weight of the country.