Caste The Origins of Our Discontents

This latest movie that you did, Origin, it was based on this book, Caste.

Well, Caste, I want to differentiate it from cast, meaning most people thinking cast of a show or something.

And that's how it's pronounced. But it's talking about this levels in society, you know, and it it was this book that really talked about how calling a situation racist is really kind of almost oversimplifying it because we all have different ways of marginalizing people.

And then Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste.

And then Isabel Wilkerson's book, Cast.

I think that it's one metric. I don't think it's the metric. And I'm always careful about better metric, right? Because I think if you if you've read Isabel Wilkerson's incredible book cast or seen the movie Origin, there is a, there's a cast system that we don't talk about, but that is present in our society.

been reading Isabel Wilkerson's new book Cast

This is the hot new book pushed by Oprah Winfrey that suggests that America is basically like the Indian cast system

the narrative drawn that America is just like Nazi Germany or like the cast system in India is so patently absurd on its face

So for Oprah Winfrey she's now pushing this new book called Caste. This is written by the same person who suggested that there have been only three durable caste systems in world history, Nazi Germany, the United States and India which is patently crazy.

And she recently wrapped production on Origin, a film based on Isabel Wilkerson's bestselling book, Cast.

Ava's recently signed on to do a film adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's bestselling book Cast...

I think all the time about this part in Isabelle Wilkerson's cast where she talks about how experts in cast can identify what cast a person's from by just the way they walk into a room, regardless of what they're wearing, what they're whatever.

been reading isabel wilkerson's new book cast that's a book about racism in america i haven't read it don't plan to she says if you were of the opinion that the united states wasn't nearly as bad as nazi germany how wrong you are can't encourage you enough to read this masterpiece

Origin is based on Wilkerson's book Cast, where she explores the concept of cast systems, drawing parallels to India, Nazi Germany and the United States.

The film is inspired by Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents.

When my guest Ava DuVernay first read Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, she was so stunned she reread it two more times. The bestselling book draws a line between India's caste system, the hierarchies of Nazi Germany, and the historic subjugation of Black people in the United States.

The book is academic in nature, 496 pages filled with facts and historical notes.

I think I was just trying to survive the pandemic, you know. I think of, it came out, the book, about two months after the murder of George Floyd... the book had sat on my nightstand for a while and you know, one of those pandemic days you pick it up and you start to explore and it drew me in but I didn't really understand it. It's a dense book.

And when I finally got through it, I wasn't satisfied with my retention of the theory, my real integration of it into my understanding. I felt that I had a surface understanding and so I read it again just to satisfy myself.

the film is inspired by Isabel Wilkerson's book Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents.

When my guest Ava DuVernay first read Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, she was so stunned she re-read it two more times.

The bestselling book draws a line between India's caste system, the hierarchies of Nazi Germany, and the historic subjugation of black people in the United States.

I think I was just trying to survive the pandemic... the book had sat on my nightstand for a while and I picked it up and it drew me in but I didn't really understand it.

It's a dense book, and when I finally got through it, I wasn't satisfied with my retention of the theory, my real integration of it into my understanding.

When my guest Ava DuVernay first read Isabelle Wilkerson's book Caste, The Origins of Our Discontents, she was so stunned she reread it two more times.

The bestselling book draws a line between India's caste system, the hierarchies of Nazi Germany, and the historic subjugation of black people in the United States. The book is academic in nature, 496 pages filled with facts and historical notes.

Okay, so I want to put myself in the place where you were when you read Caste three times.

One of those pandemic days you pick it up and you start to explore and it drew me in, but I didn't really understand it. It's a dense book.

I think that's one of the reasons why I was attracted to the book.

the book Cast, The Origins of Our Discontents by Pulitzer Prizewinning author Isabel Wilkerson

But there wasn't a big idea in the science of learning, at least not one that I could find, that had that sort of transformative power like that kind of, oh wow, this idea makes the whole world look different.

I read cast by Isabel Wilkerson.

The cast system in America.

If you've ever read the book Cast, great book by Isabelle Wilkerson, read it a few years ago. It's based off this book.

When I when I when I heard that they were doing a movie based off this book, I was like, how are they going to make a movie based off Cast? Like if it's not a documentary because the book is just full of facts and research.

But she did it through the lens of Isabelle Wilkerson getting the idea to write the book Cast in the process of her writing the book.

And like you said, it's it's based off, I guess, different things that happened in the past, what, six, seven years? No. What's your research? No. What was it? The book is what, Cast? Yeah. What is the research on?

It is based off the system that we live in and how how the system of race was developed in the country, in America.

If you've ever read the book Cast, great book by Isabelle Wilkerson, read it a few years ago. It's based off this book.

When I when I when I heard that they were doing a movie based off this book, I was like, how are they going to make a movie based off Cast? Like if it's not a documentary because the book is just full of facts and research.

It is based off the system that we live in and how how the system of race was developed in the country, in America.

The great thing about her writing, and I recommend anybody to actually read the book, cast is that she's, and you know this, her writing is so transparent and there's blood in her words.

So I looked at the book cast when I was reading it, when I got the part as a memoir of Ms. Wilkerson. So I just use that as my source material.

Fantastic movie. And I didn't realize... I didn't know how she was going to turn it into an actual movie.

She did a great, great job. When I tell you Ava DuVernay don't never waste her art.

She doesn't do it for fun. She doesn't do it for a check. Everything means something with Ava DuVernay which is pretty dope.

It's based off the book "Cast", which I read by Isabel Wilkerson.

Wilkerson's book is about invisible systems that rank humanity into arbitrary hierarchies. She connects the violent racism of the Jim Crow South to anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and to India's caste system, which cruelly relegates the Dalit people as untouchables.

Cast was a number one New York Times bestseller in 2020, though it languished on DuVernay's nightstand until Oprah, yes, that Oprah, finally convinced her just to get into it.

It's one of the ways in which Isabel Wilkerson actually explained it to me. Personally, and I remembered hearing the word and thinking, oh, that helps me organize it in my mind in a certain way.

One of the things that Isabel Wilkerson does so beautifully in her work, whether it's The Walk of the Mother's Sons, whether in her writing as a journalist or in caste, is she is able to explain these large, you know, complex issues in a thousand different ways, and one of them you're going to get.

This is the metaphor that Wilkerson uses in a book. And as you say in the film, any more deterioration is on our watch.

What you just were talking about reminded me of something, you know, kind of a searing anecdote in the book cast by Isabella Wilkerson.

And one of the stories she tells, and it's, you know, it's shocking, I think, to many, many ears. She showed up somewhere to do an interview, I think with a proprietor of a business who refused to believe-- this is some years ago-- who refused to believe that this Black woman could actually be a reporter for the New York Times.

I read every page from beginning to end over the weekend, and it had a lot of praise that preceded it. But I found it to be an enormously important work.

Can't put it down.

For me, it was a combination of not just the ideas that you have in the book and the analysis in the book, but also how you string it all together with stories and metaphors.

So it's a magnificent achievement, and I congratulate you.

Many people might rightly say I had nothing to do with how all this started. I have nothing to do with the sins of the past. My ancestors never attacked indigenous people, never owned slaves. And yes, not one of us was here when this house was built.

I've said a number of times here and elsewhere that a book that really made me think deeply about a lot of things and I think is important, I tweeted about it after the election, and I think we want to understand better where the country is, why it is where it is, why some people are so disaffected, and what the structure of inequality comes from in this country. You have to read Isabel Wilkerson's cast.

If you haven't listened to that episode, I would go back and listen to it and then read the book or vice versa. But it's an eye-opening, I know people like to say eye-opening a lot, but it was truly eye-opening.

You have to read Isabel Wilkerson's Cast.

If you haven't listened to that episode, I would go back and listen to it and then read the book or vice versa. But it's an eye-opening, I know people like to say eye-opening a lot, but it was truly eye-opening.

But I think the best answer to your question, or at least one of the best answers to your question, came in an earlier podcast episode when I interviewed Isabel Wilkerson on her book Cast the Origins of Our Discontents.

There's obviously a lot more there in the lengthy book by Isabel Wilkerson, but in a nutshell, that's her response.

It's called 'Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents'. And let me just can I add my small voice to all the waves of praise that you've gotten for the book? I read every page from beginning to end over the weekend and it had a lot of praise that preceded it. But I found it to be an enormously important work. Can't put it down for me.

It was a combination of not just the ideas that you have in the book and the analysis in the book, but also how you string it all together with stories and metaphors. And so I also could not put it down. So it's a magnificent achievement.

Author Isabel Wilkerson's new book 'Caste: The Origins of our Discontents' is a riveting reframing of how power operates in our society. It's been sparking conversations all over the country and for good reason.

It's a powerful and profoundly timely meditation on the way that hierarchies form across societies from the United States to India to Nazi Germany.