Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. My guest today is Pulitzer
Speaker 1: Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson. She's the author of Cast,
Speaker 1: The Origins of Our Discontent. It's a profound book and
Speaker 1: an instant bestseller. Wilkerson digs deep into American history, as
Speaker 1: well as the history of Nazi Germany and the cast
Speaker 1: system of India to understand the ways systemic inequality is
Speaker 1: enforced in the United States. Throughout the book, Wilkerson explicitly
Speaker 1: does not use the word racism. You know, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons I use the word cast and this invisible, unrecognized,
Speaker 1: unspoken hierarchy and infrastructure is that it is so profoundly
Speaker 1: embedded into you know, our history, our psyches, the way
Speaker 1: that things work, that it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 1: single institution or actor. It's an autonomic response to changes
Speaker 1: or threats to the hierarchy as we've known it. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time thinking about how the word
Speaker 1: cast is used in our language, with or without the E.
Speaker 1: And so if you think about cast in a play
Speaker 1: in which everyone has there's a script and everyone has
Speaker 1: a place on the stage stage left, stage right, foreground background,
Speaker 1: and everyone knows their lines, and if you're really invested
Speaker 1: in it, you know everyone's lines because you know the
Speaker 1: entire script. And so one when you have a situation
Speaker 1: in which we have all inherited this script that's been
Speaker 1: passed down through the generations, it doesn't take a single person.
Speaker 1: It's not about a single person or entity. It's about
Speaker 1: the recognition that this is the way things have been,
Speaker 1: and those who are deeply invested in maintaining it will
Speaker 1: do whatever it takes to keep it going. So it
Speaker 1: could be any number of different entities, subsets, individuals anywhere
Speaker 1: along the hierarchy who have a vested interest in maintaining it.
Speaker 1: But would you say that in decades prior, would you
Speaker 1: say that organizations that clearly espoused public policy and argue
Speaker 1: for public policy that had a racially subjugating tinge to it,
Speaker 1: an ultimate result was a cast maintenance. Oh? Absolutely. But
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is, were those organizations more fringe years ago,
Speaker 1: like the John Bird's Society, things that were ultra conservative,
Speaker 1: ultra reactionary. We're much more marginalized fifty years ago, and
Speaker 1: now it's mainstream now you have a whole news organization
Speaker 1: where Tucker Carlson is saying the things he's saying. You know,
Speaker 1: he's got advertisers, he's got a nightly show. Has it
Speaker 1: become more mainstream that maintenance people who espouse a maintenance
Speaker 1: of the cast system that you write of. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason that I mentioned of the plateau is that as
Speaker 1: long as you're in a plateau, there's not necessarily a
Speaker 1: need for anyone to get activated. While the play is
Speaker 1: going on and everything is going you know, it's had
Speaker 1: a very long run, and everybody knows where they're supposed
Speaker 1: to be, then there's no need for anyone to necessarily
Speaker 1: to act to take action. It's only when there is
Speaker 1: a threat, a perceived threat to what all has happened before,
Speaker 1: to the infrastructure as we've known it, that is when
Speaker 1: more and more people can be drawn into responding to
Speaker 1: whatever is perceived as a threat. And that is how
Speaker 1: I would look at it from a cast perspective. So
Speaker 1: when the African American community, my question for a long
Speaker 1: time has always been, you know what, ultimately as a
Speaker 1: group separate from Hispanics, latinos Asians, the black community, the
Speaker 1: African American community what do you think African American people
Speaker 1: wanted fifty two years ago and how that's changed? Is
Speaker 1: integration itself? Acquaint idea? Have black Americans? Have African Americans
Speaker 1: arrived at a place and have they been there for
Speaker 1: a while where they're like, we don't need to be
Speaker 1: friends with you, we don't need to live with you
Speaker 1: and hang out with you, as long as you just
Speaker 1: let us have what we need and get off our
Speaker 1: back and give us equal opportunity. Is the idea of
Speaker 1: a pure racially blind integration Is that dead in this country?
Speaker 1: I think that we don't even have necessarily a single
Speaker 1: African American community. There are communities, There are people who
Speaker 1: have been in this country for longer than most Americans
Speaker 1: who might meet, meaning you know, slavery went on for
Speaker 1: two hundred and forty six years, more than a hundred
Speaker 1: years before there was the United States of America. So
Speaker 1: that means that that's one group of people who are
Speaker 1: descended from enslavement in a huge percentage, you know, probably
Speaker 1: the majority of people who would be identified as black
Speaker 1: in this country. Then we have people who have who
Speaker 1: have immigrated here from a Caribbean and have been here
Speaker 1: for many many decades as well, and now we have
Speaker 1: a new introduction of people who are immigrating very large
Speaker 1: numbers of people integrating from Sub Saharan Africa, so there's
Speaker 1: not even just one community. There's also an issue of
Speaker 1: class within the group known as African Americans. So there
Speaker 1: are many, many different perspectives that are paid within forty
Speaker 1: million people who would be identified as black or African
Speaker 1: American in this country. So it's not one perspective, I
Speaker 1: would say in that case, although of course everyone would
Speaker 1: agree that people in our current day wish to be
Speaker 1: treated as anyone else would in this country, wish to
Speaker 1: not be over surveiled and over policed, would wish to
Speaker 1: be able to go about their lives every day the
Speaker 1: way other people do, without having someone intrude into their
Speaker 1: day and call the police on them for you know,
Speaker 1: sitting at a Starbucks waiting for a friend, trying to
Speaker 1: get into one's own condo building. Those are the kind
Speaker 1: of things that have happened to people who are of
Speaker 1: African descent in this country in in just the last
Speaker 1: couple of years. I mean just many, many, many, many
Speaker 1: many examples of this going on. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's a have to say that all people of
Speaker 1: African descent would love to just be able to go
Speaker 1: about their lives as everyone else, as Americans, to be
Speaker 1: able to pursue their dreams as anyone else would, or
Speaker 1: just to be able to get through the day. I
Speaker 1: would say that going back to the nineteen you know,
Speaker 1: to the era of the Civil rights movement, which actually,
Speaker 1: it could be argued, began with the arrival of the
Speaker 1: first slave ship, meaning that there has always been resistance
Speaker 1: to enslavement, always been resistance to being kept in Chaine,
Speaker 1: and there's always been some kind of resistance, and what
Speaker 1: we think of as a civil rights movement, it's just
Speaker 1: part of the continuum of resistance that goes back for many,
Speaker 1: many generations. You know, when you think about during slavery,
Speaker 1: there were people the underground railroad of people trying to escape.
Speaker 1: So I also think looking at the long arc of
Speaker 1: history where we talk about progress and backlash and plateau,
Speaker 1: those are the things that have continued for as long
Speaker 1: as there's been a country. But the Civil Rights movement,
Speaker 1: as you were speaking about what do people want, I
Speaker 1: mean people wanted, well, what was life like for them
Speaker 1: at that time? During the Civil rights era, nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, A good portion the majority of African Americans,
Speaker 1: many of them were in the South, were not permitted
Speaker 1: to vote, not permitted to be able to just use
Speaker 1: public facilities, were segregated in every way that you can imagine.
Speaker 1: There were actually separate bibles in court to swear to
Speaker 1: tell the truth on. There is a Black Bible and
Speaker 1: altogether separate white Bible to swear to tell the truth on.
Speaker 1: In court. It was against the law for a black
Speaker 1: person and a white person to merely play checkers together
Speaker 1: in Birmingham, for example. So the world that people lived in,
Speaker 1: and what I call the cast system of the American South,
Speaker 1: was one of such extreme inequality and injustice and this
Speaker 1: artificial graded ranking of human value, that the goal would
Speaker 1: have been to be able to be seen and accepted
Speaker 1: and have all the rights and privileges of any other
Speaker 1: citizen of the United States, which they had earned through
Speaker 1: generations and generations of course of working for free to
Speaker 1: build this country for two and forty six years. So
Speaker 1: that is what they were seeking ultimately, and they were
Speaker 1: seeking human rights as well as civil rights, to be
Speaker 1: seen and recognized as the humans that they had always
Speaker 1: been and the citizens that they had always been. I
Speaker 1: want to just get to another idea, and these are
Speaker 1: all my opinions. In the last several years, there are
Speaker 1: three primary groups that have organized politically to varying degrees
Speaker 1: of success and using various methodologies to try to advance
Speaker 1: their cause of their human rights. The l g B
Speaker 1: t Q community, women and African Americans and people of color. Now,
Speaker 1: one would argue that although none of them have come
Speaker 1: far enough, the gay community made great strides with marriage equality,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of things that really really
Speaker 1: you know, they had a nice, tight campaign and they
Speaker 1: pushed and they won, and they prevaire women. I think
Speaker 1: things have gotten better for women in this country, not enough.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the fact that we don't have
Speaker 1: an equal rights in them and in this cord yous
Speaker 1: appalling to me. Do you think that the cause of
Speaker 1: African Americans in terms of their human rights has been
Speaker 1: in third place in terms of those accomplishments gaining what
Speaker 1: they wanted to and why? Well, I can only second
Speaker 1: only go back to the work that I've done, which
Speaker 1: is to say that we have inherited a cast system,
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the arbitrary artificial ranking of human value.
Speaker 1: And it was founded on the essential belief that the
Speaker 1: colonists established themselves on top. They imported, they brought in
Speaker 1: people from Africa to form the bottom wrong of that hierarchy.
Speaker 1: So we're going back to the founding of our country.
Speaker 1: Before there was the United States, there was this hierarchy
Speaker 1: and it established this bipolar infrastructure. And X of course,
Speaker 1: in the founding of the country, the indigenous people were
Speaker 1: their numbers were decimated, and they were driven from their lands.
Speaker 1: So this is this is our inheritance as Americans, and
Speaker 1: this is so built into the infrastructure of our country
Speaker 1: that this is an enduring question that has yet to
Speaker 1: be fully resolved. Even though we had in a civil
Speaker 1: rights movement and civil rights legislation of nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: sixty five, and sixty eight. What we are seeing now
Speaker 1: is an indication that you can have the laws in
Speaker 1: place which are absolutely necessary and a show of progress.
Speaker 1: Um yet you can still have what we have seen
Speaker 1: in just the last year when it comes to video
Speaker 1: after video of you know, dehumanizing effects of people who
Speaker 1: are still enforcing these assumptions and and this this ranking
Speaker 1: of human value. We can we have seen people killed
Speaker 1: before our very eyes, inside of all that has gone before.
Speaker 1: For you who have achieved, I mean, it doesn't get
Speaker 1: any better for someone in your field than what you've accomplished.
Speaker 1: You have a poet, surprise. You live in a pretty
Speaker 1: rarefied world, in a pretty elite world. You'll be You're
Speaker 1: an enormous successful, enormously well respected writer. You've been given
Speaker 1: one of the highest honors in your field. Do you
Speaker 1: still encounter microaggressions from people in the world you live in? Oh? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: The one that I feel most comfortable talking about is
Speaker 1: where I was actually accused of impersonating myself. For people
Speaker 1: who haven't heard that, how did this guy pulled? How
Speaker 1: did he do this? Yeah? So I had made appointments
Speaker 1: with several people for this one story that was a
Speaker 1: fairly harmless, you know, not controversial story at all, and
Speaker 1: everybody that I called was really excited about it, about participating.
Speaker 1: And he was one of the people that I called.
Speaker 1: And I've done all these interviews during the course of
Speaker 1: the day and he was the last interview of the
Speaker 1: day and when I got there, he was not there.
Speaker 1: I got into his h It's a retail establishment, a
Speaker 1: small boutique and there was no one there in the
Speaker 1: boutique at the time. Was a quiet hour of the day.
Speaker 1: And the sales clerk said, you know, he's not here.
Speaker 1: This is the man nager of the boutique. And I
Speaker 1: waited for him, and then this, you know, the door
Speaker 1: opening in. He's clearly recognized that he's late for something.
Speaker 1: He's taking off his code, he's trying to get situated.
Speaker 1: The clerk tells me to go over to him, because
Speaker 1: that's the guy that I'm supposed to be interviewing. And uh.
Speaker 1: I go up to him and I introduced myself and
Speaker 1: he said, oh, I can't talk with you now, I
Speaker 1: cannot talk with you. I'm getting ready for a very
Speaker 1: very important meeting, very very important interview. I don't have
Speaker 1: the time to talk with you. And I said, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm Isabel Wilkerson. Um, I think I'm the appointment that
Speaker 1: you're here, because we have this interview set up for
Speaker 1: four thirty. Uh. And he said, well, how do I
Speaker 1: know that? How do I know that? I mean, I
Speaker 1: was stunned by that, because, I mean, here we were,
Speaker 1: he was late, there was no one else there, and
Speaker 1: he was saying to me, how do I know that
Speaker 1: you're who you say you are? And I said, I
Speaker 1: made this appointment with you. It's well past the time
Speaker 1: I made this appointment with you. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: let me you know you have a business card. And
Speaker 1: it's so happened. It's one of those things where there's
Speaker 1: when you're in a particular you know, uh past, I
Speaker 1: might say, there's no room for error, and it just
Speaker 1: so happened. I didn't have any business cards. I've been
Speaker 1: out talking to people all day. I said, I don't
Speaker 1: have a business card with me. I but we have
Speaker 1: this appointment. I have my notebook. I was here waiting
Speaker 1: for you. There's no one else here. We should be
Speaker 1: having his interview. And he said, well, I'll need to
Speaker 1: see some I D. So I said to him, I said,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have to show you I D. We're already
Speaker 1: well into the time that we should be interviewing. But
Speaker 1: here's my idea. I showed it to him, and he said,
Speaker 1: showed him the driver's life. And he said, you don't
Speaker 1: have anything with the New York Times on it. And
Speaker 1: I said, we are well into the time we should
Speaker 1: be doing the interview. I mean like we're just wasting time.
Speaker 1: We could have been done with the interview by now.
Speaker 1: And he said, I'm going to have to ask you
Speaker 1: to leave because she'll be here any minute. She'll be here, Yes,
Speaker 1: she'll be here any minute. Here she is. Let me
Speaker 1: Let me leave and read what I thought of that? Wait?
Speaker 1: Wait here, I am. It's me and my boss is
Speaker 1: on the phone. They want you to call at the times.
Speaker 1: But what's interesting to me? Among a myriad of things?
Speaker 1: Were there ever any consequences for him? Was he an
Speaker 1: employee of a company. Did anybody contact his employer and
Speaker 1: say nothing ever happened to him? Now this charade? Now, Now,
Speaker 1: I wrote the piece, I finished the piece, and I
Speaker 1: would have liked to have included him, and he very
Speaker 1: much wanted to be in it, obviously, But I wrote
Speaker 1: the piece and got it done, and you know, and
Speaker 1: that was it. I mean, he I I've sent him
Speaker 1: a copy of the article with the business card he'd
Speaker 1: asked for. Author Isabel Wilkerson. Another person who was challenging
Speaker 1: the narratives of our nation's history is Brian Stephenson, the
Speaker 1: founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. From the Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing Archives, Stevenson talked about the way civil rights history
Speaker 1: gets condensed. All we want to do when we talk
Speaker 1: about the nineties, forties and fifties and exties is celebrate
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement, to celebrate the progress that we made,
Speaker 1: and freeze it. Everybody gets to celebrate. There's no qualifying
Speaker 1: questions that you have to add answer before you get
Speaker 1: to participate. And we've reduced it almost to this kind
Speaker 1: of three day event where Rosa Parks gives up her
Speaker 1: seat on the first day. Dr King leads the march
Speaker 1: on Washington on the second day, and then we pass
Speaker 1: all these laws on the third day. And it provokes
Speaker 1: me because we're ignoring the decades of damage that we
Speaker 1: did to everybody by humiliating people of color every day
Speaker 1: of their lives. You can find the rest of my
Speaker 1: conversation with Brian Stevenson that here's the thing dot Org.
Speaker 1: We talk about the need for a curriculum for all
Speaker 1: Americans to understand the history of the cast system. After
Speaker 1: the break, I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's the thing.
Speaker 1: We're speaking today with author Isabel Wilkerson about her best
Speaker 1: selling book Cast The Origins of Our Discontent. It feels
Speaker 1: like racial inequality in our country is by design. Well,
Speaker 1: it was designed as a hierarchy that we don't often
Speaker 1: recognize because we can't see it. And that's why it's
Speaker 1: in some ways so powerful. We've accepted it for so
Speaker 1: long that we don't we don't see it because it
Speaker 1: is just the way things are. You know, I described that,
Speaker 1: you know, the country is like an old house, and
Speaker 1: that old house, you know you don't want to go
Speaker 1: into the basement to see, but the reins have wrought
Speaker 1: after a rain. But if you don't go in and
Speaker 1: look at it, then you're not You're not going to
Speaker 1: avoid the consequences just because you don't know what they are.
Speaker 1: You don't avoid having to deal with whatever is down
Speaker 1: there just because you have not to have look. It
Speaker 1: could be that if there's a human impulse to create hierarchy,
Speaker 1: and you know, again getting back to that play that
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, that script that has been passed down
Speaker 1: through the generations, it doesn't take a single individual to
Speaker 1: make pro ones for a society because if everyone has
Speaker 1: received the script, then they're acting upon that script. I
Speaker 1: am saying that each one of us has received the script,
Speaker 1: and we we may act upon it in our own ways,
Speaker 1: but the script is still there. And I think that
Speaker 1: this is a matter of, you know, of adjusting and
Speaker 1: changing and dealing with the programming that we have been heard.
Speaker 1: It's like we've all been programmed to see things in
Speaker 1: a certain way, to treat people in a certain way,
Speaker 1: to elevate those who are in who are in the
Speaker 1: dominant group, and to sublimate those who are in the
Speaker 1: subordinated group. And it's so it's so much a part
Speaker 1: of the social order of things, and it's been in
Speaker 1: place for so long that we may not even be
Speaker 1: able to see how it's acting upon ourselves. We may
Speaker 1: not be able to say I was acting upon our
Speaker 1: society until things reach that breaking point as they have
Speaker 1: in more recent times, you know, in our current era.
Speaker 1: I want to get to one last thing while I
Speaker 1: have you, because I can't believe I've forgotten this. That is,
Speaker 1: are you a proponent of reparations? Yes, I think that
Speaker 1: The Warmth of the Sons your other book, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: first book describes what African Americans endured, not doing slavery,
Speaker 1: not doing slavery, but in the lifespan of people, actually
Speaker 1: the oldest Americans and our current era, what they endured,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of redlining and restrictive covenants. That
Speaker 1: meant that African Americans were excluded from the American dream
Speaker 1: ununtil the nineteen sixties, excluded from the ability to just
Speaker 1: kind fortgage like any other like white Americans were able to.
Speaker 1: That means that white Americans whose parents bought homes or
Speaker 1: grandparents and great grandparents bought homes before the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: were you know, unintended or may not be aware of it,
Speaker 1: but we're beneficiaries of the discrimination that occurred against African Americans,
Speaker 1: the exclusion of African Americans because they African Americans were
Speaker 1: not permitted to participate in this wealth building, you know,
Speaker 1: part of the American dream. And so there is a way,
Speaker 1: without even having to go back to slavery, to say
Speaker 1: that African Americans have been harmed economically and that current
Speaker 1: day Americans, you know, my my own parents, for example,
Speaker 1: who were not able to to get a mortgage in
Speaker 1: the regular way that other people were because they fell
Speaker 1: under that category of people who were excluded. They were
Speaker 1: African Americans who were excluded by the virtue of their race.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the record is very clear
Speaker 1: that this is a group that has has endured completely
Speaker 1: different experience as they went about trying to build lives
Speaker 1: for themselves, excluded from the American dream. And so therefore,
Speaker 1: of course, as other groups have have experienced abuses and
Speaker 1: and atrocities and have been harmed for that, and that
Speaker 1: is what countries do, reparations having to do with repairing harm.
Speaker 1: So I'm in favor of clearly that is for the groups,
Speaker 1: but I would also add that I believe what's most
Speaker 1: important is education to go along with that, so that
Speaker 1: all Americans can know why it is appropriate. No, we
Speaker 1: need to have instruction in this country. Human rights is
Speaker 1: something that should be taught in the core curriculum. You
Speaker 1: should be have. Kids should come into school and they
Speaker 1: should learn all about human rights with it two women
Speaker 1: related to sexuality, related to race. We should have a
Speaker 1: core course that kids are talking from a very young
Speaker 1: age about why it's just the right thing to do
Speaker 1: and why it's in your interest to allow people their
Speaker 1: their rights. The only thing I would finish with is
Speaker 1: beyond where the money would come from and how much
Speaker 1: money would be in a reparations program, who do you
Speaker 1: think is the best arbiters and who would be the
Speaker 1: best managers of that system, do you think, see I
Speaker 1: appreciate you asking me that question, but I'm not equipped
Speaker 1: to answer that question. Who's a good person you think
Speaker 1: they can speak about, who has a view about reparation
Speaker 1: that you admire? Well, there are many people who do
Speaker 1: who are researching this. One of them is a professor
Speaker 1: of economics at Duke University named William Darety. He's one
Speaker 1: of the people who's been working on this for a
Speaker 1: very long time. Obviously, Ton Halsey Coates is you know,
Speaker 1: wrote the piece the Case Reparations, which he very kindly
Speaker 1: referred to the warmth of other sons as being an
Speaker 1: inspiration for that. So there are many, many, many people
Speaker 1: working on this, and I think that they're the ones
Speaker 1: that I would defer to on this topic. I would
Speaker 1: only say, and I really want to emphasize that in
Speaker 1: other countries. I'm thinking about Germany, where I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time trying to understand how they deal with
Speaker 1: their history. You know, in the middle of Berlin is
Speaker 1: this massive memorial to the Jews who were killed in
Speaker 1: the Holocaust, and it should be there. It is massive,
Speaker 1: and of course is anyone to give deep thought reflect
Speaker 1: upon what was lost uh in that. But it takes
Speaker 1: up a massive amount of that city center. And in
Speaker 1: spite of how large it is, it's notable that there's
Speaker 1: no sign there's no signage, there's no exhibit explanation as
Speaker 1: to why it's there or what happened. And the reason
Speaker 1: is because everyone knows what is there. It happened to have
Speaker 1: have been cre aided by a Jewish American architect, and
Speaker 1: it's there as a memorial, and it makes a statement
Speaker 1: by its existence by saying everyone there recognizes the horror
Speaker 1: that happened. Everyone recognizes the history, as they should because
Speaker 1: everyone receives an education about how and why this is
Speaker 1: necessary to honor and how and why the country got
Speaker 1: to where it was in World War Two, And we
Speaker 1: do not have that. We're not on the same page
Speaker 1: here in our country about basic facts as to the
Speaker 1: causes of the Civil War and what happened after reconstruction,
Speaker 1: and what was Jim Crow and how did that? How
Speaker 1: did that work? How did we end up with the
Speaker 1: cast system when I'm describing as a cast system of
Speaker 1: this artificial grade and ranking of human value. We're not
Speaker 1: on the same page about what happened in our country.
Speaker 1: And that is what I'm saying. Why it's so important
Speaker 1: as we try to understand how we got to where
Speaker 1: we are now, is to understand what happened. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't fix what you can't see, and you can't
Speaker 1: repair what you don't know. And and that's why I
Speaker 1: think it's important for us to get on the same
Speaker 1: page about what happened. You can't make progress unless you
Speaker 1: know what's happened to get us where we are. I
Speaker 1: think there's hope. I think there's hope. I actually do
Speaker 1: think there's hope. I've written these books so that people
Speaker 1: can have an idea of where and how we got
Speaker 1: to where we are. But that first book, when it
Speaker 1: came out, moren't other sons. People would come up to
Speaker 1: me of all different backgrounds and would say to me
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I had no idea that this happened in our country.
Speaker 1: I had no idea. And so the goal of this
Speaker 1: is to get us on the same page about what
Speaker 1: happened in this country. Things don't make sense until you
Speaker 1: know how we got here. It's as if our country
Speaker 1: like we're in an audience that walked into a theater
Speaker 1: in the middle of a movie and we didn't catch
Speaker 1: the first half. So we see one car chasing another car,
Speaker 1: and a man chasing and and someone else's stopping the
Speaker 1: man is chasing, and we don't understand why this one
Speaker 1: man is chasing the other man. We don't understand what's happened.
Speaker 1: And we watched the rest of the movie and we
Speaker 1: still missed out on what was the essential questions about
Speaker 1: how and why this happened. And so that's what we're like.
Speaker 1: And if you've walked into the middle of a movie
Speaker 1: and you didn't catch the first half, in some ways
Speaker 1: nothing else really truly makes sense. And this is an
Speaker 1: effort to try to get us on the same page
Speaker 1: so that things will make sense, so that we will
Speaker 1: have a better understanding of why we're where we are
Speaker 1: and how we got to where we are, so that
Speaker 1: we can have a better sense of what to do
Speaker 1: going forward. That's the whole goal here. Well, let me
Speaker 1: just say once again, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to do with this. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: That's best selling author Isabel Wilkerson. I wanted to follow
Speaker 1: up on this question of reparations and as Isabel Wilkerson
Speaker 1: recommended talking to William Daretti. He happens to be my
Speaker 1: next guest. He teach is public Policy, African American Studies,
Speaker 1: and Economics at Duke University. He and his wife Kirsten
Speaker 1: Mullen are the authors of From Here to Equality, Reparations
Speaker 1: for Black Americans in the twenty one century. It's a
Speaker 1: detailed case for reparations, particularly as a way to close
Speaker 1: the generational wealth gap between white and Black Americans. Dareity says,
Speaker 1: the reparations invoice the federal government owes descendants of enslaved
Speaker 1: people is between ten and twelve trillion dollars. It's a
Speaker 1: daunting price tag. However, Darety says, if the federal government
Speaker 1: commits to the plan, it can find the money. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I don't think the increasing the deficit
Speaker 1: necessarily means you increase the debt, uh, And it's it's
Speaker 1: really a rise in the death that creates a financial
Speaker 1: burden that's carried over time. But you can finance projects
Speaker 1: without increasing taxes or increasing tax revenu new or making
Speaker 1: a commitment to obtain an additional debt. In the process
Speaker 1: of engaging in the expenditure. But let's say, even just
Speaker 1: as a hypothetical, that they gave a trillion dollars over
Speaker 1: ten years or twenty years, you've got a trillion dollars
Speaker 1: a hundred billion dollars a year that was distributed for whatever,
Speaker 1: for as you said, institutions, scholarships, direct cash payments to
Speaker 1: people who I mean, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: process to identify who really is entitled to this money
Speaker 1: by your own metric. And even if you do that,
Speaker 1: you don't think we need to raise taxes in order
Speaker 1: to distribute a trillion dollars over ten years, not necessarily.
Speaker 1: I mean, the limit to additional federal spending is the
Speaker 1: inflation risk, and so any new expenditure program would have
Speaker 1: to be designed in such a way that it minimized
Speaker 1: the risk of high rates of inflation, UH, including this one.
Speaker 1: But we propose some ways in Chapter thirteen that the
Speaker 1: program could be administered UH in such a way that
Speaker 1: you contain the prospects of high inflation, including what you
Speaker 1: just mentioned, which is the idea of distributing the payments
Speaker 1: over a period of years rather than making the payments
Speaker 1: take place all at once. But we're also concerned about
Speaker 1: creating a new wealth position for Black Americans that's comparable
Speaker 1: to the wealth position that's held by white Americans. Or
Speaker 1: the average white household has eight hundred thousand dollars more
Speaker 1: in net worth than the average black household, and we
Speaker 1: argue in the book that that's a consequence of the
Speaker 1: cumulative intergenerational effects of policies that have promoted white wealth
Speaker 1: accumulation at the expense of black wealth accumulation. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, we could distribute that that set of funds
Speaker 1: over the course of a decade. We could also distribute
Speaker 1: the funds in such a way that we create trust
Speaker 1: to counts or endowments where the full amounts are not
Speaker 1: spent overnight or instantly by the individual recipients. So there
Speaker 1: are ways to contain the inflation risk. Now the question becomes,
Speaker 1: you know as well as I do, that the knee
Speaker 1: jerk response you always get from people is almost kind
Speaker 1: of a statute of limitations. Bail out. They kind of
Speaker 1: sit there and they go, hey, man, I didn't known
Speaker 1: any slaves, and yet you and I I mean, you
Speaker 1: maintain I think, and I'll let you speak to this
Speaker 1: this idea that the whole country there is the nation
Speaker 1: itself is where it is today, and as the directors
Speaker 1: of the bears responsibility as a country to pay this
Speaker 1: amount of money. Correct, Yes, that's precisely right. Our position
Speaker 1: is that the United States government is the culpopal party
Speaker 1: because it maintained the legal and authority framework that permitted
Speaker 1: these atrocities take place, and in many instances actually supported
Speaker 1: the execution of these these are cities. And so yes,
Speaker 1: it is the United States government that bears the responsibility
Speaker 1: on behalf of the nation as a whole for meeting
Speaker 1: the reparations bill. Uh. This comes into full focus when
Speaker 1: we start thinking about the origins of the racial wealth
Speaker 1: disparity that exists in the United States today, and and
Speaker 1: that kind of disparity actually begins UH in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the Civil War when they formally enslaved persons were
Speaker 1: promised forty acre land grants in the form of restitution,
Speaker 1: and that promise was not met when at the same time,
Speaker 1: the United States government, through the Homestead Acts, was providing
Speaker 1: one point five million white families with access to a
Speaker 1: hundred sixty acre land grants in the western part of
Speaker 1: the United States and land that was appropriated from the
Speaker 1: native population. This was a settler colonialist projects straight up.
Speaker 1: But the effects of that were to create a situation
Speaker 1: in which Black Americans start with no steak, no grub
Speaker 1: steak in American society. They have to build wealth entirely
Speaker 1: independently after being subjected to many, many years of bondage,
Speaker 1: and white Americans get what is essentially a governmental handout
Speaker 1: in the form of land that provides them with a
Speaker 1: foundation for intergenerational wealth from the Homestead Act. Now, in
Speaker 1: chapter thirteen a program of Black Reparations, you enumerate a
Speaker 1: handful of different methods by which where the money would
Speaker 1: be accessed. You talk about the wealth of the country
Speaker 1: and the percentage of the population on the most simple terms,
Speaker 1: that's African American. If it's thirteen percent, so they're entitled
Speaker 1: to of that. Uh, you know, wealth of the country.
Speaker 1: Which metric that you reference in the book? Are you
Speaker 1: the most in favorable what do you think is the
Speaker 1: calculation and what do you think is the best way
Speaker 1: to get the money out of the Congress. So the
Speaker 1: thing that we settle on as the metric for dictating
Speaker 1: the actual amount of the reparations payment is elimination of
Speaker 1: the racial wealth differential in the United States by increasing
Speaker 1: the black asset position until there is no longer any
Speaker 1: significant difference between average black and white household wealth. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that would require an expenditure we estimate in the
Speaker 1: vicinity of ten to twelve trillion dollars, So that would
Speaker 1: be the basic amount that would be required to actually
Speaker 1: accomplish the goals of a reparations project. Right now, the
Speaker 1: African American population in the United States is what we
Speaker 1: should say about forty million. I would say that the
Speaker 1: African American population that is descended from persons who are
Speaker 1: enslaved in the United States is about forty million people.
Speaker 1: So do you have much knowledge as to how much
Speaker 1: money the German government had to transfer even to the
Speaker 1: state of Israel, because you mentioned not only just direct
Speaker 1: payments to people, but to institutions as well. What what
Speaker 1: what was the bill that was handled by the German government?
Speaker 1: Do you know? As far as I understand, the German
Speaker 1: government as well as interestingly enough, the United States government,
Speaker 1: which is not a culpable party in that situation, are
Speaker 1: still making payments and they are running into the vicinity
Speaker 1: of billions and billions of US dollars. I think at
Speaker 1: the outset When the German government first started this process,
Speaker 1: it was running into the low billions in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: the late nineteen forties. So the US government is still
Speaker 1: paying into a program. The U s government is paying
Speaker 1: into a program to provide restitution for US citizens who
Speaker 1: were victims of the Holocaust and their descendants. How long
Speaker 1: has that been going on. I think that was enacted
Speaker 1: within the past ten years. And how much money is
Speaker 1: that program spending US dollars. I'm not certain about the
Speaker 1: exact amount of money and that program. I will say
Speaker 1: this that you know, progressively, over time with respect to
Speaker 1: the Holocaust payments, there's been an increase in the number
Speaker 1: of individuals who are identified as being eligible for payments.
Speaker 1: So it has expanded, particularly to the descendants of the
Speaker 1: folks who were the direct victims, in such a way
Speaker 1: that it actually includes I believe, not only sons and daughters,
Speaker 1: but nieces and nephews. So it really has become a
Speaker 1: more expansive program in terms of treating the ramifications of
Speaker 1: the harm. The United States to me seems like a
Speaker 1: country that they do the right thing, not all the time,
Speaker 1: but very often they do the right thing only when
Speaker 1: it's absolutely necessary. As my friend who was a professor
Speaker 1: at n y U Law School, he had a great quote.
Speaker 1: He said, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Brown
Speaker 1: versus Board of Education decision, they didn't wake up that
Speaker 1: morning and have any new information. They woke up that
Speaker 1: morning and they knew the timing was right, that they
Speaker 1: had to do this, that the country absolutely demanded and
Speaker 1: was ready for this change. Now, what do you think
Speaker 1: is the foundation, if you will, of selling this to
Speaker 1: the American people? How would you expect that to work
Speaker 1: in the COVID ravaged and financially limping United States of today. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's critical again that that I
Speaker 1: emphasize that I don't believe that the United States is
Speaker 1: crippled in terms of its capacity to finance anything new,
Speaker 1: but it has to structure those financing programs in a
Speaker 1: sensible way so that it mitigates the risk of inflation.
Speaker 1: I think that we should not be mystified or paralyzed
Speaker 1: the consequence of the United States having accumulated a significant
Speaker 1: amount of debt already, because we don't have to continue
Speaker 1: to fund new programs by accumulating additional debt. So I
Speaker 1: think we should just proceed to do the right thing. Now,
Speaker 1: what would it take to persuade the American public at
Speaker 1: large that this is the right thing to do. There
Speaker 1: is evidence of a substantial sea change in American attitudes
Speaker 1: about the legitimacy and the desirability of a reparation's plan
Speaker 1: for Black Americans, which would have the effect of finally
Speaker 1: giving Black Americans the material conditions for full citizenship, their
Speaker 1: grounds for optimism because in a survey that was done
Speaker 1: by Michael Dawson and Ravana pop Off, two researchers at
Speaker 1: the University of Chicago the beginning of this century year
Speaker 1: two thousand, they found that four percent of white Americans
Speaker 1: were in favor of reparations for Black Americans. That's fou
Speaker 1: r four. But about fifteen or sixteen months ago, a
Speaker 1: survey indicated that about fifteen percent of white Americans were
Speaker 1: now in favor of reparations. And the most recent survey
Speaker 1: that I'm aware of, one that was conducted by the
Speaker 1: organization Civics in June, indicated, and I'm not sure you
Speaker 1: know how much confidence I have in this number, but
Speaker 1: it indicated the thirty nine percent of white Americans are
Speaker 1: now in favor of reparations for Black Americans. So even
Speaker 1: if that's off by nine percentage points, it still would
Speaker 1: represent a doubling of the figure that we had fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen months ago. So I'm not sure if this
Speaker 1: is a permanent change. I'm not sure if we can
Speaker 1: make it a permanent change, but it sounds like the
Speaker 1: momentum is moving in the right direction. This is here's
Speaker 1: the thing. I'm Alec Baldwin, and I'm talking to Duke
Speaker 1: University professor William Darty about reparations. If you like, here's
Speaker 1: a thing, don't keep it to yourself, tell a friend.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe to hear the thing on the I
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Speaker 1: After the break, we'll talk about how, according to Darty's proposal,
Speaker 1: the federal government could determine who is eligible to receive reparations.
Speaker 1: William Darety teaches economics at Duke University and has become
Speaker 1: a leading advocate for reparations. He mentioned other cases where
Speaker 1: reparations have been paid here in the US and in Germany.
Speaker 1: I asked if he has any concern about other historically
Speaker 1: marginalized groups like women, also coming forward to make a
Speaker 1: case for reparations to actually no. Uh. We encourage whichever
Speaker 1: group thinks they have a claim for a grievous injustice
Speaker 1: to come forward and work on and present their claim. Uh,
Speaker 1: just as we have in our book. We encourage other
Speaker 1: folks who think that they have a legitimate claim to
Speaker 1: craft their own narrative about why such a claim should
Speaker 1: be met. I think it's really interesting that in the
Speaker 1: process of the provision of reparations for Japanese Americans, uh,
Speaker 1: in the process of the provision of reparations to the
Speaker 1: families that lost loved ones in the nine one attacks,
Speaker 1: they received significant federal compensation and the U. S Government
Speaker 1: was not the culpable party in that instance either. But
Speaker 1: in in those cases, I think there was some concern
Speaker 1: about future claims being made by other groups, but this
Speaker 1: was not something that proved to be an obstacle to
Speaker 1: actually executing the project. So uh, yeah, it may well
Speaker 1: be the case that there's I mean, the Native American
Speaker 1: population has a strong case that I think is predicated
Speaker 1: on sovereignty as opposed to the Black American case, which
Speaker 1: is for used on citizenship. But certainly there's a case
Speaker 1: to be made there and as far as we're concerned,
Speaker 1: we welcome others to pursue their own case. We're just
Speaker 1: tired of black, the Black American case being consistently pushed
Speaker 1: to the back of the bus. Now. In October, the
Speaker 1: governor of California signed a bill that will develop proposals
Speaker 1: on paying out reparations to the descendants of the enslaved
Speaker 1: who lived there. Now. Similar plans are underway in Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: North Carolina, and elsewhere. Some would suggest that's a good
Speaker 1: first step, you believe otherwise, correct, Yeah. I I certainly
Speaker 1: believe that states and municipalities should establish what might be
Speaker 1: called racial equity task forces, and I certainly believe that
Speaker 1: they should address the scope of ongoing or sustained discriminatory
Speaker 1: practices in their in their communities. But I don't think
Speaker 1: that they should call the actions that they take reparation.
Speaker 1: I think that in the context of the arguments we
Speaker 1: make and from here to equality, we are concerned that
Speaker 1: the concept of reparations has a certain proprietariness that's appropriate
Speaker 1: to the type of project that we describe. In particular,
Speaker 1: if you were to take all of the funds that
Speaker 1: the state and local governments spend in their budgets from
Speaker 1: a year ago, it would amount to three point one
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. That's the total for all purposes. If we
Speaker 1: have a reparations bill of ten to twelve trillion dollars,
Speaker 1: there's no way that individually or collectively, our state and
Speaker 1: local governments can actually meet the bill. And so uh
Speaker 1: in addition to the fact that the federal government is
Speaker 1: the culpable party, it is also the federal government that
Speaker 1: has the practical capacity to actually fulfill the requirements of
Speaker 1: a reparations plan. And so as a consequence, I think
Speaker 1: that as admirable as any local efforts are for atonement
Speaker 1: or for change with respect to discriminatory practices within their states,
Speaker 1: these things should not be called reparations. When you look
Speaker 1: at the world and you look at history, is there
Speaker 1: a model for what you want to do that you
Speaker 1: can point to? Well? From our perspective, the model is
Speaker 1: that's relevant to the United States experience. The model that's
Speaker 1: most relevant is is the Japanese American Reparations Project. Is
Speaker 1: it possible to say that it was effective? That's much
Speaker 1: harder to do because the individual recipients were not followed.
Speaker 1: Nobody was concerned about making some type of judgment about
Speaker 1: how they might use the money. Now you make mention
Speaker 1: you said, we advanced two criteria to determine eligibility for
Speaker 1: a black reparations program. First, U S citizens, we need
Speaker 1: to establish that they had at least one ancestor who
Speaker 1: was enslaved in the United States after the formation of
Speaker 1: the Republic. Second, they would have to prove that they
Speaker 1: self identified as black, Negro, Afro American, or African American
Speaker 1: at least twelve years before the enactment of the reparations
Speaker 1: program or the establishment of a congressional or presidential commission
Speaker 1: quote to study and develop reparations for African Americans unquote,
Speaker 1: whichever comes first. Does such a thing exists now? No,
Speaker 1: not to my knowledge. Uh. Yeah. So the idea is
Speaker 1: that we wouldn't want people to have to bear a
Speaker 1: significant financial burden to establish their eligibility. And since one
Speaker 1: of the criteria for eligibility is demonstrating that you have
Speaker 1: at least one ancestor that was enslaved in the United States,
Speaker 1: we could have the federal government provide that investigation as
Speaker 1: a service to individuals to me the genealogical component in
Speaker 1: order for it to be really really helpful and be effective.
Speaker 1: Is another thing you've got to build out in this operation.
Speaker 1: This is that this is a big operation to identify
Speaker 1: who gets the money. Well, well, I mean this is
Speaker 1: something that is as a debt that is overdue for
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty five years, and it's a debt that
Speaker 1: now is owed to forty million people. So yes, it's
Speaker 1: a substantial operation. I mean, if if if the debt
Speaker 1: had been met in eighteen sixty five, it would have
Speaker 1: involved the allocation of approximately on the low end estimate
Speaker 1: of about forty million acres of land to the four
Speaker 1: million newly emancipated Americans. And that that was not something
Speaker 1: that was done. Today we're now talking about forty million people.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that you would have solved every problem.
Speaker 1: I think there's a quotation that we provide in the
Speaker 1: text from Malcolm X that kind of captures the scope
Speaker 1: of the issue, where Malcolm X talks about having a
Speaker 1: knife plunged into his back nine inches and he makes
Speaker 1: a distinction between pulling the knife fount and healing the wound.
Speaker 1: From our perspective, reparations is a matter of healing the wound.
Speaker 1: But there's a host of steps that need to be
Speaker 1: taken to make sure that the knife is pulled out
Speaker 1: and that it stays out. And those are steps that
Speaker 1: do not involve necessarily the types of payments that we're
Speaker 1: talking about, but the types of payments we're talking about
Speaker 1: are essential, and they would have to take place for
Speaker 1: the purposes of really altering the framework, the substance, and
Speaker 1: the morality of this society in such a way that
Speaker 1: we really truly have an inclusive democracy, something we've never
Speaker 1: actually had. Thank you very much for taking time to
Speaker 1: do this with us. Best of luck with your next book.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much. William Darety teaches at Duke University and
Speaker 1: is the co author with his wife Kirsten Mullen, of
Speaker 1: From Here to Equality, Reparations for Black Americans in the
Speaker 1: twenty one century. I'm at like Baldwin. Here's the Thing
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