January 2021 - OE - lists.wedgeblade.net

FW: Celebration of life for John Weir Singleton, 1931-2020
by Lynda C 05 Nov '24

05 Nov '24

From: Rob Singleton <rob.singleton(a)hsc.utah.edu> Date: Saturday, July 11, 2020 at 3:51 PM To: Rob Singleton <rob.singleton(a)hsc.utah.edu> Subject: Celebration of life for John Weir Singleton, 1931-2020 This email is sent on behalf of Louise Singleton- Dear Family and Friends, We plan a virtual Gathering of Gratitude to celebrate the life of John Singleton on August 8 at 11:00 a.m. MDT. The celebration will consist of a service and, after a five minute break, a virtual reception. Details of the service and instructions for how you can participate are contained in the attached Word document. Please register to join the celebration at: http://bit.ly/johnweirsingleton which also contains additional information. With love and appreciation to all of you who made John's life abundant. Louise Rob, Martha, David, and Will Louise Singleton 3101 Old Pecos Trail, Unit 509 Santa Fe, NM, 87505 lrsingleton85(a)gmail.com<mailto:lrsingleton85@gmail.com> J. Robinson Singleton, MD Professor and Vice Chairman for VA Programs, Department of Neurology, University of Utah Chief of Service, Neurology, Salt Lake City Veterans Medical Center Office 801-581-6770 Cell- 801-201-4525

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John Epps completed life
by John Epps 16 May '23

16 May '23

Dear Communion of Saints, John's earthly existence was completed on Wednesday morning, June 24, 2020. His last words were "thank you," the same words he wrote to you on June 9 in his brief comments, "Thanks for the memories." For five days we were privileged to be in the lovely Denver Hospice which enveloped us with grace and compassion. I am grateful for your many comments of appreciation for John in response to his "Last Collegium." His remains will be interred at the Montview Presbyterian Church Columbarium in Denver. Grace and Peace, Ann

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Adventures of Joe Biden--Inauguration Day!
by mellowmilan2＠gmail.com 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

I wrote a lot of 'Adventures of Obama' during the times now past. Ogden Nash, who wrote comic poetry in the 1920s, wrote 'Adventures of Isabel,' a 40 line poem in rhyming couplets. I took my poetic license and wrote a series of the Adventures of Obama in 10 line segments at a time. Each stanza tells the of encountering seemingly impossible odds and turning them into victory in unexpected ways. The original Isabel was a little girl who met a ravenous bear, an ugly witch, a one-eyed giant, and a despairing doctor and used her "magic" powers to win out in the end. I am continuing to use my poetic license with a nod to Ogden Nash in the Adventures of Joe Biden. Adventures of Joe Biden-Inauguration Day Joe Biden showed up for inauguration Knowing he'd face a divided nation Mitch and his minions known for obstruction Smiling as though there'd been no eruption Of venomous attackers hunting their heads At the urging of Donald who now they did dread Joe Biden, Joe Biden didn't worry Joe Biden didn't scream or scurry He calmly took his oath, made his stand And brought civility back to our land. Milan Hamilton January 20, 2021 Milan Hamilton 80 North Center Street Redlands, CA 92373 Phone: 909-556-5815 E-mail: mellowmilan2(a)gmail.com

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Re: [Oe List ...] Happy New Year! I Guess!
by Vera M Barber 17 Mar '21

17 Mar '21

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FW: Directory Cover Art
by Lynda C 30 Jan '21

30 Jan '21

Celebrating all of our efforts in various endeavors! Reading through the names on the memorial pages and also throughout the Directory is such a gift! Lynda From: Judy Lindblad <nj.lindblad(a)gmail.com> Date: Friday, January 29, 2021 at 11:30 PM To: Lynda Cock <lynda860(a)outlook.com> Cc: Ellen & Richard Howie <rhowie3(a)verizon.net>, Ken and Dorcas Rose <icatroy(a)verizon.net>, "lanphear(a)cnw.com" <lanphear(a)cnw.com>, David & Burna Dunn <dmdunn1(a)gmail.com>, ICA Directory <MovementDir(a)aol.com> Subject: Re: Directory Cover Art Long live the Spirit Movement...blessings to all, Judy On Fri, Jan 29, 2021 at 2:42 PM Lynda C <lynda860(a)outlook.com<mailto:lynda860@outlook.com>> wrote: Dear Judy, Thank you so much for the new cover art of The Directory. Ours just recently arrived. I love the history of where all this came from. Like so much of everything we do/did, so many people’s ideas and work comes together often at the instigation of one daring person who decides to step forward. Thanks so much for this creative remembering of Imaginal Education and the gift of collaboration. With care and gratitude and special memories, Lynda Cock

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A Poem after the inauguration-Ode to Amanda
by Milan Hamilton 29 Jan '21

29 Jan '21

I’ve been ruminating ang cogitating and contemplating on this poem night and day since the inauguration—this is likely about the tenth revision or refinement. It, like Amanda’s iteration of her vision of our tattered democracy , will likely never be finished. Ode to Amanda (contemplation on Amanda Gorman’s Inaugural Poem “The Hill We Climb”) As I poured through your words Trying to find the light in the never-ending shade You spoke of-- In my jaded view (After all I’m only 84 today—you’re already twenty-three) In my jaded view I say, The beast’s belly seemed to me a devouring monster, Leading me to a wallowing in my own sense of Being wronged by friend and foe alike. This is the hill we must climb? Tell us how to do it! I’m not so sure we knew it! Tell us how the nation isn’t broken—how to finish it. Skinny black girl from slaves descended—tell us Privileged whiteys, our privilege now up-ended How to heal the brokenness we pretended not to know Was in our DNA. We tried to turn our particular democracy into autocracy, Hide behind our masks of hypocrisy, make a mockery of Our Hippocratic oath to defend the Constitution, Allow our institutions up-ended by insurrectionists Masquerading as resurrectionists. We heard you say the dream was delayed but not defeated. Tell us how to avoid disaster and history repeated, How the cascading catastrophes we see approaching, And the results of our encroaching and Nature’s fierce response to our ravenous rapacity Will not be our ending. You have such hope, Skinny black girl-- Not so skinny anymore, You raise your voice and body to challenge us as a country To rise up and recognize our inaction, That our inertia will be our legacy. But if we find strength in mercy and justice, We will not settle for “just what is” And love will no longer be a fantasy. The poem is yours But the last word will be ours if we pay attention, Not give up our election to allow truth and justice The final mention. Milan Hamilton January 25, 2021 Sent from my iPad

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Fw: 1/28/21, Progressing Spirit: Rev. Deshna Shine: What Pulls At Your Heart; Spong revisiteddialo
by Ellie Stock 28 Jan '21

28 Jan '21

| | | | View this email in your browser | | | | | | | | | | | | | | What Pulls At Your Heart | | | | | | | | | | Essay by Rev. Deshna Shine January 28, 2021 Nearly 15 years ago I was asked to “help out” in the office of the new president of The Center for Progressive Christianity. I was told I would be filing paperwork, answering phone calls and helping with some basic accounting. My first response was, “No, thank you. I think I am done with Christianity.” Allow me to fill in the history a bit. As many of you know, I grew up as a pastor’s kid in a vibrant, thriving and meaningful progressive Christian church (United Church of Christ). We were one of the first churches to experience the Open and Affirming process. We marched in protests, and had a diverse, intellectual, justice oriented congregation. People of different sexual orientations, gender identities and a spectrum of Christian and non-Christian believers attended our church. Some drove an hour every Sunday, because it was the only church where they were welcomed and accepted. This was in the 80’s. I participated at every level of the church — in the choir, as a youth group leader, a camp counselor, a youth delegate and as a beloved community member. I will never forget the feeling of walking into that church building, being greeted with eyes of love, warm hello’s, familiar faces and many hugs. I had my regular seat at the front of the church where I laughed, cried and held hands with neighbors. Often I was joined there by several children, many of whom I babysat, and all of whom I loved dearly. My lap would be full, my heart soft and my mind stimulated. Now at 43 years old, I realize I have rarely felt so whole as I did when we were at Family Camp at Pilgrim Pines, singing around the fire, under the magnitude of stars. The crisp fall air swirled around us, pine fragrance filled the air, and I belonged to something bigger than myself. I felt directly connected to God then. She was all around us. My church was my extended family. And in my years of searching, I have yet to find a church like it, although I am sure they are out there. So, why did I feel like, at 29 years old, that I was done with Christianity? One, I couldn’t ignore the history of violence, misuse, mis-translation, abuse of power, sexism, racism, and the blatant oppression of people around the world. It seems like the Christian Church has often been at the center of these since it’s inception. This continued oppression is in opposition to the teachings of the Jesus I knew. Two, I couldn’t relate to the stories in the Bible, of a land in the middle east, and a people over 2,000 years ago. While many of the stories are timeless and universal, many for me simply were not. And it felt like a lot of digging to find those gems. I tried to imagine Jesus in our world today… and I simply couldn’t. He would likely be a homeless man, thought to be crazy. Or a black man imprisoned. An immigrant caged. The nation I was raised in, that calls itself Christian, is simply not. And three, growing up in Orange County, California our progressive church and our family were targeted by fundamentalist Christians on a regular basis. I had “friends” tell me I was going to burn for all eternity in Hell. My family and our church received bomb threats and death threats. We were called heathens, heretics and false prophets. All this because we dared to create a radically inclusive community. Like Jesus. So, I felt like I was done. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that Christianity again. In college, I moved on and studied Eastern Asian religions and I fell in love with Tibetan Buddhism. I taught yoga, worked with children, had my own child and eventually was asked help with this progressive Christian non-profit organization, known then as TCPC. In spite of my initial hesitancy, it felt like a good opportunity for some part time work. So I finally said yes. My role expanded and I began to learn more about progressive Christianity from a different perspective. I can’t tell you how many letters and emails and phone calls we received on a regular basis saying something like: “Until I found this organization, I felt completely alone in the world.” And “I have hope again.” Or, “My family doesn’t understand me and calls me a sinner. I now see that there is a path for me where I can still be a follower of Jesus and also be me.” Something like that over and over again. And, after some deep introspection, contemplation and a re-opened mind, I realized that what mattered was that we were offering a path of radical inclusion. TCPC, like my childhood church family, was trying to model the radical love of Jesus as we saw and understood it. That vision still matters now, even more so. Today, progressive Christianity is being called to level up. And big time. All that preaching from the pulpits about radical inclusion and justice? It’s time to take that to the polling place, grocery store, neighborhood and family dinner table. It’s time to examine how we have contributed to unjust systems because of our personal comfort. It’s time to acknowledge how these unjust systems have kept us from the community Jesus embodied. How do we level up? We must listen to our grief, individually and collectively. We are losing something, after all — our privilege, our perceived superiority and our comfortable and familiar ability to “other.” We must accept that our anger is telling us something is not right. We can no longer hide under the blankets of denial, guilt, fragility, shock and numbness. We must look at that grief with eyes wide open and ask how it is informing our spending, sense of ownership, actions and empathy today? We must act. Empire living, which embodies the sins of human nature, has been crushing us all. We can not pretend that because we are kind, liberal Christians that we don’t have to act or be in denial of our part. Black, brown and trans bodies are dying for our sins over and over again. We can no longer turn a blind eye. We must create a bigger table with every voice in mind and make sure every one is there when we start to wrestle with solutions. Because “we belong to each other,” as indigenous teachers have said. We must maintain hope. At the heart of Christianity and the path of Jesus is Wild Hope, living and loving with abandon. As John Shelby Spong says, “live fully and love wastefully.” “If God is the source of love, as I believe God is, then the only way you can worship God is by loving. Not by being right, but by loving. By loving wastefully. The image in my mind is an old sink in the basement, that you plug up the drains and you turn on all the [taps] and the water overflows the boundaries and goes all over the floor and fills up every crack and cranny… and never stops to ask whether that crack deserves this living water. You love because love is what you have to do, not because somebody deserves the love. You love wastefully.” Radical love, patience and trust require hope and we must maintain that burning light within if we are going to be a real part of transforming our communities and world. Hope tells us that there will always be more living water within to pour out of us. We must keep pushing. It is going to take hard, dedicated and exhausting work to continue to evolve Christian theology and to remove all echoes of racism from our liturgy and rituals. Take rest and take turns, but never stop pushing. Progressive leaders and communities need to continue (or start) modeling the transformation of systems that pervade our current global human experience through radical love. Push everyday to center, listen and learn from black, brown and indigenous people who will lead the way. United States Vice President Kamala Harris has been known to say, “I eat no for breakfast. I love that word.” She kept on pushing and isn’t going to let up now. Neither can we. We must not forget. Poet, leader and author Sonya Renee Taylor says, “white supremacist delusion demands amnesia” in order to survive. We can’t forget where the Church has done harm and has been oppressive and unjust or we will repeat the cycle of fear and othering, complacency and apathy. We must create new narratives and images. Progressive Christians, the time has come to be fully engaged in the world and active in our pursuits of radical compassion and service. Gather your church and ask, “How can we radically model the love Jesus offered to the world? The new, diverse, just and live giving narratives we create need to represent all of us and center the least of us. They must be a balance of accountability and radical empathy and forgiveness. What breaks your heart? You know when else I have felt whole? Marching in Black Lives Matter protests alongside thousands of other humans chanting and crying and singing songs of justice. Demanding an end to the hate and fear of racism. So let us take our 40 days in the desert while we wrestle our grief and what it means to you to be a follower of Jesus. But then, for the love of god, for the love of what is good and worthy, let us come out of the desert and do something. Look with honesty at the world and notice what breaks your heart. And then start with just one thing that lends healing to that brokenness. What breaks your heart can break open your community. So there is room for new growth in the cracks and a deeper cause. Pick one thing and do it well. And when you don’t know what to do, find BIPOC leaders who are already building those just systems Jesus longed for. They have been calling us to pay attention for hundreds of years. Listen, learn and show up. I stand with you as we step into our collective healing. I march with you as we commit to walking the walk. It is what Jesus asked of us all along. ~ Rev. Deshna Shine Read online here About the Author Rev. Deshna Charron Shine is Project Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org’s Children’s Curriculum. She is an ordained Interfaith Minister, author, international speaker, and visionary. She grew up in a thriving progressive Christian church and has worked in the field for over 13 years. She graduated from UCSB with a major in Religious Studies and a minor in Global Peace and Security. She was Executive Director of ProgressiveChristianity.org, Executive Producer of Embrace Festival and has co-authored the novel, Missing Mothers. Deshna is passionate about sacred community, nourishing children spiritually, and transforming Christianity through a radically inclusive lens. | | | | | | | | Question & Answer Q: By Victor Trying to figure out what Christianity is all about, I ask a lot of questions. All I want is a simple answer, but I keep getting different opinions from different people. Is that all there is? Opinions? Where are the facts? A: By Rev. David Felten Dear Victor, As a pastor who’s also a musician, the best analogy I can think of is (what else?) musical. There are a lot of “facts” about music: we strive for the “A” above middle “C” to vibrate at 440 Hz, there are four musicians in a quartet, and the British Navy uses Britney Spears songs to scare off Somali pirates.[i] No kidding. But beyond that kind of thing, music is pretty subjective. I, for one, have eclectic tastes in music, ranging from the spare and simple to the avant-garde – not surprising in that my music education degree expected me to be proficient in everything from the obscure and esoteric discipline of the classical French saxophone repertoire to the jazz and pop styles that make up the bulk of what people listen to in the real world. I was trained and expected to be able to play it all. Not surprisingly then, the music that moves me and serves as the soundtrack to my life is from almost every style and period. It’s intensely personal and subjective. I know that some of the more experimental and “free” music that inspires me the most would leave a lot of people just shaking their heads in bewilderment (it does with my mom, at least), but that’s where my musical journey has taken me. So, here’s the thing: there’s one kind of music that I don’t listen to. In fact, I can’t stand it. And that’s contemporary country music. I understand it technically and appreciate how popular it is with regular folk. Be it the inane lyrics, superficial patriotism, or the monotony of the music harmonically, it’s just not anything I can listen to. Totally subjective, but there it is. That’s my opinion. I’m a musical elitist and snob. Suffice it to say, in the realm of theology and religion, there’s an abundance of opinion, but there just aren’t that many facts. As with music, my theological tastes are pretty eclectic, ranging from the spare and simple to the avant-garde. My theological degrees expected me to know about everything from pretty obscure historical and esoteric writings to the simplest pop Christian theology that most people relate to in everyday life. I was exposed to a lot; and now, where I’ve come to be in my own personal spiritual life turns out to be very confusing to most people. It’s intensely personal, subjective and fluid. I know that a lot of what I believe must make some people just shake their head in wonder, but that’s OK. I hope they can get a glimpse of my spiritual priorities through my actions in the world. Along the way, colleagues have called me a heretic, apostate, liar and “one of the tools the enemy.” All for just being honest? Hooray! They called Thelonious Monk incompetent and subversive. And yes, just like in music, in the world of faithing, there’s one kind of theology that I can’t stand – and that’s the kind of pop Christianity that has become the dominant civic/evangelical religion in the United States. And just like country music, it’s inane, monotonous and steeped in superficial patriotism. I understand it and appreciate how popular it is with regular folk, but it's disconnectedness from the teachings and intentions of Jesus make me really sad. What’s worse is its programmatic embrace of hateful and ignorant ideologies that not only discriminate against a growing laundry list of people and ideas, but deny reality and those precious “facts” you’re looking for. I used to think that they were totally out of touch with the reformation that is going on across the country and around the world, but that’s not true. They’re well aware of the threat posed by evolving mainliners, post-evangelicals and non-believers. The nature of God, blood atonement, Christology, the authority of the Bible – all of them (including “belief” itself) – are not just in the midst of major change, in the words of one of my mentors, “they’re not even in my rear-view mirror.” As a result, the Religious Right leverages fear-based campaigns to raise money and enhance their political influence to fend off what they perceive as dangerous religious and social trends. For us in the middle of it professionally, it’s daunting, exciting and challenging, but it’s just downright perplexing to most people in the pews who think that Christianity just “is what it is” and want “just the facts.” Sorry. There’s lots of change in process and on the horizon. The belief and practices of the last 1,500 years are being retooled, revised or just plain retired. For many of us, it’s not about being faithful to rigid creeds and doctrines, but about subjectively composing a whole new genre of spirituality (of which Jesus’ teachings are just one part). The challenge is that most people in most churches (and many clergy) have their theological beliefs pre-set to the “oldies station” and are either insulated from or intimidated by what’s going on outside their comfort zone. So, they simply plod along in the isolation of their bubble of orthodoxy without a clue that there are people who practice Christianity and follow Jesus in radically different ways. So there it is. I’m not only a musical elitist and snob but a theological elitist and snob, too. If you ask me what Christianity is all about, I’m happy to give you my opinion. But it probably won’t match the last person you asked. And just like my musical tastes, I reserve the right to change my opinion based on the latest release from Snarky Puppy or Die Berliner Philharmoniker. I urge you to abandon your quest for simple answers and embrace the journey that sifting through opinions offers. Any “facts” along the way may be helpful, but only insofar as they provide a means of evaluating the veracity of various opinions. In the meantime, I encourage you to take to heart the sage (and subjective) advice of Harry Emerson Fosdick: “Opinions may be mistaken; love never is.” ~ Rev. David M. Felten Read and share online here About the Author Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions” and authors of Living the Questions: The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity. A co-founder of Catalyst Arizona and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet. David is the proud father of three reliably remarkable human beings. [i] https://metro.co.uk/2013/10/27/britney-spears-songs-used-to-scare-off-pirat… | | | | | | | | Please continue to send us your feedback… we are listening. We aim to give voice to many different perspectives that are relevant and inspiring along this spiritually progressing path. We are not here to tell you what to believe or how to act. We are here to support your journey, to share and learn together.Thank you for being a part of this community - join us on Facebook! | | | | | | | | | | | | | | As a non-profit ProgressiveChristianity.org relies heavily on the good will of donors. We want to continue to bring you the messages of progressive Christians via our Progressing Spirit Newsletter; however, the fact is, the cost of a subscription goes towards paying our authors. We therefore rely your generosity - specifically, if you are in a position to contribute to our efforts, we would be grateful for your donation. Help keep ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit online and going strong - click here to donate today! * Another way to support us is to leave a bequest in your Will and/or Trust designating us a beneficiary. | | | | | | | | Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited The Origins of the New Testament Part XXVI: The Book of Acts Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong June 17, 2010 In the early manuscripts of the Bible, the book of Acts served the purpose of providing transition from the gospels to the epistles. There was a deep historical fallacy in this assumption though it seemed logical, at least historically, to have stories of the life of Jesus precede stories of the spread of Christianity after the end of Jesus’ earthly life. The fact is that the authentic epistles of Paul were written first (51-64) and then the gospels, or, at least, the first three gospels (70-93). John was much later (95-100). Into that framework also needs to be placed the Pastoral Epistles that claim Pauline authorship, but are clearly written in Paul’s name long after his death (ca. 64), and the General or “Catholic” Epistles that are called by the names of Peter, John, James and Jude, but which were clearly not written by the one to whom each is attributed and some of which are even quite clearly the products of the second century. Then there is this book of Acts, which purports to tell the story of the Christian movement and how it spread after the Easter event from Jerusalem to Rome. Although its title claims that it is the story of all the apostles, it features stories primarily about Peter, with John appearing in a secondary role before moving to its obvious star, Paul, who is known in the early church simply as “the Apostle.” Not only was he not one of the twelve, but there is no evidence that Paul ever met or knew the Jesus of history. Originally, Acts was designed to be volume two of the Gospel of Luke. The two works are clearly inter-related and are obviously the products of the same author. They agree in vocabulary usage, in common themes and in the fact that Luke’s gospel anticipates the book of Acts and the book of Acts looks back on the gospel of Luke. It is unfortunate that, when the New Testament was formed, the gospels — now four in number — were put in the beginning, which necessitated splitting Luke-Acts into two volumes, with the gospel of John breaking their original unity. In this study, however, I will try to rectify that mistake by treating Luke-Acts as one continuous story. We can then move with better understanding into the Pastoral Epistles, the General Epistles and that rather unique epistle we call the Letter to the Hebrews before concluding our journey through the biblical text with the Johannine corpus, which includes the gospel that bears John’s name, the three epistles purportedly written by him and the book of Revelation, which claims to have been written by John while he was imprisoned on the Isle of Patmos. So with that apologia for the placement of this book in both the Bible and in this series, let me bring into focus the Acts of the Apostles. I noted in our earlier study the impact the synagogue setting had on the organization and the content of the gospels themselves (I am speaking now primarily of the first three: Mark, Matthew and Luke) and raise the question about whether or not the book of Acts might fit into that same liturgical pattern. Please note first that the book of Acts is approximately the same length as both Matthew and Luke, so if Matthew and Luke were designed to enable Jesus stories to be read in the Sabbaths of the liturgical year, as I have suggested, Acts is a similar length so that it would also lend itself to be read in segments over the course of one liturgical year. We also need to be aware of the practice in the synagogue of reading the Torah first in the Sabbath liturgy. There appear to have been two patterns at the dawn of the Christian era. The pattern in the more traditional synagogues was to read the Torah in its entirety over the Sabbaths of a single year. This would mean a very long first lesson, some five to six chapters from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In those communities of “the Diaspora,” in which the Jews were dispersed throughout the empire into pockets in predominantly Gentile cities, the pattern developed of reading the Torah over a three year cycle, thereby making the lessons much shorter each Sabbath. Once the reading of the Law was complete, and probably following the recitation of a psalm, a second lesson would be read from the historical books that the Jews called “the Early Prophets” — the books of Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel and I & II Kings. Basically, this portion of the sacred story was the narrative of what happened to the Jewish nation after the end of the life of their founder, Moses. The Jews did not regard these writings as in the same category of importance as the Torah so the passion to complete their reading in a particular period of time was not a matter of great urgency. It appears to me that the book of Acts was designed by Luke after the analogy of this Jewish practice and was meant to provide Christians with a lesson tracing the history of the church as it moved out of the Jewish orbit and into the wider Gentile world. Like the books called the “Early Prophets,” the book of Acts chronicles the life of “the New Israel” following the death of its founder, Jesus. If that is true, we might look for stories in the book of Acts that would be appropriate to the various feasts and fasts of the liturgical year in the synagogue. The first one is obvious for in Acts 2, Luke gives us the narrative of Pentecost in which he tells the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Christian community. The Jews regarded the Law as the greatest gift God had ever given to Israel and they marked this at Pentecost. Christians, however, wanted to transform Jewish Pentecost into a Christian celebration to mark what they believed was the greatest gift God had given the Christians, namely the gift of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost, which literally means 50 days, was also called Shavuot. When we previously examined Matthew’s gospel, we noted that Shavuot was observed by the Jews as a twenty-four-hour vigil focusing on the Sinai experience in which Moses received the law. We also noted that Matthew marked that holy day with the Sermon on the Mount that portrayed Jesus as the new Moses on a new mountain giving a new interpretation of the Torah, together with sufficient material to cover eight segments of three hours each in this twenty-four hour vigil. That is why there are eight beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and eight commentaries or elaborations of each of the beatitudes. Matthew’s traditionally Jewish community observed Pentecost in an orthodox way. We also noted earlier that Luke’s community was constituted of dispersed Jews and an increasing number of Gentiles who had been attracted to the synagogue by its theology of ethical monotheism. These Gentile proselytes, however, were not attracted to the cultic elements of Judaism. They would thus not be particularly interested in observing a twenty-four-hour vigil. When we were considering Luke’s gospel, we noted that when this author came to the time in which Pentecost was celebrated, he simply had John the Baptist point to the narrative that he planned to write when he got to the second chapter of Acts where Luke would reveal his new understanding of Pentecost. He did this by having John say, “I baptize you with water, but one comes after me, the thong of whose sandal I am not worthy to unloose, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” In the fifty day period between Passover and Pentecost in the Jewish calendar, Pentecost will be reached on or near the seventh Sabbath. Luke, therefore, needed to provide six gospel lessons before he gets to Pentecost. As the Easter stories began to proliferate he provided for three of these in his gospel itself. The lesson for the Sabbath after Passover, when the Christians celebrated the resurrection, would be Luke 24:1-12. Next, he added the Emmaus Road resurrection story (24:13-35) that no other gospel writer recorded to be read on the second Sabbath after Passover. Then Luke’s gospel has a third resurrection story (24:36-53) in which Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time and commissions them to be his witnesses to “all the nations,” before he departed from them. The early Christian community would then turn to the book of Acts where Luke has three more quite distinct lessons to carry him to Pentecost. First, there is his introduction (Acts 1:1-5) in which continuity with the gospel of Luke is established together with the note that the appearances of the raised Jesus went on for fifty days. Second was the story of the Ascension that brought those appearances to an end (Acts1:6-14). Finally there was the story of the community choosing Matthias to replace Judas Iscariot so that the new Israel, like the old Israel, could continue to have twelve tribes. That brings us to the seventh Sabbath and the day of Pentecost. Right on cue, the reading was the story of how the Christians had turned Pentecost into a Christian celebration of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:1-13). There are other stories in the book of Acts that seem to be appropriate to the other Jewish holidays and each comes in the correct liturgical order: Stephen is a kind of Rosh Hashanah figure as he points to the coming of the kingdom (see Acts 6:1-8); Yom Kippur is referenced when the Christian movement begins to enroll Gentiles (6:9-15); Sukkoth or Tabernacles is recalled when Stephen recites and recalls the time the Jewish people lived homeless in the wilderness (7:1-36). The festival of Dedication or Hanukkah, which came in the dead of winter, might well be replicated in the story of Paul’s conversion in chapter 9:1-22 in which the light of God comes not on the Temple as it did in the Hebrew observance, or even on Jesus as it does in the gospel story of the Transfiguration, but on Paul as he journeyed on the road to Damascus. When we get to the end of Acts, we discover the trial of Paul also appears to replicate in many places the trial of Jesus and would be read at the time when Passover for the Jews and the crucifixion for the Christians were being observed. My conclusion is that the book of Acts, like the Synoptic Gospels, was written as a liturgical book patterned after the synagogue’s holy day observances and in the proper order. Now we are ready to look at the content of this book. ~ John Shelby Spong | | | | | | | | Announcements Integrating social science research, dynamic storytelling, playful body movement, and interfaith/no-faith spiritual practices — Dr. Cleveland presents 5 stages of BIPOC racial identity development and 6 stages of white racial identity development. Online eCourse February 13th - April 24th. READ ON ... | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

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Global Buzz reminder for February issue
by ICA International 27 Jan '21

27 Jan '21

Reminder for entries This reminder is for the Global Buzz that will be published February 5th. 2021 (Please send your entries at least a day or more ahead) Please send all your entries by regular e-mail to: inform(a)ica-international.org with your entry as an attatchment. Send details of news items, training programmes, your peer to peer connections with other ICAs, any concerns you may have and of any events that are coming up at your location. Your report can be long or short, but remember that all other ICAs would really like to know about the things that matter where you are, and what you are doing as an ICA. Peter, for ICAI Communications Pour les entrées de rappel Ce rappel est à la Global Buzz qui sera publié le 5 Février 2021 (S'il vous plaît envoyez vos entrées au moins un jour à l'avance) Veuillez envoyer toutes vos entrées maintenant par courriel ordinaire à : inform(a)ica-international.org avec votre entrée comme un attatchment. Envoyer les détails des articles de nouvelles, des programmes de formation, vos connexions peer to peer avec d'autres CIAS, de toute préoccupation que vous pourriez avoir et de tous les événements qui sont à venir à votre emplacement. Votre rapport peut être longue ou courte, mais rappelez-vous que toutes les autres CIAS aimerait vraiment savoir à propos de choses qui importe où vous êtes et ce que vous faites comme une ICA. Recordatorio de las entradas Este aviso es para el Global Buzz que se publicarán 5 Febrero 2021 (Favor de enviar sus entradas al menos con un día de antelación) Por favor envíe todos sus entradas ahora por correo electrónico a: inform(a)ica-international.org con su entrada como un archivo adjunto. Enviar detalles de noticias, programas de capacitación, el peer to peer las conexiones con otros convenios o acuerdos internacionales, las preocupaciones que usted pueda tener y de los eventos que se aproximan en su ubicación. El informe puede ser a corto o largo, pero hay que recordar que todos los demás convenios quisiera saber realmente sobre lo que realmente importa, y lo que están haciendo una ICA.

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FW: A World In Transition - Building Resilient Communities & Hearts
by Lynda C 23 Jan '21

23 Jan '21

I don’t anything about this or any of the participants, but the title looks right in line with our history. Anyone know about this group? Lynda From: <unify.activehosted.com(a)s5.csa1.acemsb2.com> on behalf of UNIFY The World <support(a)unify.org> Date: Saturday, January 23, 2021 at 8:24 AM To: Lynda Cock <lynda860(a)outlook.com> Subject: A World In Transition - Building Resilient Communities & Hearts JOIN US TONIGHT | Sat Jan 23 | 6:00 – 9:00 PM PST [https://unify.imgus11.com/public/eebf8446a9bf085557422f6d7e253a81.png?r=877…] Saturday Night Alive for the Global Peace Tribe Inspirational Virtual Variety Show Lynne Twist • Jon Young • Jerry Anderson • Ridhi D'Cruz • Marisha Auerbach • Cynthia Tina • Ayla Nereo • Shylah Ray Sunshine • Shea Freedom • Chad Wilkins • Jonathan Youtt Saturday Night Alive for the Global Peace Tribe has been the mecca of conscious, heart-centered, transformational community to gather online from across the globe for soul-inspiring talks, music and connection during this unprecedented time. Featuring world-class luminaries, brilliant musicians, light-hearted comedians and inspirational performances our variety show brings both warmth and wisdom during so much uncertainty. >> Register Here<https://unify.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?redirectUrl=aHR0cCUzQSUyRiUy…> << New to Sat Night Alive? Use Promo Code: NEWBIES * Facebook Event - Click HERE<https://unify.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYl…> * More Event Details - Click HERE<https://unify.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYl…> [https://unify.imgus11.com/public/36052de2f1ad7aa12e3c57aab8a64e33.png?r=182…] On Jan 23rd, our theme is "A World In Transition: Building Resilient Communities & Hearts" Luminaries: Lynne Twist • Jon Young • Jerry Anderson • Ridhi D'Cruz • Marisha Auerbach • Cynthia Tina Musicians: Ayla Nereo • Shylah Ray Sunshine • Shea Freedom • Chad Wilkins Puppet Show: Jonathan Youtt Hosted by: Scott Catamas (Love Coach Academy) & Debra Giusti (Debra Recommends & Harmony Connects) What tools are needed to build a culture of care, connection and sustainability within our communities? In a world that is changing faster than ever, how do we stay present with our human family, cultivate thriving and resilient communities and stay connected to our natural, living systems? From eco-villages, to urban restoration, to cultural emergence, come learn how to re-build community with all of our relations. Come join our experts in learning how to create empowered, regenerative, and life-sustaining cultures and communities. We invite you to sing, dance and listen at home to an eclectic mix of musical styles and speakers, always heart-centered and soul-driven. Come join us for moments of visionary inspiration, deep truth, reflection, prayer, and meditation all addressing this unique time our collective is going through. Saturday Night Alive Event | 6-9 PM Pacific Time Register Here<https://unify.lt.acemlnc.com/Prod/link-tracker?redirectUrl=aHR0cHMlM0ElMkYl…> If you’re new to SNA use Promo Code: NEWBIES We’ll see you there! Sent to: Lynda860(a)outlook.com Unsubscribe<http://unify.activehosted.com/proc.php?nl=1&c=775&m=5930&s=6b42d3e9eed0af2e…> Unify The World, 237 Kearny St., #9011, San Francisco , CA 94108, United States

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Opinion | America’s Caste System Is 400 Years Old. That Doesn’t Change Overnight. - The New York Times
by Randy Williams 22 Jan '21

22 Jan '21

Isabel Wilkerson’s book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, has become a top seller since its publication last summer. In this interview Wilkerson explains the differences between the response of the authorities to the BLM protests of the summer and their response to the Capitol riots on January 6. Randy https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/sway-kara-swisher-isabel-wilkers… America’s Caste System Is 400 Years Old. That Doesn’t Change Overnight. Isabel Wilkerson on why a new presidency alone can’t fix America’s 400-year-old race-based hierarchy. Thursday, January 21st, 2021 transcript Isabel Wilkerson on why a new presidency alone can’t fix America’s 400-year-old race-based hierarchy. Thursday, January 21st, 2021 [MUSIC PLAYING] - (SINGING) When you walk in the room, do you have sway? kara swisher I’m Kara Swisher and you’re listening to Sway. Last week, the Capitol was a crime scene. Now it feels hopeful. As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.” It was nice to hear. And as he and Vice President Kamala Harris start their term, it might be tempting to say, let’s put the past behind us. But how can we forget January archived recording Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal! kara swisher A mob of pro-Trump extremists clashed with Capitol Police. They ransacked the halls of Congress, stole property, smeared feces on the wall. Some viciously attacked police officers. Five people died. It was an astonishing stew of hatred, arrogance, and stupidity. And let’s be honest. It was mostly white people who did this. When it was all over, shattered glass and broken furniture littered the building. Then the longtime maintenance workers showed up. archived recording [INAUDIBLE] kara swisher It was mostly Black and brown people cleaning up the mess. It’s the system Pulitzer Prize winning writer and historian Isabel Wilkerson describes in her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book is about an invisible system that classifies humanity. It was published last summer to much acclaim. She got a lot of attention then, but now seems to be the best time to talk to her, since we all saw that system so clearly in action just weeks ago. I wanted to know what Wilkerson saw. isabel wilkerson So among the many scenes that struck me to my core was after the rampage had been quelled and was later into the night, and the cleaning crew is brought in to clean up after the damage that had been done. It fell to them in order to do that. And there they were, laboring in their uniforms, bent over with mops and brooms and with masks over their faces. And I saw instantly the people assigned to the subordinated caste for 400 years, since before there was the United States, still consigned to their historic role of serving and cleaning up after those who had been programmed to see themselves as dominant and superior and supreme. And we know that, had people who looked like those janitors in that crew that we saw working late into the night, if they had deigned to burst into the Capitol like that, we know what would have come of that. They wouldn’t have lived to tell. kara swisher So talk about that difference, because the police handled the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer very differently. Explain what you think would have happened. isabel wilkerson We have seen, in so many of the peaceful protests for basic human rights, protesting against police brutality, we have seen tanks rolled out, for example, after Ferguson. We have seen riot police flanked and in position in anticipation of an outbreak. And we saw a situation in which masses of people were able to overrun the officers. They were able to trample the barricades. We saw people climbing walls to get into the Capitol, attacking police officers. We saw this with our very eyes, the complete opposite of how the protesters for basic human rights throughout the entire summer, how people were treated there. This is an indication of the — what I describe, when it comes to caste, caste is essentially this graded ranking of human value. But what it does is it determines one’s standing, respect, benefit of the doubt, access to resources, assumptions of competence and intelligence and worthiness, and then also whether the authorities will protect you or attack you. This is a function of where you are perceived to be, your value and sense of worthiness in the hierarchy. kara swisher One of the things that really — part of your book that’s gotten a lot of attention is when you’re having coffee with your friend, historian Taylor Branch. It’s 2018 and two years into the Trump administration. Taylor Branch asks you, if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness? At the time you didn’t have an answer. Looking at what happened at the Capitol, do you have an answer now? isabel wilkerson Well, I left it unanswered because in the work that I do, which is narrative nonfiction, my job is to show— show the history, show what has happened. And it is more powerful to me if those who read it come to the answer themselves. I think the answer is all too obvious. We need to remind ourselves that no Democrat who has run for president has won a majority of the white vote, or you could say, has won the white vote, since 1964. kara swisher Which is the Civil Rights Act. isabel wilkerson Lyndon Johnson, right. So this has continued to the current day. And so there is something about the connection that one group feels to one party in particular, with this belief that this party will uphold and defend the interests of the dominant. And that is what the outcome of these elections seem to be telling us. kara swisher OK, let’s check back a little bit and talk about the term caste. Americans are familiar with race and the concept of systemic racism. But your book argues that America is built on an invisible caste system. You don’t use the word racism much. You prefer to talk about casteism. What’s the difference? isabel wilkerson Well, first of all, any society, any hierarchical society can use any number of metrics, arbitrary metrics to rank people in a caste system. So you could use ethnicity. You could use religion. You could use language. You could use place of origin. And in our country, the metric that the early colonists used to divide and to rank people to determine who would be a slave or free, just to start with, the metric that was used was what we look like. It became the tool, the signifier, the signal of one’s place in the hierarchy. And it took what would be neutral characteristics otherwise, neutral characteristics that would just be part of the range of human manifestation, and turn that into a new designation, a new way of ranking and categorizing people known as race. And the idea of race is actually quite flexible and fungible. And we know that because many people who are currently identified, who we would all accept as being part of the category now known as white, were in previous centuries not considered white. There was a time where Benjamin Franklin did not view people of German descent as being in the category of his own and felt that there was a threat coming in from people who happen to be German. Now of course, this would be something that people would not even question. Of course the same goes for people who are of Irish descent. So the idea of the hierarchy that was created in our country— and remember, it was created. It was not natural. It was created. And it became a bipolar system of power and control, in which anyone who arrived to this country from outside of the poles of this hierarchy had to find a way of where did they fit in. And it turned out that, when people were coming in from other parts of Europe who might have had nothing in common with each other, who might not have seen themselves as part of the same group, arrived to this country, and it turned out that while they may have thought of themselves as Polish or Hungarian or Irish, it turned out that they were given a new identity, an identity that would have had no meaning or necessity in the old country, but meant everything in the New World because it determined what you could do. It had consequences. The resources — it had everything to do with one’s rights. If you were part of the dominant caste, part of the dominant group, it accorded all the rights and privileges of that dominant group. And that’s how race was created and how underneath that is the infrastructure. I mean, caste is about structure. kara swisher It’s a power structure. Caste groupings exist in every country because it can be anything people choose. The randomness is quite — isabel wilkerson Yeah, it’s the arbitrary nature of it. I mean, that’s what is so powerful and so enlightening, actually, about the universality of the human will to categorize and apportion power and to determine who can have power on the basis of these arbitrary characteristics that should have no meaning, except that which is accorded meaning. And the issue of class, you could say there are three out of many ways that a society can decide the different aspects of identity. So one of them would be caste, which I would describe as the bones, and race, which is the skin. It’s the visible manifestation of the structure that undergirds whatever we might be able to see. And then class becomes, essentially, the outward — the things that we add to ourselves — clothes, the dictions, the accents, education, all the things that we do have some control over that we can use to try to adjust what we might have been born to in our society. And so I say that, if you can act your way out of it, it’s class. If you cannot act your way out of it, it’s caste. And so we’ve seen so many cases. There was a case of the editor of British Vogue, for example, who was — kara swisher Yes, Edward Enninful. isabel wilkerson — walking into his own office building, and the security guard told him he needed to use the service elevator to his own office. And that meant that, here you have someone who is the best-dressed, sophisticated person in the world, and it didn’t matter how he was presenting himself. It didn’t matter what his bearing was. It didn’t matter what his education was. It didn’t matter what his diction was. It was determined on the basis solely of what he looked like, what that signifier and cue said to the security guard as to where he belonged. The idea of being out of one’s place is sort of a hallmark of caste. kara swisher Why do you think there’s a need for this human classification? And is it subliminal? isabel wilkerson Historically, a society needs to get certain things done in order for the society to work. That is what happened when slavery was created. It was an economic system that was created to extract the labor of people, human beings, by first commodifying human beings in order to make sure that the work that they felt needed to be done would be done, in order to convert wilderness into a country, to be able to tend and to grow the crops that were the lifeblood of a growing capitalistic society. And of course in order to maintain this, it requires, you know, dehumanization of those people so that everyone in that society would have to buy into the fiction to justify this brutal institution of slavery. Everyone had to buy into this belief system that the people were worthy, that the people deserved nothing more than that. There’s often, in creating a caste system, there is usually some perceived law of nature or some sense of scriptural divine will that determines that these people were born to be on top and these other people were born to be on the bottom. kara swisher Right, you can bring it up around COVID, too, in terms of essential workers actually being sacrificial workers, Black patients being denied painkillers because of stereotypes about their pain tolerance, COVID disproportionately affecting African-Americans. You describe a Black tax on caste. What price do Black Americans pay for being part of a subordinate caste in America? isabel wilkerson Well, I’d like to say that I prefer to use the term subordinated. kara swisher That’s — you’re right. isabel wilkerson I just thought I would mention that. Yeah, the fact of the matter is that at every systemic part of our society, we see it manifested. And then one of the places that we see it manifesting is, of course, longevity and health itself. What is more important than one’s very life? And we, of course, have seen over the summer that this is a matter of life and death for people who are descended from this originally historically subordinated group. And we have seen that, from Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, that this is a matter of life and death, what can happen to people in the current day. And in everyday ways, the idea that there’s this belief that people in the medical establishment still hold study after study after study, shows that medical professionals still believe the fallacy that Black and brown people do not experience pain in the same way that their white counterparts do. It’s shocking — kara swisher It is. isabel wilkerson — that in the current day anyone would believe that. So this affects how people are treated when they get into the system. There was a heartbreaking case over the holidays in which a Black woman, who was a physician, who had COVID was in the hospital. This happened in Indiana. And she was not given the pain medications that she required. She was not getting the treatment that she required. She was compelled to go on to Facebook to record what was happening to her. Here’s someone who had every single, one would presume, advantage and understanding of the medical system, of the treatment, of how she should have been treated, of the standards and the medications. She knew the language. She spoke the code. Whatever it was, she had all of it. And she still was not getting the care that she deserved. She was not getting the care that she knew was standard for this disease. And she was reduced to having to go on to record herself. And we know that after that, she passed away. I mean, this is the way that we see caste playing out in our current era. Right now we can see it. kara swisher Can you talk a little bit about how it’s affected you? isabel wilkerson Well, you know what? It has affected me in the sense that, as I go through the world, I can never know when this will rear itself. You go through the world, everyone wakes up, starts their day, with the hope that the day will be good, with the hope that you will move through the world and get the things that you need to get done done. And yet in the hierarchy in which we live, it cannot be assumed that you will just move about your day and there will not be some intrusion of caste, as I describe it. And one of the examples that stands out to me, of course, is when I was a national correspondent for The New York Times, and just going about my work of interviewing people. And I had made a call with several people in order to interview them for a story that was a pretty standard story and had no trouble all day with all the people I’d interviewed, until I got to the last interview. I got to the location a little early. The person I was supposed to interview was not there yet. I was told to sit and wait for him. That was fine, no trouble. And then moments later, a man comes in rushing. He’s clearly in a hurry. It seems as if he’s flustered. The clerk tells me that that’s the man I’m supposed to interview. That’s the manager that I’m there to interview. And I go up to him and he says, oh, I can’t talk to you right now. I’m very, very busy. And I said, well, I’m here to interview you. I’m The New York Times here to interview you. And he said, well, how do I know that? And I said, well, I made the arrangement and we talked on the phone and we made the arrangement for a 4:30 appointment, and here I am. I had my notebook. I had my pen. I was all ready to interview him. And he said, well, do you have a business card to prove that you’re with The New York Times? And it had been all day — now we don’t even use business cards, you know? But it had been all day — kara swisher No, we don’t, yeah. isabel wilkerson — and I was out of business cards. And I said, I happen not to have any business cards. But obviously, we have the appointment. I’m ready here to interview you. He said, do you have some ID? I’ll need to see some ID. And so I said I shouldn’t have to show you ID. We made the appointment. I’m here. I shouldn’t have to show you ID. And I pulled out my driver’s license anyway so that he could see it, just to be able to move on so I could get the interview done. And he said, you don’t have anything with The New York Times on it? And I said, now it’s well past the time. We should have been interviewing right now instead of standing here. No one else has come. We’re well past into the time we were supposed to be interviewing. I’m Isabel Wilkerson with The New York Times. And he said, I’m going to have to ask you to leave because The New York Times will be here any minute. So I had to write the piece without him. But the reason that I mention that example is also to show how this affects so much more than just the prime targets of it, who obviously suffer on so many levels. It impedes your ability to do your work. It throws you off your course. You are forced to have to think about, what is it that just happened. You’re using brain power that could be put toward much better things, toward the writing of the work that you’re doing or whatever it is that your job is. And instead you have to process and wonder — kara swisher Sure, it’s a tax. isabel wilkerson It is a form of the tax. But also, there is a cost for those who buy into this hierarchy, who buy into what I would say his assumptions about caste. What does a New York Times national correspondent look like? I did not look like what he thought that should be. I did not fit the, quote, unquote, “role” that he had in his mind. And so he lost out on the opportunity to get in the story, to be in The New York Times. He asked me to leave because The New York Times would be there any minute. And if you multiply this times, you know, tens of thousands of times a day, when some assumptions about another individual impedes the ability for something to happen in our society, impedes a transaction, impedes an interview, impedes something that really truly needs to happen and it doesn’t happen, how do you even begin to measure the cost, not just to the individual who is suffering, but also to the entire society, all the things that don’t get done, all the missed opportunities because of these assumptions and stereotypes that are all an inheritance of the original caste system that predated our country. kara swisher It’s an enormous waste of time. isabel wilkerson Enormous. [MUSIC PLAYING] kara swisher We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, hit Subscribe. You’ll be able to catch up on Sway episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Jennifer Doudna, and you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Isabel Wilkerson after the break. So now, caste is a term that American scholars have been using for years to describe how power operates in America. Why hasn’t the term, though, caught on? isabel wilkerson I think one reason it hasn’t caught on is because it has generally remained in the purview of the academy. It’s kind of a conversation that I think scholars have primarily been having with one another. It just hasn’t made it into the mainstream of dialogue. It’s not something that people would generally think about. Anyone who read The Warmth of Other Suns, however, has been exposed to the idea, at least from my role as a writer, because I use the term caste. I was having to describe an entire region where it was against the law, for example, in one of the states, for a Black person and a white person to merely play checkers together in Birmingham. It was a world where there was a Black Bible and altogether separate white Bible to swear to tell the truth on in court. The very word of God was segregated. It could not be touched by hands of different races, which speaks to one of the pillars of caste that I identified and described, which is purity versus pollution, where the untouchables, what were formerly known as untouchables, now known as Dalits, were policed and carefully watched and punished for any breach of what’s viewed as purity pollution. They could not drink from the same wells. They could not drink from the same cups. They could not even be, some of them, within 96 paces of a dominant caste person. kara swisher This is in India. The Dalits you’re talking about are in the Indian caste system. isabel wilkerson Yes. kara swisher And your book focuses on three major caste systems in human history— ancient Indian one, thousands of years, Nazi Germany, which was a very short time, and America’s caste system. Talk about how you make that connection between those three caste systems. isabel wilkerson Well obviously, we know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an adherent to the nonviolent protest philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi. And he had always wished to go to India. And so he had the chance to do so in the winter of 1959. He and his wife, Coretta Scott King, went to India. And they were received as visiting dignitaries. But while they were there, they made a visit to the southern part of the country to Kerala. And there he visited a school where the students were then known as untouchables, now known as dalits. And so he went to visit that school. And when the principal introduced him, the principal said to the students, he said, young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America. And when Dr. King heard those words, he bristled at first hearing it, because he didn’t perceive himself that way. He was a learned man who had led the Montgomery bus boycott and was a visiting dignitary, had had dinner with the prime minister. So he didn’t perceive himself in that way. He didn’t see how it was that the people there who were then known as untouchables could see him as one of them. And then of course, he had to think about it. He had to think about the fact that there were, at that very moment, Black people in the United States who he was advocating for, at that very moment, the majority of them were not being permitted to vote. The majority of them were not being permitted to use public accommodations. In every way, they were being held the lowest rung of the American hierarchy. And they were at the very bottom. And he said to himself, I am an untouchable. And he said, every Negro in the United States is an untouchable. And so what that meant is that the people who knew what a caste system— who knew best what a caste system is instantly recognized caste when they saw it. And they connected their system of hierarchy to our own. And he made this realization at that time. And he later gave a sermon in which he spoke about what he had experienced and learned there. And so it was through that experience that we can see the connection made by the people who knew caste best. Those who were at the bottom of it recognized the parallel condition of subjugation. kara swisher So when you make the connection with the Indian caste system and then the German one, one of the most surprising parts of your research is that the Nazis studied and admired U.S. segregation laws. What did they learn from Americans? isabel wilkerson Yes, that’s true. I only came to looking at Germany after Charlottesville, because it was there that we saw the conflation of, the merging of these symbols from across time and across the ocean of the Confederacy and of Nazi Germany. The people protesting the possible removal of the Statue of Robert E. Lee, they brought those symbols together, those belief systems together. And that sparked my interest to look and see what had Germany done in the years since the war. And I was just stunned to discover that, in the years leading up to the war, that German eugenicists were actually turning to and consulting with American eugenicists to build upon their brewing sense of Aryan superiority. It turned out that American eugenicists were writing books that were huge bestsellers in Germany, and in fact were used in the school curriculum that the Nazis created for themselves and for the students in that world. kara swisher What was the most important of these U.S. segregation efforts that moved there from your perspective? What was the most striking? isabel wilkerson Well, as you said, they actually sent people to study the United States, to study what Americans had done to separate and to identify who would be and what race. And so they were fascinated by this apportioning of fractions of, quote, unquote, “blood” to make up or to determine what a person’s race, quote, unquote, “race,” would be. And they were looking at the various ways of enforcement, the lynchings and others. They were also looking at antimiscegenation laws, the laws that prevented people from marrying across race. They adjusted some of these things to make up what would ultimately become the Nuremberg laws, one of them having the idea of the one drop rule, which was part of some Southern jurisprudence that would say that, in defining who was Black, all it took was one drop of Black blood to make that person Black. And among the Nazis, that was more than they were willing to do in defining who could be Jewish. kara swisher And what’s interesting is, that was their classification system. isabel wilkerson They created their own classification system. kara swisher Still a caste system invisibly underneath, just with their classifications. isabel wilkerson Well, caste meaning the artificial, arbitrary graded ranking of human value in a society, an infrastructure of division, they did create that. kara swisher So when you look at when the Nazis were defeated, something very different happened in that case than it happened here. I lived in Germany for a long time. And East Germany did not have the changes. You could see sort of the difference of doing nothing and doing something — education, removing of Nazi monuments, et cetera. They made things illegal, using the ability to do the Heil, for example, all kinds of things. Here, we have Confederate monuments. There continues to be displaying Confederate flags. Why is there a different American experience? Is it lack of memory? They paid reparations for the Holocaust, the Germans did. Why does that not happen here, from your perspective? isabel wilkerson Well, it goes back to the end of the Civil War and how was that major psychic break in our country’s history managed after the war was over? And we had a brief time known as Reconstruction, in which there was an attempt at helping to bring some equity to those who had been held in a fixed place again under enslavement for 246 years. And then that, of course, we know, in the compromise, that signaled the end of Reconstruction, and thus, there was never a true reconciliation. There was never a true addressing of what had happened. There was a sense of rushing to move on and move beyond what had happened without truly addressing the deep, deep wounds and the tragic exploitation of an entire group of people for 246 years, nor was there an incorporation of the true history into our curriculum. And I realized this because after I wrote The Warmth of Other Suns, which is about the 20th century Jim Crow system — which most people just simply didn’t know. I didn’t know when I started it. And most people don’t know because we don’t learn this in school. The thing I would hear from people time and time again after they read the book was, I had no idea. I heard that all the time. I heard from people wherever in the country they might have been, different backgrounds, I had no idea. Well, not having an idea has consequences. It has consequences in how people vote, what policies they support, who people hire, who is granted mortgages, who can be assaulted by authorities with impunity, all of the things that we’ve talked about. And so if we don’t know the history, we don’t know what’s gone before us. And that is why knowing the history is a huge part of it. And of course in Germany, the history is front and center in understanding what happened in World War II. You go to Berlin, as you know so well, right in the middle of a major world city is this massive, massive installation, the memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust. It is unmissable. It is right there, and it doesn’t even need to have a sign because people know what it’s there. They learn the history and they know why it’s there. It’s there for anyone to see. You’re going about your day and you’re reminded. There are markers and reminders everywhere in that city, in addition to the stumbling stones, which beckon in front of the last known residence of the individuals who perished in the Holocaust. I mean, there are reminders everywhere, as they should be. kara swisher And beyond that, they also do things like leave bullet holes in certain buildings, which I think is important, you talked about in your book. One of the things that was really interesting is they had Potsdamer Platz. They had a whole issue around Hitler’s bunker, which was near there. And they did not want people going there, acolytes of Hitler’s. And so they either hid it or you cannot find it or you can’t figure out where it is. But they resolved not to allow that to continue there, not keeping the history, because you need to keep the history. But it was a real big debate in Germany at the time. And it was fascinating to watch, compared to the Confederate monuments debate. isabel wilkerson That is such a great point you make. I actually was taken to that site by a friend who wanted to make sure I could see it. And what they’ve done is they’ve paved over it. It’s a parking lot. It’s just the most mundane feature of an urban landscape that you could ever imagine. And there’s a small sign that just says, this is what was there. But other than that, there are just cars parked over what had been a bunker. kara swisher And there’s no way to celebrate it if you were possibly — if you were an acolyte of Hitler. There’s no way to celebrate, as opposed to the Confederate monuments, which is, of course, where a lot of those protests went on several years ago. And what’s interesting about it is, I have a lot of Southern relatives, and they keep saying, Kara, well, it’s history. And I said, well, put it in a museum then. Like fine, no one’s — you know what I mean? Study it, whatever you want. It doesn’t need to be out in the public space. So why is that a debate? isabel wilkerson Well, there’s a difference between remembering something and celebrating something. And I think that is where the disconnect when it comes to, what do we do with our history? We want people to know the history. It’s necessary to know the history. We do not want to forget. We’re not on the same page with our history. That is why you can have, in a country such as Germany, all of the markers that — like you said, the bullet holes that have been kept for a reason to remind people, to not forget what happened. And we’ve not done that. We have simply not done that because we’re not on the same page about basic facts and basic aspects of our own history. kara swisher So let’s talk about how to dismantle caste then. Because you have said that Germany had dismantled, officially vanquished caste. There were signs when white Trump supporters, who say they voted for Barack Obama, this is pushing against the self-interest of their dominant caste status, and then in this election, more Black Americans who voted for Trump. Let’s talk a little bit about how you demolish the idea of caste. As we’re moving into the next year, and now we have a Black female vice President with Kamala Harris, some people used to say that America, we’re post-racial and doesn’t have a caste system. How do you respond? isabel wilkerson Well, I mean, I don’t know how anyone can say that after Jan. 6. I literally don’t know how anyone can say that. [LAUGHTER] I’m not saying you did. I just — I sort of throw up my hands. But I’d like to say the conversation has been going toward the idea of moving quickly toward healing, which is the same thing that happened after the Civil War and Reconstruction. There’s the same natural reaction to want to move on. But the issue is that these wounds are 400 years in the making. There’s no single pill that you can take for something that is this longstanding. It’s on the systems level at multiple systems levels. It’s economic. It’s social. It’s political. It’s labor. And it’s employment. It’s health care system, criminal justice, education, law enforcement. It’s everything. And these are system level issues that require so much more than just a single answer. I have written this book as — I present myself as a building inspector who is presenting the report to the current owners of the building, the house we all call America. And it took all that I could do just to present the report. It’s like holding up an X-ray of our country. And the radiologist presents the X-ray and talks about what’s going on in the X-ray. It’s the surgeon and all the other people who come in, the other physicians who come in and actually look more closely at it to look at all the things that need to be done in order to fix what is gone wrong. We would never expect that there would be a single pill for a cancer diagnosis. You don’t expect that. And it’s the same thing here. It requires a closer examination, first recognizing our history, how did we get here. And then and only then can you begin to even think about crafting a plan for moving forward. kara swisher Sure, certainly. Now, I get you don’t want to be the surgeon. You’re the building inspector, and the building’s a mess. But do you see signs of it, as the building inspector of the house of America, which is pretty creaky right now, do you see signs that there is an ability to push back this system? I don’t. I don’t, so — I’ll say. And I don’t know how to fix it. Not to give prescriptions, but I’d like you to give predictions. isabel wilkerson I would never, ever give predictions. I’ll tell you right now. [LAUGHTER] I take the position of someone who is deeply steeped in the history that I have studied. And I see echoes of what I have studied in the past. And I can see and visualize some of the same out of control, almost primordial, existential response to existential threat that I see in the rampage that we saw on Jan. 6. I have — kara swisher And the response in Congress by the Republicans — let’s move on. isabel wilkerson Yeah. This is a reminder that history is still with us. And the really foundational structure of our country was slavery. We still live with the after effects of it, how it is not this ancient, long ago single chapter in our country’s history. And so I have two numbers, two years that I want to speak about. One is next year, 2022. The United States will not have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil until the year 2022. That is a massive reminder of how slavery lasted, which is, again, the foundation of the inequities that we live with to this day, the upside-down power structure of the country that was established in the time of slavery. But then also, no adult alive today will be alive at the point at which African-Americans will have been free for as long as they were enslaved. That will not happen until the year 2111, 2111. So the fact that our country will not even have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted, that’s how long it lasted, that it won’t be till next year, in our lifetimes. So that is connecting us to the longstanding history. And we can see it resurrected before our very eyes because this has not been addressed. It has not been fully known, thus not fully addressed. And so we still live out the ancient struggles and tensions of previous generations because we have never truly dealt with them in the ways that they really need to be. We have had laws, which are necessary, absolutely necessary. We’ve had a civil rights movement that was absolutely necessary. But we can also see how fragile all of that is and how it doesn’t take much to resurrect those longstanding unaddressed wounds that are still with us. kara swisher Its structure. So a lot of people have said this week, this is not our country. But it is. isabel wilkerson Well, I feel as if this is the country’s karmic moment of truth. And we are here alive to see it playing out before our eyes. What we saw last week on January 6 may have looked like another country, but it is our country. It may have looked like a different century, but it is our century. It may have looked like a long ago battle over justice, waged and presumably won back in another era. But it is ours. We are living this right now. And I think that that moment has forced us into a karmic reckoning that is long overdue. kara swisher This is a phenomena. Your book is a phenomena. But once it’s over, is there a topic you really want to delve into? isabel wilkerson That’s one of the things that I retain from my years at The Times, is I never talk about what I’m working on. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] Ever. kara swisher All right, then. Ever — well, keep that policy then. Don’t let me drag it out of you. Anyway, your book is wonderful. It really is. isabel wilkerson Thank you so much for having me. kara swisher All right, thank you. Sway is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Paula Szuchman, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Erick Gomez, and fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Liriel Higa, and Kathy Tu. If you’re in a podcast app already, you know how to subscribe to a podcast. So subscribe to this one. If you’re listening on The Times website and want to get each new episode of Sway in your podcast hierarchy, download a podcast app Like Stitcher or Google Podcasts. Then search for Sway and hit subscribe. We release every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening. America’s Caste System Is 400 Years Old. That Doesn’t Change Overnight. Isabel Wilkerson on why a new presidency alone can’t fix America’s 400-year-old race-based hierarchy. [MUSIC PLAYING] - (SINGING) When you walk in the room, do you have sway? kara swisher I’m Kara Swisher and you’re listening to Sway. Last week, the Capitol was a crime scene. Now it feels hopeful. As President Joe Biden said in his inaugural address, “We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.” It was nice to hear. And as he and Vice President Kamala Harris start their term, it might be tempting to say, let’s put the past behind us. But how can we forget January archived recording Stop the steal! Stop the steal! Stop the steal! kara swisher A mob of pro-Trump extremists clashed with Capitol Police. They ransacked the halls of Congress, stole property, smeared feces on the wall. Some viciously attacked police officers. Five people died. It was an astonishing stew of hatred, arrogance, and stupidity. And let’s be honest. It was mostly white people who did this. When it was all over, shattered glass and broken furniture littered the building. Then the longtime maintenance workers showed up. archived recording [INAUDIBLE] kara swisher It was mostly Black and brown people cleaning up the mess. It’s the system Pulitzer Prize winning writer and historian Isabel Wilkerson describes in her book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. The book is about an invisible system that classifies humanity. It was published last summer to much acclaim. She got a lot of attention then, but now seems to be the best time to talk to her, since we all saw that system so clearly in action just weeks ago. I wanted to know what Wilkerson saw. isabel wilkerson So among the many scenes that struck me to my core was after the rampage had been quelled and was later into the night, and the cleaning crew is brought in to clean up after the damage that had been done. It fell to them in order to do that. And there they were, laboring in their uniforms, bent over with mops and brooms and with masks over their faces. And I saw instantly the people assigned to the subordinated caste for 400 years, since before there was the United States, still consigned to their historic role of serving and cleaning up after those who had been programmed to see themselves as dominant and superior and supreme. And we know that, had people who looked like those janitors in that crew that we saw working late into the night, if they had deigned to burst into the Capitol like that, we know what would have come of that. They wouldn’t have lived to tell. kara swisher So talk about that difference, because the police handled the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer very differently. Explain what you think would have happened. isabel wilkerson We have seen, in so many of the peaceful protests for basic human rights, protesting against police brutality, we have seen tanks rolled out, for example, after Ferguson. We have seen riot police flanked and in position in anticipation of an outbreak. And we saw a situation in which masses of people were able to overrun the officers. They were able to trample the barricades. We saw people climbing walls to get into the Capitol, attacking police officers. We saw this with our very eyes, the complete opposite of how the protesters for basic human rights throughout the entire summer, how people were treated there. This is an indication of the — what I describe, when it comes to caste, caste is essentially this graded ranking of human value. But what it does is it determines one’s standing, respect, benefit of the doubt, access to resources, assumptions of competence and intelligence and worthiness, and then also whether the authorities will protect you or attack you. This is a function of where you are perceived to be, your value and sense of worthiness in the hierarchy. kara swisher One of the things that really — part of your book that’s gotten a lot of attention is when you’re having coffee with your friend, historian Taylor Branch. It’s 2018 and two years into the Trump administration. Taylor Branch asks you, if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness? At the time you didn’t have an answer. Looking at what happened at the Capitol, do you have an answer now? isabel wilkerson Well, I left it unanswered because in the work that I do, which is narrative nonfiction, my job is to show— show the history, show what has happened. And it is more powerful to me if those who read it come to the answer themselves. I think the answer is all too obvious. We need to remind ourselves that no Democrat who has run for president has won a majority of the white vote, or you could say, has won the white vote, since 1964. kara swisher Which is the Civil Rights Act. isabel wilkerson Lyndon Johnson, right. So this has continued to the current day. And so there is something about the connection that one group feels to one party in particular, with this belief that this party will uphold and defend the interests of the dominant. And that is what the outcome of these elections seem to be telling us. kara swisher OK, let’s check back a little bit and talk about the term caste. Americans are familiar with race and the concept of systemic racism. But your book argues that America is built on an invisible caste system. You don’t use the word racism much. You prefer to talk about casteism. What’s the difference? isabel wilkerson Well, first of all, any society, any hierarchical society can use any number of metrics, arbitrary metrics to rank people in a caste system. So you could use ethnicity. You could use religion. You could use language. You could use place of origin. And in our country, the metric that the early colonists used to divide and to rank people to determine who would be a slave or free, just to start with, the metric that was used was what we look like. It became the tool, the signifier, the signal of one’s place in the hierarchy. And it took what would be neutral characteristics otherwise, neutral characteristics that would just be part of the range of human manifestation, and turn that into a new designation, a new way of ranking and categorizing people known as race. And the idea of race is actually quite flexible and fungible. And we know that because many people who are currently identified, who we would all accept as being part of the category now known as white, were in previous centuries not considered white. There was a time where Benjamin Franklin did not view people of German descent as being in the category of his own and felt that there was a threat coming in from people who happen to be German. Now of course, this would be something that people would not even question. Of course the same goes for people who are of Irish descent. So the idea of the hierarchy that was created in our country— and remember, it was created. It was not natural. It was created. And it became a bipolar system of power and control, in which anyone who arrived to this country from outside of the poles of this hierarchy had to find a way of where did they fit in. And it turned out that, when people were coming in from other parts of Europe who might have had nothing in common with each other, who might not have seen themselves as part of the same group, arrived to this country, and it turned out that while they may have thought of themselves as Polish or Hungarian or Irish, it turned out that they were given a new identity, an identity that would have had no meaning or necessity in the old country, but meant everything in the New World because it determined what you could do. It had consequences. The resources — it had everything to do with one’s rights. If you were part of the dominant caste, part of the dominant group, it accorded all the rights and privileges of that dominant group. And that’s how race was created and how underneath that is the infrastructure. I mean, caste is about structure. kara swisher It’s a power structure. Caste groupings exist in every country because it can be anything people choose. The randomness is quite — isabel wilkerson Yeah, it’s the arbitrary nature of it. I mean, that’s what is so powerful and so enlightening, actually, about the universality of the human will to categorize and apportion power and to determine who can have power on the basis of these arbitrary characteristics that should have no meaning, except that which is accorded meaning. And the issue of class, you could say there are three out of many ways that a society can decide the different aspects of identity. So one of them would be caste, which I would describe as the bones, and race, which is the skin. It’s the visible manifestation of the structure that undergirds whatever we might be able to see. And then class becomes, essentially, the outward — the things that we add to ourselves — clothes, the dictions, the accents, education, all the things that we do have some control over that we can use to try to adjust what we might have been born to in our society. And so I say that, if you can act your way out of it, it’s class. If you cannot act your way out of it, it’s caste. And so we’ve seen so many cases. There was a case of the editor of British Vogue, for example, who was — kara swisher Yes, Edward Enninful. isabel wilkerson — walking into his own office building, and the security guard told him he needed to use the service elevator to his own office. And that meant that, here you have someone who is the best-dressed, sophisticated person in the world, and it didn’t matter how he was presenting himself. It didn’t matter what his bearing was. It didn’t matter what his education was. It didn’t matter what his diction was. It was determined on the basis solely of what he looked like, what that signifier and cue said to the security guard as to where he belonged. The idea of being out of one’s place is sort of a hallmark of caste. kara swisher Why do you think there’s a need for this human classification? And is it subliminal? isabel wilkerson Historically, a society needs to get certain things done in order for the society to work. That is what happened when slavery was created. It was an economic system that was created to extract the labor of people, human beings, by first commodifying human beings in order to make sure that the work that they felt needed to be done would be done, in order to convert wilderness into a country, to be able to tend and to grow the crops that were the lifeblood of a growing capitalistic society. And of course in order to maintain this, it requires, you know, dehumanization of those people so that everyone in that society would have to buy into the fiction to justify this brutal institution of slavery. Everyone had to buy into this belief system that the people were worthy, that the people deserved nothing more than that. There’s often, in creating a caste system, there is usually some perceived law of nature or some sense of scriptural divine will that determines that these people were born to be on top and these other people were born to be on the bottom. kara swisher Right, you can bring it up around COVID, too, in terms of essential workers actually being sacrificial workers, Black patients being denied painkillers because of stereotypes about their pain tolerance, COVID disproportionately affecting African-Americans. You describe a Black tax on caste. What price do Black Americans pay for being part of a subordinate caste in America? isabel wilkerson Well, I’d like to say that I prefer to use the term subordinated. kara swisher That’s — you’re right. isabel wilkerson I just thought I would mention that. Yeah, the fact of the matter is that at every systemic part of our society, we see it manifested. And then one of the places that we see it manifesting is, of course, longevity and health itself. What is more important than one’s very life? And we, of course, have seen over the summer that this is a matter of life and death for people who are descended from this originally historically subordinated group. And we have seen that, from Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd, that this is a matter of life and death, what can happen to people in the current day. And in everyday ways, the idea that there’s this belief that people in the medical establishment still hold study after study after study, shows that medical professionals still believe the fallacy that Black and brown people do not experience pain in the same way that their white counterparts do. It’s shocking — kara swisher It is. isabel wilkerson — that in the current day anyone would believe that. So this affects how people are treated when they get into the system. There was a heartbreaking case over the holidays in which a Black woman, who was a physician, who had COVID was in the hospital. This happened in Indiana. And she was not given the pain medications that she required. She was not getting the treatment that she required. She was compelled to go on to Facebook to record what was happening to her. Here’s someone who had every single, one would presume, advantage and understanding of the medical system, of the treatment, of how she should have been treated, of the standards and the medications. She knew the language. She spoke the code. Whatever it was, she had all of it. And she still was not getting the care that she deserved. She was not getting the care that she knew was standard for this disease. And she was reduced to having to go on to record herself. And we know that after that, she passed away. I mean, this is the way that we see caste playing out in our current era. Right now we can see it. kara swisher Can you talk a little bit about how it’s affected you? isabel wilkerson Well, you know what? It has affected me in the sense that, as I go through the world, I can never know when this will rear itself. You go through the world, everyone wakes up, starts their day, with the hope that the day will be good, with the hope that you will move through the world and get the things that you need to get done done. And yet in the hierarchy in which we live, it cannot be assumed that you will just move about your day and there will not be some intrusion of caste, as I describe it. And one of the examples that stands out to me, of course, is when I was a national correspondent for The New York Times, and just going about my work of interviewing people. And I had made a call with several people in order to interview them for a story that was a pretty standard story and had no trouble all day with all the people I’d interviewed, until I got to the last interview. I got to the location a little early. The person I was supposed to interview was not there yet. I was told to sit and wait for him. That was fine, no trouble. And then moments later, a man comes in rushing. He’s clearly in a hurry. It seems as if he’s flustered. The clerk tells me that that’s the man I’m supposed to interview. That’s the manager that I’m there to interview. And I go up to him and he says, oh, I can’t talk to you right now. I’m very, very busy. And I said, well, I’m here to interview you. I’m The New York Times here to interview you. And he said, well, how do I know that? And I said, well, I made the arrangement and we talked on the phone and we made the arrangement for a 4:30 appointment, and here I am. I had my notebook. I had my pen. I was all ready to interview him. And he said, well, do you have a business card to prove that you’re with The New York Times? And it had been all day — now we don’t even use business cards, you know? But it had been all day — kara swisher No, we don’t, yeah. isabel wilkerson — and I was out of business cards. And I said, I happen not to have any business cards. But obviously, we have the appointment. I’m ready here to interview you. He said, do you have some ID? I’ll need to see some ID. And so I said I shouldn’t have to show you ID. We made the appointment. I’m here. I shouldn’t have to show you ID. And I pulled out my driver’s license anyway so that he could see it, just to be able to move on so I could get the interview done. And he said, you don’t have anything with The New York Times on it? And I said, now it’s well past the time. We should have been interviewing right now instead of standing here. No one else has come. We’re well past into the time we were supposed to be interviewing. I’m Isabel Wilkerson with The New York Times. And he said, I’m going to have to ask you to leave because The New York Times will be here any minute. So I had to write the piece without him. But the reason that I mention that example is also to show how this affects so much more than just the prime targets of it, who obviously suffer on so many levels. It impedes your ability to do your work. It throws you off your course. You are forced to have to think about, what is it that just happened. You’re using brain power that could be put toward much better things, toward the writing of the work that you’re doing or whatever it is that your job is. And instead you have to process and wonder — kara swisher Sure, it’s a tax. isabel wilkerson It is a form of the tax. But also, there is a cost for those who buy into this hierarchy, who buy into what I would say his assumptions about caste. What does a New York Times national correspondent look like? I did not look like what he thought that should be. I did not fit the, quote, unquote, “role” that he had in his mind. And so he lost out on the opportunity to get in the story, to be in The New York Times. He asked me to leave because The New York Times would be there any minute. And if you multiply this times, you know, tens of thousands of times a day, when some assumptions about another individual impedes the ability for something to happen in our society, impedes a transaction, impedes an interview, impedes something that really truly needs to happen and it doesn’t happen, how do you even begin to measure the cost, not just to the individual who is suffering, but also to the entire society, all the things that don’t get done, all the missed opportunities because of these assumptions and stereotypes that are all an inheritance of the original caste system that predated our country. kara swisher It’s an enormous waste of time. isabel wilkerson Enormous. [MUSIC PLAYING] kara swisher We’ll be back in a minute. If you like this interview and want to hear others, hit Subscribe. You’ll be able to catch up on Sway episodes you may have missed, like my conversation with Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr. Jennifer Doudna, and you’ll get new ones delivered directly to you. More with Isabel Wilkerson after the break. So now, caste is a term that American scholars have been using for years to describe how power operates in America. Why hasn’t the term, though, caught on? isabel wilkerson I think one reason it hasn’t caught on is because it has generally remained in the purview of the academy. It’s kind of a conversation that I think scholars have primarily been having with one another. It just hasn’t made it into the mainstream of dialogue. It’s not something that people would generally think about. Anyone who read The Warmth of Other Suns, however, has been exposed to the idea, at least from my role as a writer, because I use the term caste. I was having to describe an entire region where it was against the law, for example, in one of the states, for a Black person and a white person to merely play checkers together in Birmingham. It was a world where there was a Black Bible and altogether separate white Bible to swear to tell the truth on in court. The very word of God was segregated. It could not be touched by hands of different races, which speaks to one of the pillars of caste that I identified and described, which is purity versus pollution, where the untouchables, what were formerly known as untouchables, now known as Dalits, were policed and carefully watched and punished for any breach of what’s viewed as purity pollution. They could not drink from the same wells. They could not drink from the same cups. They could not even be, some of them, within 96 paces of a dominant caste person. kara swisher This is in India. The Dalits you’re talking about are in the Indian caste system. isabel wilkerson Yes. kara swisher And your book focuses on three major caste systems in human history— ancient Indian one, thousands of years, Nazi Germany, which was a very short time, and America’s caste system. Talk about how you make that connection between those three caste systems. isabel wilkerson Well obviously, we know that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an adherent to the nonviolent protest philosophy of Mohandas K. Gandhi. And he had always wished to go to India. And so he had the chance to do so in the winter of 1959. He and his wife, Coretta Scott King, went to India. And they were received as visiting dignitaries. But while they were there, they made a visit to the southern part of the country to Kerala. And there he visited a school where the students were then known as untouchables, now known as dalits. And so he went to visit that school. And when the principal introduced him, the principal said to the students, he said, young people, I would like to present to you a fellow untouchable from the United States of America. And when Dr. King heard those words, he bristled at first hearing it, because he didn’t perceive himself that way. He was a learned man who had led the Montgomery bus boycott and was a visiting dignitary, had had dinner with the prime minister. So he didn’t perceive himself in that way. He didn’t see how it was that the people there who were then known as untouchables could see him as one of them. And then of course, he had to think about it. He had to think about the fact that there were, at that very moment, Black people in the United States who he was advocating for, at that very moment, the majority of them were not being permitted to vote. The majority of them were not being permitted to use public accommodations. In every way, they were being held the lowest rung of the American hierarchy. And they were at the very bottom. And he said to himself, I am an untouchable. And he said, every Negro in the United States is an untouchable. And so what that meant is that the people who knew what a caste system— who knew best what a caste system is instantly recognized caste when they saw it. And they connected their system of hierarchy to our own. And he made this realization at that time. And he later gave a sermon in which he spoke about what he had experienced and learned there. And so it was through that experience that we can see the connection made by the people who knew caste best. Those who were at the bottom of it recognized the parallel condition of subjugation. kara swisher So when you make the connection with the Indian caste system and then the German one, one of the most surprising parts of your research is that the Nazis studied and admired U.S. segregation laws. What did they learn from Americans? isabel wilkerson Yes, that’s true. I only came to looking at Germany after Charlottesville, because it was there that we saw the conflation of, the merging of these symbols from across time and across the ocean of the Confederacy and of Nazi Germany. The people protesting the possible removal of the Statue of Robert E. Lee, they brought those symbols together, those belief systems together. And that sparked my interest to look and see what had Germany done in the years since the war. And I was just stunned to discover that, in the years leading up to the war, that German eugenicists were actually turning to and consulting with American eugenicists to build upon their brewing sense of Aryan superiority. It turned out that American eugenicists were writing books that were huge bestsellers in Germany, and in fact were used in the school curriculum that the Nazis created for themselves and for the students in that world. kara swisher What was the most important of these U.S. segregation efforts that moved there from your perspective? What was the most striking? isabel wilkerson Well, as you said, they actually sent people to study the United States, to study what Americans had done to separate and to identify who would be and what race. And so they were fascinated by this apportioning of fractions of, quote, unquote, “blood” to make up or to determine what a person’s race, quote, unquote, “race,” would be. And they were looking at the various ways of enforcement, the lynchings and others. They were also looking at antimiscegenation laws, the laws that prevented people from marrying across race. They adjusted some of these things to make up what would ultimately become the Nuremberg laws, one of them having the idea of the one drop rule, which was part of some Southern jurisprudence that would say that, in defining who was Black, all it took was one drop of Black blood to make that person Black. And among the Nazis, that was more than they were willing to do in defining who could be Jewish. kara swisher And what’s interesting is, that was their classification system. isabel wilkerson They created their own classification system. kara swisher Still a caste system invisibly underneath, just with their classifications. isabel wilkerson Well, caste meaning the artificial, arbitrary graded ranking of human value in a society, an infrastructure of division, they did create that. kara swisher So when you look at when the Nazis were defeated, something very different happened in that case than it happened here. I lived in Germany for a long time. And East Germany did not have the changes. You could see sort of the difference of doing nothing and doing something — education, removing of Nazi monuments, et cetera. They made things illegal, using the ability to do the Heil, for example, all kinds of things. Here, we have Confederate monuments. There continues to be displaying Confederate flags. Why is there a different American experience? Is it lack of memory? They paid reparations for the Holocaust, the Germans did. Why does that not happen here, from your perspective? isabel wilkerson Well, it goes back to the end of the Civil War and how was that major psychic break in our country’s history managed after the war was over? And we had a brief time known as Reconstruction, in which there was an attempt at helping to bring some equity to those who had been held in a fixed place again under enslavement for 246 years. And then that, of course, we know, in the compromise, that signaled the end of Reconstruction, and thus, there was never a true reconciliation. There was never a true addressing of what had happened. There was a sense of rushing to move on and move beyond what had happened without truly addressing the deep, deep wounds and the tragic exploitation of an entire group of people for 246 years, nor was there an incorporation of the true history into our curriculum. And I realized this because after I wrote The Warmth of Other Suns, which is about the 20th century Jim Crow system — which most people just simply didn’t know. I didn’t know when I started it. And most people don’t know because we don’t learn this in school. The thing I would hear from people time and time again after they read the book was, I had no idea. I heard that all the time. I heard from people wherever in the country they might have been, different backgrounds, I had no idea. Well, not having an idea has consequences. It has consequences in how people vote, what policies they support, who people hire, who is granted mortgages, who can be assaulted by authorities with impunity, all of the things that we’ve talked about. And so if we don’t know the history, we don’t know what’s gone before us. And that is why knowing the history is a huge part of it. And of course in Germany, the history is front and center in understanding what happened in World War II. You go to Berlin, as you know so well, right in the middle of a major world city is this massive, massive installation, the memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust. It is unmissable. It is right there, and it doesn’t even need to have a sign because people know what it’s there. They learn the history and they know why it’s there. It’s there for anyone to see. You’re going about your day and you’re reminded. There are markers and reminders everywhere in that city, in addition to the stumbling stones, which beckon in front of the last known residence of the individuals who perished in the Holocaust. I mean, there are reminders everywhere, as they should be. kara swisher And beyond that, they also do things like leave bullet holes in certain buildings, which I think is important, you talked about in your book. One of the things that was really interesting is they had Potsdamer Platz. They had a whole issue around Hitler’s bunker, which was near there. And they did not want people going there, acolytes of Hitler’s. And so they either hid it or you cannot find it or you can’t figure out where it is. But they resolved not to allow that to continue there, not keeping the history, because you need to keep the history. But it was a real big debate in Germany at the time. And it was fascinating to watch, compared to the Confederate monuments debate. isabel wilkerson That is such a great point you make. I actually was taken to that site by a friend who wanted to make sure I could see it. And what they’ve done is they’ve paved over it. It’s a parking lot. It’s just the most mundane feature of an urban landscape that you could ever imagine. And there’s a small sign that just says, this is what was there. But other than that, there are just cars parked over what had been a bunker. kara swisher And there’s no way to celebrate it if you were possibly — if you were an acolyte of Hitler. There’s no way to celebrate, as opposed to the Confederate monuments, which is, of course, where a lot of those protests went on several years ago. And what’s interesting about it is, I have a lot of Southern relatives, and they keep saying, Kara, well, it’s history. And I said, well, put it in a museum then. Like fine, no one’s — you know what I mean? Study it, whatever you want. It doesn’t need to be out in the public space. So why is that a debate? isabel wilkerson Well, there’s a difference between remembering something and celebrating something. And I think that is where the disconnect when it comes to, what do we do with our history? We want people to know the history. It’s necessary to know the history. We do not want to forget. We’re not on the same page with our history. That is why you can have, in a country such as Germany, all of the markers that — like you said, the bullet holes that have been kept for a reason to remind people, to not forget what happened. And we’ve not done that. We have simply not done that because we’re not on the same page about basic facts and basic aspects of our own history. kara swisher So let’s talk about how to dismantle caste then. Because you have said that Germany had dismantled, officially vanquished caste. There were signs when white Trump supporters, who say they voted for Barack Obama, this is pushing against the self-interest of their dominant caste status, and then in this election, more Black Americans who voted for Trump. Let’s talk a little bit about how you demolish the idea of caste. As we’re moving into the next year, and now we have a Black female vice President with Kamala Harris, some people used to say that America, we’re post-racial and doesn’t have a caste system. How do you respond? isabel wilkerson Well, I mean, I don’t know how anyone can say that after Jan. 6. I literally don’t know how anyone can say that. [LAUGHTER] I’m not saying you did. I just — I sort of throw up my hands. But I’d like to say the conversation has been going toward the idea of moving quickly toward healing, which is the same thing that happened after the Civil War and Reconstruction. There’s the same natural reaction to want to move on. But the issue is that these wounds are 400 years in the making. There’s no single pill that you can take for something that is this longstanding. It’s on the systems level at multiple systems levels. It’s economic. It’s social. It’s political. It’s labor. And it’s employment. It’s health care system, criminal justice, education, law enforcement. It’s everything. And these are system level issues that require so much more than just a single answer. I have written this book as — I present myself as a building inspector who is presenting the report to the current owners of the building, the house we all call America. And it took all that I could do just to present the report. It’s like holding up an X-ray of our country. And the radiologist presents the X-ray and talks about what’s going on in the X-ray. It’s the surgeon and all the other people who come in, the other physicians who come in and actually look more closely at it to look at all the things that need to be done in order to fix what is gone wrong. We would never expect that there would be a single pill for a cancer diagnosis. You don’t expect that. And it’s the same thing here. It requires a closer examination, first recognizing our history, how did we get here. And then and only then can you begin to even think about crafting a plan for moving forward. kara swisher Sure, certainly. Now, I get you don’t want to be the surgeon. You’re the building inspector, and the building’s a mess. But do you see signs of it, as the building inspector of the house of America, which is pretty creaky right now, do you see signs that there is an ability to push back this system? I don’t. I don’t, so — I’ll say. And I don’t know how to fix it. Not to give prescriptions, but I’d like you to give predictions. isabel wilkerson I would never, ever give predictions. I’ll tell you right now. [LAUGHTER] I take the position of someone who is deeply steeped in the history that I have studied. And I see echoes of what I have studied in the past. And I can see and visualize some of the same out of control, almost primordial, existential response to existential threat that I see in the rampage that we saw on Jan. 6. I have — kara swisher And the response in Congress by the Republicans — let’s move on. isabel wilkerson Yeah. This is a reminder that history is still with us. And the really foundational structure of our country was slavery. We still live with the after effects of it, how it is not this ancient, long ago single chapter in our country’s history. And so I have two numbers, two years that I want to speak about. One is next year, 2022. The United States will not have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted on its soil until the year 2022. That is a massive reminder of how slavery lasted, which is, again, the foundation of the inequities that we live with to this day, the upside-down power structure of the country that was established in the time of slavery. But then also, no adult alive today will be alive at the point at which African-Americans will have been free for as long as they were enslaved. That will not happen until the year 2111, 2111. So the fact that our country will not even have been a free and independent nation for as long as slavery lasted, that’s how long it lasted, that it won’t be till next year, in our lifetimes. So that is connecting us to the longstanding history. And we can see it resurrected before our very eyes because this has not been addressed. It has not been fully known, thus not fully addressed. And so we still live out the ancient struggles and tensions of previous generations because we have never truly dealt with them in the ways that they really need to be. We have had laws, which are necessary, absolutely necessary. We’ve had a civil rights movement that was absolutely necessary. But we can also see how fragile all of that is and how it doesn’t take much to resurrect those longstanding unaddressed wounds that are still with us. kara swisher Its structure. So a lot of people have said this week, this is not our country. But it is. isabel wilkerson Well, I feel as if this is the country’s karmic moment of truth. And we are here alive to see it playing out before our eyes. What we saw last week on January 6 may have looked like another country, but it is our country. It may have looked like a different century, but it is our century. It may have looked like a long ago battle over justice, waged and presumably won back in another era. But it is ours. We are living this right now. And I think that that moment has forced us into a karmic reckoning that is long overdue. kara swisher This is a phenomena. Your book is a phenomena. But once it’s over, is there a topic you really want to delve into? isabel wilkerson That’s one of the things that I retain from my years at The Times, is I never talk about what I’m working on. [LAUGHTER] [MUSIC PLAYING] Ever. kara swisher All right, then. Ever — well, keep that policy then. Don’t let me drag it out of you. Anyway, your book is wonderful. It really is. isabel wilkerson Thank you so much for having me. kara swisher All right, thank you. Sway is a production of New York Times Opinion. It’s produced by Nayeema Raza, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong, and Vishakha Darbha, edited by Paula Szuchman, with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Erick Gomez, and fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Special thanks to Shannon Busta, Liriel Higa, and Kathy Tu. If you’re in a podcast app already, you know how to subscribe to a podcast. So subscribe to this one. If you’re listening on The Times website and want to get each new episode of Sway in your podcast hierarchy, download a podcast app Like Stitcher or Google Podcasts. Then search for Sway and hit subscribe. We release every Monday and Thursday. Thanks for listening. January 21, 2021 • 39:29America’s Caste System Is 400 Years Old. That Doesn’t Change Overnight. January 19, 2021 • 40:37Bryan Cranston Won’t Play Donald Trump January 14, 2021 • 38:59Food Delivery Is Keeping Uber Alive. Will It Kill Restaurants? January 12, 2021 • 33:10Anna Wintour on the Kamala Harris Vogue Cover January 11, 2021 • 27:41Inside the Billion-Dollar War Against Right-Wing Conspiracists January 7, 2021If You Were on Parler, You Saw the Mob Coming January 4, 2021 • 38:11What’s Next in Your Netflix Queue? December 28, 2020 • 33:35This Astrologer Has Some Things to Tell Kara Swisher December 22, 2020 • 25:26Bonus: Kara Swisher and Nick Kristof Discuss Pornhub and Mastercard December 21, 2020 • 41:18Your Card Payment Has Been Declined December 17, 2020 • 38:35Can Kara Swisher Be Vulnerable? December 15, 2020 • 24:01Bonus: Kara and Maggie Haberman Debrief on Brad Raffensperger Listen and subscribe to “Sway”: Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher (How To Listen) At the inauguration on Wednesday, Kamala Harris became vice president — the nation’s first Black person, the first Asian person and the first woman to do so — and President Biden spoke of “a cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making,” adding that “the dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer.” But according to Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, change may not come so easily. Her reporting reveals that the systems of power in America are deeply defined by caste. On this episode of “Sway,” she explains how she saw an invisible ranking system play out in the raid at the U.S. Capitol, and argues that rushing to move on would be a mistake. Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times Special thanks this episode to Liriel Higa and Kathy Tu. “Sway” is produced by Nayeema Raza, Heba Elorbany, Matt Kwong and Vishakha Darbha and edited by Paula Szuchman; fact-checking by Kate Sinclair; music and sound design by Isaac Jones; mixing by Erick Gomez. New episodes every Monday and Thursday. Listen and subscribe.

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