Tuesday, March 30, 2021
We had our book club on Caste from 4-5 at work. About 20+ folks were in attendance. Jerri ran the book club and did an excellent job. The reactions were similar to mine, that this was an important, powerful, amazing look at our caste system in America. The book really calls out who were are and what our history has always been about. One of the telling take-aways of Caste is how Isabel Wilkerson breaks down American history using a couple of key numbers. If each generation equals 20 years of history, we have 20 generations of American history (equal to 400 years). From that, we have three eras, 12, 5, and 3: 12 generations in which slavery was the law of the land, 5 generations in which Jim Crow was the law of the land (with 12 years, or a 1/2 generation of Reconstruction), and the final 3 generations represents the Civil Rights Laws from the 1960s to the present. 17 generations of slavery and Jim Crow, versus 3 generations of Civil Rights Laws. That really puts things in perspective for me. Ron Johnson, Ron DeSantis, Brian Kemp, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, and all the other enablers and white power sympathizers actually do represent who America has been. Who we are now is another story, and we'll see who wins out in the coming months and years. I do like how the illusion of America verses the realities of America are becoming more and more mainstream. That's a good thing.
Before our book club, I listened to an interview with Isabel Wilkerson and Michael Eric Dyson. So good!
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