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[wind whooshing]
- [Trayvon] I know you want to say it. - [Rachel laughs over phone]
- [Trayvon] Go ahead. - [Rachel] I'm not going to say it.
- But you want to. - [Rachel] Yeah, I do.
I know. Go ahead.
- [Rachel] I told you so. - [laughs]
See, always with the "I told you so."
- [Rachel] Uh, because I told you so. - [laughs]
- [Rachel laughs] - You was right this time.
[Rachel] Uh, what do you mean this time?
- [Trayvon laughs] - [Rachel] I'm always right. [laughs]
[Trayvon] All right, all right, all right. Calm down.
- Calm down. - [Rachel] So, get your little candy
- or whatever and call me back. - [Trayvon] All right.
- [refrigerators whirring] - [music playing]
[shopkeeper] Hey.
- [scanner beeps] - [shopkeeper] Three-fifty.
- [cash register beeps] - [drawer opening]
- [drawer closing] - [rain pattering]
Like, uh, I don't know, some… Ooh, ooh, ooh, you know I like breakfast.
[Rachel] Okay, breakfast.
- I might need some eggs. - [Rachel] Rice, bread, berries,
- I got you. - Oh, you got me?
I don't know if I want-- You like berries?
What, you be eating berries with pancakes?
[Rachel] Yeah, I eat berries with pancakes.
Like, blueberry pancakes?
- They're so bomb. - [Trayvon] See, okay, okay.
We gotta have fun. We gotta do our own thing. I feel like--
[Rachel] We gotta do our own thing. It's gonna be… it's gonna be amazing.
- I'm really excited. - [ominous music playing]
[Rachel] Yeah, I mean, we have all kinds of breakfasts…
Hey, I think… I think this car is following me.
- [Rachel] What? For real? - It keeps looping around the block.
[Rachel] Dang. Uh. Try going another way.
- Call me when you get home, okay? - All right.
[cell phone locks]
- [music concludes] - [birds chirping]
[keys jangling]
[car lock beeps]
[sighs] Mama?
Mama?
Afternoon.
- Afternoon. Are you sleeping or kinda? - [groans]
Kinda. [groans]
Hey, sleeping beauty.
- [Ruby] Hi. - Hello.
- [Ruby] Hi, hi. - Hello, hello.
[groans]
- Wanna sit up? - [Ruby groans]
Let's sit up. There we go.
- [groans] - All right. Come on, one more time.
- [groans] Okay. - [Isabel] That's good. That's good.
- Okay. - How's that?
- [groans] - [Isabel] Yeah. There we go.
- Sweetie with you? - He's bringing the trash around back.
Oh, yeah, garbage day. Everything in its right place.
- [laughs] - Well, of course you know how to do it,
but you don't have to do it. Not while I'm here.
- [Ruby chuckles] - Take my job from me, please.
- [chuckles] - [Brett chuckles]
There's only so much joy left for me in this world.
You gotta let me have it now. [chuckles] Okay.
You ready?
[Brett sighs]
Come here.
[sighs]
[Brett whispers] Okay. Go slow, okay? Come on.
- I got you. Okay. - [Ruby sighs]
[Ruby] Could you tell me how many apartments are in this?
[Mr. Mayhew] Oh yeah, we have 200 units.
- [Ruby] Two hundred, okay. - [Mr. Mayhew] Two hundred units,
- yes. - [Ruby] And everything…
- Kitchen, full kitchen. - Full kitchen…
- Mm-hmm. - …and a-- yeah, that's a…
- Well, everyone looks really nice here. - [Mr. Mayhew] Yes.
- It's a great place. - You know, Mr. Mayhew,
- my husband was a Tuskegee Airman. - Oh.
- Fought for America in World War II. - Oh.
Oh, this is the gym here, yeah.
Beautiful, open 24 hours.
[ambient music playing]
[Isabel] Oh.
[sighs] Oh. Thank you.
Thank you.
[Brett exhales]
[exhales]
[speaks indistinctly]
Hey. [sighs]
- At least there's good light. - Hmm. Yeah.
- [sighs] - Oh.
Look at that cloud.
I see a swimming pool with boys jumping in.
- Where? - There. Look.
- There's the arms. - Oh, yeah.
- [chuckles] - I see it. I see it. I see it.
They're a Little League team.
- Hmm. - Just won the big game.
Celebrating and having a ball. [chuckles] See the splashes?
- Oh! [chuckles] - [Isabel] Mama. Little League team.
- Oh. - Splashes. [laughs]
- It's true. - [Isabel] Mm-hmm.
[somber music playing]
[Isabel] You and your imagination.
You gonna be all right?
[sighs] Yes.
I'm gonna be all right, honey.
I'm gonna be all right.
Okay.
If anybody can maneuver, it's your mom, okay?
Um, what she say all the time? "My husband was a Tuskegee Airman."
- [chuckles] Listen… - [chuckles]
…I know keeping elders at home is supposed to be a noble thing and all,
- but there's something to be said… - [keys jangling]
- [Brett clears throat] - …for keeping her as independent
- as she can be. - [chuckles]
Where'd you find them?
Next to the lamp, under a scarf with the ringer off.
[Isabel groans, sighs]
[Brett] You gotta use the hook. That's what it's there for.
- Is that Mr. Brett? - Oh.
- [Isabel] Are you ready to go out? - [chuckles] Miss Marion. How's Teddy?
[Marion] You know, working my nerves. But what else is new?
[laughs]
[indistinct chatter]
- Did you say paper towels? - Yeah.
Please do not miss this flight, okay?
I love you. Please be safe, okay? Okay.
You got your boarding pass?
- I knew you had it. - [chuckles] Hell yeah, you knew it, huh?
- You got it. - Bye.
[Brett] Bye, baby.
- [indistinct chatter] - [gentle music playing]
[indistinct chatter in German]
[Isabel] Shipyard workers at Blom and Voss gather for a ceremony,
celebrating the company's new 295-foot vessel.
[crowd] Heil!
[Isabel] Adopted by the Nazis,
a "heil" salute was mandatory for German citizens.
But if you look closely, you'll find someone who defied this.
His name is believed to be August Landmesser.
He had joined the Nazi party two years before this day, but in that time,
August met and fell in love with a woman unlike any he'd ever met.
Unlike any he was supposed to have met.
- [speaks German] - [Isabel] Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman.
- [gasps] - [chuckles]
- [August chuckles]
[in German] An unexpected treat. You're early.
- I'm a surprise. - That you are.
- [chuckles] - A handsome one.
- [moans] - [moans, chuckles]
[Isabel in English] Although a member of the dominant class,
August saw in Irma what others like him chose not to see.
Her humanity, her beauty, her love.
On this day…
he folded his arms
rather than salute a regime that deemed that love illegal.
On this day, he was brave.
He couldn't have been the only one who felt something tragic was happening.
So, why was he the only one among the men to not go along that day?
Perhaps we can reflect on what it would mean to be him today.
I'll leave you with that.
- [audience applauding] - Thank you.
- Yeah, goodbye. - Thank you, Isabel.
- [sighs] - Earpiece.
[sighs]
- [stage worker] Thank you. - Thank you.
- [stage worker 2] Water? - Oh, I'm fine. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
- Isabel. Isabel. Hey. [chuckles] - [Isabel] Amari!
- [chuckles] - [Isabel] I didn't know you were speaking.
[Amari] Oh, no, no, no, no. One of my reporters is.
Hey, can you guys give me a minute? Okay. You were solid.
- [groans] - Nice work.
I am a better writer than I am speaker.
[Amari] Yeah, well, you're a better writer than most people do anything.
- [sighs] - So, listen.
I was gonna reach out to you on something.
Uh, so, I'm gonna take seeing you as a sign.
- This… this… this Trayvon Martin case. - [sighs] I know.
- Have you heard the tapes? - No. Of what?
Not the murder.
911 calls. This killer called 911 before he did it.
And tapes of people that heard the boy screaming out
and called the police.
[sighs] Is this public?
No. Well, it's being released. Slowly.
But we got him.
Are you interested in listening to consider writing something for us?
[chuckles softly] Amari, you have a stable of writers.
They don't have Pulitzer Prizes.
- Some of them do, actually. - [chuckles]
Yeah, well, then they're not as brilliant as you on things like this.
You know what I do.
[Amari] Yeah, and I know what you used to do.
Some of the best reporting I've ever edited.
I write books now.
So, that one book you wrote took way too damn long.
It was a masterpiece and whatnot, but… it took too long, Isabel.
If you ask me, writers write.
So, write.
I don't do assignments anymore. I…
I want to be in the story, really inside the story.
Mm-hmm.
And yes, that takes time.
Okay.
Maybe after you hear the tapes, I'm gonna send them to you.
- Okay. - [Amari] Okay, no… no pressure.
[drawer opening]
[drawer closing]
[clears throat]
- [mousepad clicking] - [gentle music playing]
[breathes deeply]
[mousepad clicking]
[officer over phone] Sanford Police Department.
This line is being recorded. This is Sean.
[caller] Hey, we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood,
and there's a real suspicious guy. Uh…
This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something.
[officer] Oh, he's just walking
- around the area? - [caller] Looking at all the houses.
It's raining, and he's just walking around, looking about.
[officer] Okay.
[caller] And he's a Black male.
Now, he's just staring at me.
[officer] Did you see what he was wearing?
[caller] Yeah, a dark hoodie, like a gray hoodie,
and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes.
Shit, he's running.
[officer] He's running? Which way is he running?
[caller exhales]
Down towards the, uh, other entrance to the neighborhood.
These assholes, they always get away.
- [officer] Are you following him? - [caller] Yeah.
[officer] Okay, we don't need you to do that.
[caller] Okay.
[music becomes tense]
[officer] All right, sir, what is your name?
[caller] George. He ran.
[officer] All right, George, what's your last name?
[George] Zimmerman.
[911 operator] 911, what do you need, police, fire or medical?
[caller 2] Uh, maybe both. I'm not sure. There's just someone screaming outside.
- [Trayvon screams] - [operator] Um.
Okay, what's the address that they're near?
[caller 2] 1211 Twin Trees Lane.
[operator] And is it a male or female?
- [caller 2] It sounds like a male. - [screams]
- [operator] And you don't know why? - [caller 2] I don't know why.
I think they're yelling "Help," but I don't know.
[Trayvon screams]
[operator] So, you think he's yelling "Help"?
- [caller 2] Yes. - [Trayvon screams]
[caller 2] I can't see him. I don't wanna go out there.
I don't know what's going on, so…
- Help! - [operator] What did you--
- [gunshots] - [breathing heavily]
- [caller 2] There's gunshots. - [music concludes]
- [operator] You just heard gunshots? - [caller 2] Yes.
- [operator] How many? - [caller 2] Just one.
[indistinct background chatter over call]
[operator] All right, is he right outside 1211 Twin Trees Lane?
[caller 2] Yeah, pretty much. Out the back, yeah.
[breathing heavily]
[breathes deeply]
[breathes heavily]
[device beeps]
[water pouring]
- [jazz music playing] - [indistinct chatter]
- [bystander] Brett. - [bystander 2] Isabel. Hi.
Hi.
- Hey. - Hi!
Looking gorgeous.
- Oh, Brett. How are you? You well? - [Brett] Hi. How are you?
[Kate] Great to see you.
- [Brett] Okay, and you. - [Kate] Yeah.
- And he is wearing that tux very well. - [Isabel] Very well.
- [Brett laughs] - He can hear you.
- Well, he can, but he's grateful. - [Kate chuckles]
- Thank you. [smooches] - Hello. [smooches]
- Uh, Amari Salvin… - [groans]
- …asked me twice if you were coming. - [sighs]
Okay? He wants something for the paper.
He's made that very clear.
All right. Are you interested? We can tie up the audio book.
- [indistinct chatter] - [ambient music playing]
Right. [chuckles]
[Amari] You listen?
Yeah. [sighs] Yeah.
- It's a lot. - [Amari] Yeah?
Uh, it's a lot. There's a lot there.
But longer-form stuff, questions that I don't have the answer to.
- [Amari] So, ask them in a piece. - [scoffs] I don't write questions.
I write answers.
Questions like what?
Like, why does a Latino man deputize himself to stalk a Black boy…
- [Amari] Hmm. - …to protect an all-White community?
- What is that? - The racist bias…
- [sighs] - …I want you to explore.
- Excavate for the readers. - We call everything racism.
What does it even mean anymore? It's the default.
- [chuckles] - [clears throat]
- When did that happen? - [chuckles] Hey, Brett.
- [Brett] How are you? - How are you doing, man?
So what, so you… you saying that… that he isn't a racist?
No, I'm not saying that he's not a racist. I'm questioning why is everything racist?
- This feels like a setup. - [chuckles] I've been there. [chuckles]
- Okay. Home ownership. - [Amari] Okay.
Covenants written into land deeds, barring Black people from having wills.
No… no generational wealth allowed.
We could not pass on what we earned to our kids
for almost 500 years. Every time, we'd have to start from zero.
So, if we are not allowed to pass on the fruits of our labor
to our family,
is that the same racism that took Trayvon's life?
- Systemic racism, yes. Same. - [chuckles] Are you sure?
Are you sure?
What does it mean?
Murders of Black people by the police. We call that racism.
- Everything's the same. - [Amari] Uh. I… I get it.
Being followed in a department store and being lynched
shouldn't be called the same thing. I get that.
Racism as the primary language
to understand everything… is insufficient.
- [Amari] See, this is good. - [Isabel] That's all.
This is good.
Look, I need a piece delving into what the Martin case means.
Set the context with these questions. It's what you do best.
- Make the hard stuff digestible. - [sighs]
And this is a hard one. I mean, what… what does it all mean?
These questions are the piece. Hey, we'll make it splashy.
- Prime placement. Sunday. - [scoffs]
- Maybe even a cover. - You're terrible.
- [chuckles] I'm just saying.
- Your face on the cover? - [Isabel] Terrible.
- [chuckles softly] - [sighs]
There's a lot there. There's a lot there. But I am on hiatus.
- Isabel, come on. - [Isabel] I am.
- Come on. - I am. I… I…
I have family responsibilities.
Yeah.
[Amari] All right, well, good for you for taking time.
- We'll talk again. All right. - [Isabel] All right.
- Hey, you two take care. All right? - Good to see you, Amari.
- Yeah. All right, bye. - [Amari chuckles]
- [Isabel] I'm on hiatus. - Okay. Okay. Okay.
- [indistinct chatter over TV] - [laughs]
She's wrong.
- She just said the only movie she knows. - [laughs]
- Die Hard is the only movie she knows? - Oh, she deserves to lose that money.
[all laugh]
…speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention
over the course of the last week, uh,
- the issue of the Trayvon Martin rule. - [Ruby] Oh.
That poor child's mother.
Wish he'd answered the man right.
What was that, Mama?
I wish he had answered the man
when he asked him why he was there in the neighborhood.
Maybe he'd still be with us.
Are you saying it's the boy's fault?
No, of course not. Don't be silly.
I'm saying you got to act in a way to keep you safe.
He was…
he was too young to know it.
And he shouldn't have had to answer to anyone.
Should have and real life are two different things, darling.
You know that.
You can't be walking around at night on a White street and not expect trouble.
That's intimidating to most Whites.
True or not?
[sighs]
Yeah.
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think it is true.
But I also think that you can't live your life
based on what's intimidating to people.
Sure you can, sweetie.
[sighs]
[soft music playing]
[Brett] So, you're going on hiatus, huh? That's what you're doing?
Huh?
[Brett] You told Amari you were going on hiatus.
You told me that you were gonna be traveling less for work,
so I'm just trying to figure out what exactly it is
that you're gonna do, because…
I said I wanted to focus on her.
Okay.
People are asking you
- to write because they… - [Isabel sighs]
Because of your voice, because they… they… they-- The way you think.
- I just-- I don't know. - She--
[Brett] I… I don't know what you're doing.
- She doesn't belong in that place. - Oh, right. [sighs]
She should be at home. She moved because she was lonely. I…
I… I should have spent more time with her.
- Daddy would want me to fix this. - [Brett chuckles]
I think your father was pretty clear that what he wanted
was for you to be happy. For you both to be happy.
Sacrificing your work,
well, that's gonna accomplish exactly the opposite, so… [inhales deeply]
Your mother was very clear about what she wanted.
It's not that, so…
[music concludes]
[pensive music playing]
[sighs]
[water splashing]
- [Allison] I don't see it, baby. - Maybe it's checked out.
[Isabel] In 1933,
two African-American anthropologists were studying in Berlin.
There are no books here at all by him.
[Elizabeth] At the premier library in the city.
The country.
Beautiful library, though.
[chuckles] I could get lost in all these books forever.
- All these ideas. - [laughs]
[chuckles]
[in German] Your library card.
[in German] Good afternoon. [chuckles] Of course.
And your passports.
[indistinct chatter]
Can you tell us when Erich Maria Remarque's
All Quiet on the Western Front is due back?
[stamp thudding]
[Isabel in English] They witnessed events that would change the world.
- [music concludes] - [Isabel] Baby.
Brett.
[somber music playing]
[inaudible]
[eulogy speaker] Brett Hamilton was a mathematician,
a financial analyst.
By heart, he was a passionate champion for those he loved deeply.
He played classical guitar, was an enthusiastic cook,
and volunteered his time and efforts to those less fortunate.
In college, he joined Phi Kappa Tau Delta Chapter,
and with his friends, enjoyed caving trips,
watching thunderstorms…
and debating the big stuff.
Recently, he traveled extensively in Europe,
accompanying his beloved in her professional activities and causes…
I'm… I'm Mrs. Copeland from across the street.
- How is Isabel? - [Marion] She's… she's resting right now.
[sighs] I can't believe it.
[Marion] Thank you so much for coming by.
[Mrs. Copeland] Give her my love, please.
[heart monitor beeping]
[wind whooshing]
[telephone ringing]
- [Marion] Isabel Wilkerson's office. - [Kate] Hello. Hi.
This is Kate. I'm Isabel's editor.
Yeah, I… I know who you are. Hi, Kate. This is her cousin, Marion.
Marion. Marion, hi, uh,
my… my condolences for your family's losses.
[inhales deeply] I… I don't… I don't have the words.
Um, it's unfathomable, unthinkable.
[sighs] I… I just… I… I can't--
Two of the closest people to you in a year…
[stutters] Who… who can withstand it?
How is she?
[Isabel whimpers]
- [Marion groans] - No, no. [sniffles]
I'm right here. I'm right here. I'm right here.
[sniffs, sobs] Stay. Stay. Stay.
- Stay. - I'm right here.
Stay. Stay. [sniffs] Stay. Stay.
- [watch ticking] - [music concludes]
[breathes heavily]
[sighs]
- [Marion] Hey. You made it in okay? - Yeah, I'm here.
How are you?
Tell me how you're feeling.
How does it feel to be back there with all of her things?
I'm here, Marion. That's all I am.
[sighs] You know what? I… I got to go.
[sighs] I've got to get this house packed.
[Marion] I could come this weekend and… and… and… and help you.
- We could take it slow. - [cashier] Thank you.
- [scanner beeps] - I've got to get these things packed up,
so I can start back work.
What? You're starting back to work?
Of course.
What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to live?
- Okay. - [cashier] Here you go.
What is the work you have to do and when do you need to start?
Marion, I have to go. I'm already behind. I… I… [sighs]
- I'll talk to you later, okay? Bye. - [Marion] Okay.
The HVAC guy got the sump pump working and got most of the water out.
[sighs] This had never happened before.
I'm never down here. My husband was always the one down here,
changing the filter in the furnace or shaking the fuse box, but…
- But he died last year, so… - [Dave] Uh-huh.
[Isabel sighs]
- There's where the water's coming in. - [Isabel] Where?
- The sink. - [sighs]
[sighs] The sink doesn't overflow. [sighs]
I mean, is it… is it a pipe that's… that's clogged, or…
Probably the pump needs clearing out. I'll write an estimate.
[breathes heavily]
My mother died a few months ago.
What about you?
Is your mother still alive?
No. No, she's not.
Died in 1991, 52 years old.
Goodness.
[sighs] That's not old…
at all.
[Dave] Sure ain't.
[Isabel] Your father?
He's 78.
[Isabel] Hmm.
You're lucky to have him.
He's mean as they come.
[chuckles softly]
Well…
I guess in the end, we miss them no matter… no matter what they were like.
No, not him.
[clears throat] You know what? Uh…
- [Isabel] You see something? - [Dave] Well, maybe.
- [water splashing] - [objects clattering]
[groans]
[water splashing]
[breathes heavily]
[indistinct chatter]
[Isabel] I have an idea.
- [Binky] Yes. - [Kate] You do?
[Binky] I thought that might be why you came. [chuckles]
- Tell us. - [Kate] Tell us.
Well, I didn't explore the Trayvon Martin case.
I know it's been a while, but I think there's a lot to unpack.
I've been thinking about my mother and how she insisted we be polite
and buttoned up around White people.
[snickers]
And there's all this Nazi symbolism all over the place.
You heard about what happened in Charlottesville?
- Yes. Neo-Nazis. - [Isabel] Yeah.
Drove his car through a crowd at a protest for Black lives.
Killed a White woman.
Heather Heyer.
All these idiots walking around with tiki torches,
evoking imagery from the KKK and Nazi Germany to stoke fear.
There's this terrific Indian scholar.
Uh, I've been… been wanting to… to read his work,
but I… I haven't. Um.
He's a Dalit professor, and he won a--
- Sorry. A Dalit professor? - [Isabel] He… he's a Dalit.
And a professor. The Dalits are untouchables of India,
beneath the lowest caste.
Have you ever heard of them?
- No. No. - Have you ever heard of them?
- No. - [Isabel] No. Me neither. Why?
There's connective tissue here. There's connective tissue there.
There is connective tissue here.
I… I could… I could… I could…
I could build a thesis that… that shows how all of this, all of it, is linked.
Well…
[sighs]
- Well, that's the writer's journey, right? - Mm-hmm.
Sorting all of that out.
There's a lot going on in that big brain of yours.
I love that. I love it.
But I gotta be honest with you.
I don't understand how the woman that killed by the neo-Nazis…
Heather Heyer.
- How that connects to the Dalit professor… - Mm-hmm.
- …connects to Trayvon Martin… - Mm-hmm.
…connects to your mom.
I don't see it… yet. I don't see that yet.
But if you can make people see it, then that is an incredible book.
[dramatic music playing]
[car door shutting]
Thank you.
Come here.
[moans]
I love you. Please be safe, okay? Okay.
- [Isabel sighs] - [airplane engine whirring]
[music concludes]
Hello, excuse me.
- Um, this is the book you ordered. - [Isabel gasps] Oh, yes.
- Yes, of course. Please sit down. - And the list we talked about.
Um, this is a list from 1935, October.
- A little bit later than the first list. - Yes.
[librarian] Yeah, Remarque Erich Maria.
Sämtliche Schriften,
that means everything he wrote is to destroy, to burn.
- To be destroyed. - Yes.
[dramatic music playing]
[Erich] Excuse me.
I heard you inquire about Remarque.
But couldn't hear the librarian's answer.
I'm Kästner.
I'm from here.
How long have you been in Berlin?
About five weeks.
You have no idea what's happening.
- Pardon me? - I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.
You have no idea what's happening here.
Everything is being torn apart.
[crowd chanting]
[Achim in German] The age of superior
Jewish intellectualism has come to an end.
[crowd screaming, cheering]
[Achim] The German soul can unfold again!
No to decadence!
[crowd yelling]
- And moral corruption! - [crowd cheering]
[indistinct clamoring]
[Achim] Yes to decency and morality
in family and state!
[Nigella in English] In Germany, there's memorials
to nearly everyone victimized by the Nazis.
And there's no entry sign, no… no gate.
- It's just open, both day and night. - Yes. Yes.
Just standing to bear witness.
[dramatic music plays]
[indistinct clamoring]
[Nigella] Twenty thousand books were lost that night.
[crowd chanting]
[Nigella] Books filled with imagination and ideas, and history.
[crowd chanting]
[Erich] Leave here, my friends.
Leave Germany.
Go to your home as soon as you can. You'll be safer there.
[crowd chanting]
[Achim in German] I deliver to the flames the works of…
Sigmund Freud…
Heinrich Mann…
Ernst Glaeser…
Erich Maria Remarque…
Georg Bernhard…
Erich Kästner…
[Nigella in English] "Where you burn books,
you end up burning men."
That's a quote by Heinrich Heine.
He was a poet, German and Jewish.
[music concludes]
[speaks German]
[Sabine] No, you are not changing the subject anymore. Mm-hmm.
- Okay. Done this Christmas? - [Nathan] Yes.
- And then? - Ah.
Jawohl, sweetheart?
- No, I still have a couple sips left. - [chuckles]
You're basically in danger when you're visiting your family.
- [Nathan] Yeah, always. - It's the American way.
I mean, we know. We know. It's ridiculous.
That is what I'm looking at with the article.
You have 900 shootings a week, it seems, in America.
- And you keep giving people guns. - [chuckles] I don't understand it.
Dear, we don't even understand it ourselves.
We don't understand.
You know, I, um… I heard here that displaying
the swastika is, um, a crime.
- Hmm. - Hmm.
- [Isabel] Three years in prison? - Yes. Yes, that's true.
I mean, it's not tolerated.
Well, in America, um,
the Confederate flag, which is like your swastika,
the flag of murderers and traitors,
it is a part of the official flag of one of our states.
- No. - [Isabel] Mississippi.
[exclaims]
Men who wanted to wage war for the right to own other human beings?
Statues of them sprinkled all over the country right now.
- Madness. - Hmm.
You know, it's not perfect, but Germany has no monuments there
to celebrate Nazis.
I mean, everything Hitler's got, paved right over it all
and built new things.
[Sabine] I mean, you can literally walk
right over Nazi places and never know they were even there.
- [Nathan] And the bunker. - Yes, the bunker. It's long gone.
- It looks like nothing. - [Ulrich] Yeah.
I mean, it was 30 feet underground.
It was protected with reinforced concrete.
And now, it has, like, a Volkswagen
or something parked on top of it at any given time of day.
[all laugh]
It is very different than the States. Very different approach.
Well, there are so many differences between here and there.
We're talking about the systematic murder of six million Jews.
That's the official number.
So, it's just very different than monuments to soldiers and whatnot.
- What? What are you saying is different? - [Sabine] All of it.
We're talking about deliberate extermination over many years.
Yeah, but wasn't slavery for, like, hundreds of years?
Right, Isabel?
Slavery lasted 246 years.
That's 13 generations of people.
Plus another 100 years of Jim Crow segregation,
violence, and… and murder.
It is, of course, horrific. I am not downplaying any of it.
There were so many millions of African Americans who were murdered…
from the Middle Passage until the end of legal segregation that it goes
beyond the realm of an official number.
- There is no number. - [Nathan] I didn't know that.
- [sighs] Stunning. - [Sabine] It is.
And I understand you're trying to make sense of American racism.
It is noble.
But your thesis linking caste in Germany with the United States is flawed.
Uh, maybe it's not exactly the same, but the thesis
of structural similarity certainly gives context for a framework.
Right, but a framework is not a book, my friends.
She is trying to connect the United States to Germany, but it doesn't fit.
It's as if you're trying to fit a square inside the circle, as they say.
I would just like you to note for yourself that American slavery is rooted
in subjugation, dominating Blacks for the purposes of capitalism.
Using bodies and labor for profit.
But for the Jews, during the Holocaust, the end goal was not subjugation.
It was extermination.
Kill them all.
Wipe them off the face of the earth.
There is no need for them here.
It's different.
I say, leave Jewish folks alone. They're fine. They don't need you.
Write about us, Isabel.
I am writing about us.
I just…
I couldn't fully explain what was in my head.
[Marion] You better than me.
Because I would have had words. She was rude.
I had words. I had a ton of words.
[Marion] Well, none of them were,
"I'm the right one on the wrong day, baby."
Yeah, well, I'm still my mother's child, and that wouldn't have happened.
[Marion] I know.
You never could back back, even when we were kids.
Always thinking about your comeback the next day.
"Oh, I know what I should have said was."
[chuckles]
What if Brett had been there last night?
Oh! [chuckles]
Poor lady. [chuckles]
He would still be there, confronting
[Marion chuckling]
[car door shutting]
- Afternoon. - [Isabel] Hi, afternoon.
Some unwanted visitors, huh?
- [chuckles] - Looks like they even built a guest house.
Yeah, putting these out in the backyard to empty out.
Just have your gardener pick them up in a day or two.
Sir, sir, sir, I… I don't want that--
I'd rather not have those nests in my yard.
I have dogs, and… and that spray can't be good for them.
It's fine. Won't hurt them.
[sighs]
Hey, can I help?
- Could I just? - Yeah, it's…
Excuse me. She doesn't want it back there. Did you… did you not hear what she said?
Yeah, but I can't take it with me today. My bins are full.
Okay, well, I guess we're just going to have
to figure something out then, right?
I mean, you didn't… you didn't remove that for free, did you?
No, right?
No, I didn't.
So look, if this is your treat,
you go ahead and you leave that wherever you'd like.
But if you do want to get paid for your work,
you're going to have to finish the job.
Appreciate the cooperation.
[scoffs]
Did I just mansplain?
[chuckles]
Well, you asked for permission, so…
- [Brett] Right. - And if you hadn't…
- I'd be in, uh, White savior mode, right? - [chuckles] What do you know about that?
Oh, hey, don't break bad habits, you're never going to get broke, right?
[chuckles]
[sighs]
Well, you asked for permission, so we'll just call it being neighborly.
Okay, let's, uh… let's do that.
I haven't seen your mom and dad
on their walks for a while. How they doing?
You know, they're slowing down, thank you.
Um, but, uh, they're having the conversation about moving to Florida.
[chuckles] But they're… they're hanging in, you know.
- My mom, too. - [Brett] Hmm.
I get it.
My mom made me promise I'd come by today.
It's, uh… it's my birthday, so… [chuckles]
[soft music playing]
- Wait. - [Brett] Uh…
- Today is your birthday? - Yeah.
- [Isabel] Today is your birthday? - [chuckles] It is.
- Yeah, she, uh… - Oh.
She made me a cake, like I was a little kid. [chuckles]
'Cause she still thinks you're her baby.
- I think it's sweet. - Hmm.
Um, happy birthday.
Uh, um, it's… it's Brett.
- I'm Isabel. - Yeah, I know.
- [sighs] - [sighs]
And I think birthdays are… are a big deal.
- [Brett] Do you? - Yes, I do.
Wow. Not me, honestly, but… [chuckles]
- [Isabel] They should be. - Really?
- [Isabel] Yes. - Okay. [chuckles]
Will you come over?
Come have a slice of cake with us.
You know, that would make my mom so happy.
And… and… and you know, it would make the birthday a big deal.
Because I… I don't have any idea how to do that.
[breathes deeply]
Well, I haven't seen your mom and dad for a while.
- There you go. - [Isabel] Yeah.
- I'll come in and say hi. - [Brett] Yeah?
- Yeah. - Wow.
- [chuckles] - [chuckles]
- God! - [Brett chuckles] What?
- [chuckles] What? - [Brett] Come on, let's go eat some cake.
She makes a mean cake, too.
- [Isabel] Really? - [Brett] Oh, yeah.
- She's got the layers… - [Isabel] What kind we talking about?
[Brett] Oh, oh, we're talking about,
I mean, hopefully… hopefully there's not going to be,
like, a fire engine on it, like when I was seven.
- You never know with my mom. - [Isabel chuckling]
[breathes deeply]
[sighs]
- [music concludes] - [dramatic music playing]
[groans]
These are the minutes from the meeting in 1934.
Fifteen months after the meeting, they become law.
Jim Crow laws.
- Yes. - The American race laws.
Yes.
- [Isabel] It's mind-blowing. - [music concludes]
[in German] The American model is useful.
Very surprising.
American racial segregation could be a possibility.
German Jews… [scoffs]
[speaks German]
[Nathan in English] "Our problem is different."
"Their problem is…
Negroes with nothing to build upon."
"A problem that plays no part for us here in Germany."
"Our problem is the Jews who must be kept enduringly apart."
- What is this? - That is a transcript…
of a meeting that I saw a picture of where Nazi lawyers
were studying American law and customs to figure out
how to pull off the Holocaust.
Our problem is the Jews who must be kept enduringly apart,
since there is no doubt that they represent a foreign body
in the Volk.
And segregation will never achieve the goal
as long as the Jews have economic power
in our German fatherland as they do have now.
As long as they have the most beautiful automobiles,
- the most beautiful motorboats. - Mm-hmm.
As long as they play a prominent role
in pleasure spots and resorts and everywhere that costs money.
This can only be achieved through measures that forbid sexual mixing
of a Jew and a German and imposes criminal punishment.
We must answer the question today as to whether laws
that the Reich will institute should declare only
the separation of races or if it should declare
the superiority of one, and the inferiority of others.
[Isabel] In the fall of 1933, Allison Davis and his wife, Elizabeth,
cut short their advanced studies at the University of Berlin
and fled Germany when Hitler took power.
Well, we finally got proof
that one landowner named Bailey has been whipping sharecroppers.
Bailey's wife told me that's the way to manage them
when they get too uppity.
We heard about a tenant farmer, one county over, who was beaten so badly
by a store merchant, he can't bring in a crop.
We're heading over there tomorrow.
- Do you know what sparked that? - The Negro man asked for a receipt.
Beat him right there in the store.
[Isabel] It inspired him to study the process of injustice.
This gave Dr. Davis new insight into the nature of hate.
The other half of their team was a White couple named Burleigh
and Mary Gardner, also Harvard anthropologists.
The mission was quietly revolutionary.
Together, all four would embed themselves in an isolated southern town
from both sides of the caste divide.
One breach of the social order could cost them all their lives.
[door opens]
[Isabel] And this was exactly what they were doing in Natchez, Mississippi.
Reaching a social order to study the social hierarchy of the South.
A mission that would render them undercover investigators
in order to fit into the community.
This would be one of the first studies of its kind.
Neither couple fully knew what they were getting themselves into.
Out in public, they had to remain in character at all times.
With the Davises required to show deference
to the Gardeners and never give the appearance that they were,
in fact, colleagues in the trenches.
They had to keep to their own cast performance.
Everyone had to play the part expected of them.
[bystander] They don't need to be out on these streets.
[Burleigh] You seen them around before?
Oh, yeah.
The monkey's getting too big for his britches.
- Hmm. - Might have to train him.
- [chuckles softly] - Come on.
[crickets chirping]
[Mary] I don't see how we stay much longer.
Our neighbor practically invited us to a lynching yesterday.
[Burleigh] And, Allison, there have been some…
some unkind things said about you.
I can't be sure these folks don't get a mind to do something.
We're seeing similar suspicion.
- We should consider. - Not yet.
- Allison. - [Allison] You're getting into the wide
- inner circle of this town. - It's not where there's safety.
And that is what we need to observe.
We're close.
[Isabel] The two couples kept on the move,
constantly changing clandestine locations for safety.
[birds chirping]
[Isabel] They couldn't go to each other's homes.
Mixing of races was not allowed publicly in any form except subservience.
The most striking tenet of their embrace of supremacy…
is deference.
That should be the core of the chapter, don't you think?
Maybe you're right.
Deference goes beyond mere observance of certain formalities.
We call them sir, and they call us boy and gal.
Exactly. Never contradicting whites.
- Always agreeing with them. - Evening.
- Hey! - [chuckles]
- [Essie] Y'all eat? - [chuckles]
Been out here reading and writing for hours.
Greens with fatback gonna get cold.
Hey, now.
- Ain't gotta tell me twice. - Oh, yes, ma'am.
- Can't wait to try them greens. - [laughs]
[Elizabeth] We'll be there.
[indistinct chatter]
All right.
- [soft music playing] - [birds chirping]
Hey.
Hi!
[Eduard] The American material gives us a path to an answer.
Well, America has succeeded here.
Their legislation does not base itself on the mere idea of racial difference.
But to the extent this legislation is aimed at Negroes,
it bases itself absolutely on the idea of inferiority.
- [indistinct chatter] - [Karl] Well.
Germans are already convinced that the Jews are an inferior race.
German laws should reflect that.
[Roland] Precisely.
I am of the opinion that we can
proceed with the same primitivity as the American states.
Such a procedure would be…
crude, legally, but…
it would suffice.
[Isabel] The Nazi blueprint…
for the extermination of millions of people
was directly patterned after America's enslavement
and segregation of Black people.
America taught the Nazis.
[Isabel] Caste in America, in Germany.
It functions the same.
The outcomes may be different, like Sabine said.
But it is the same.
I think that the caste system in India,
I… I think that there is a connection there too, but…
The interconnectedness.
That is my point.
That is what I'm saying.
[dramatic music playing]
We proudly bestow this Amedgar Award to Dr. Suraj Yengde,
postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
[applause on video]
- [upbeat funk music playing] - [indistinct chatter]
Come on, win it! Come on, win it!
Nathaniel, I know it's gonna be worth the wait.
- Give that to me. - [Marion chuckles]
[Marion] Carolyn, can you finish uncovering this one?
All right, I got it, baby.
[Isabel] This chicken looks good.
What?
- Respectfully. - [Patrice] Yeah.
We and everybody are just wondering about an ETA.
The ETA is when I say it's ready. Respectfully.
Yes, ma'am.
- Hi, Isabel. - Hello.
- [Andre] How you been? - I've been all right.
Yeah, how are you holding up?
All is well. How are you two?
- We're good. Everything's good. - Starving.
[chuckles]
I wanted to ask if you knew one of my professors, Dr. Montgomery.
I think he studies the same things you do.
Uh, no, but I'm not keeping up like I used to, so.
Of course. Well, he is a smart man, a nice older gentleman.
I thought you might like to meet him.
He is handsome for his age, Black.
Why don't the two of you take this over to the UNO table
and tell them we're startin'?
Okay.
Boy.
They mean well.
You know, Brett always looked forward to these.
You and Mama were the only ones that let him in.
Folks weren't mean.
I know, but there was always that.
"When is she going to leave him and find herself a good brother?"
You know, these containers.
These containers we're in, we… we maybe the…
maybe the label says Black woman, maybe the label says white man,
- or Asian. - Hey, fix your face.
You too young for all that.
We read the label, and we think we know what's on the inside.
Y'all can eat now. Mm-hmm.
We trust the label, we put the container on the shelf, and that's it.
That's it.
Who need a kiss for good luck?
- [Teddy] Me. - Because that hand is trash.
[Teddy laughs] Come on, mama, give me some sugar.
Thank you, baby.
- Okay, so now go ahead. I'm listening. - I think that's what my book is about.
Oh, okay.
I forgot. Which one is yours? Which one is mine?
[sighs] This one is mine.
[Isabel] There you go.
So, your book is about interracial relationships.
Hmm. No. No, it's about…
it's about caste.
It's a phenomenon of placing one group above another group…
in a hierarchy.
And the consequences to its victims and presumed beneficiaries.
Um, one more time in English.
A little Pulitzer Prize-less, if you can.
I can.
Okay, well, then do it. Make it plain.
Because the stuff you were saying about the Nazis got me all twisted around.
How is that in the same book about Brett? I don't get it.
Do you think slavery was a system of terrorism and torture
that the Europeans used to profit off the labor of Black people
who they considered inferior?
Yeah. Hell, yes, it was.
Don't shake your head.
- It was. - [Isabel] No, they made it all up.
Your girl Toni Morrison said, "Why would you give your child
to be nursed and raised by people who you think aren't human,
who are animals?"
- Yes, Toni. - [Isabel] Yes, Toni.
It was all lies. They knew we weren't inferior.
But they magnified, they magnified the myths.
They codified them, set them in stone.
In… in systems.
In our laws, in our healthcare, in where we lived, how we learned.
The kind of work that we do, even our food.
- Racism at its finest. - [Isabel] Mm-mm.
No.
It's caste.
Everything you just said was racist.
Well, that… Well, if it's racist, then why is the same thing happening in India?
They're all brown. They're all Indian.
Marion. Right now, to this day…
there is a system in India where generations of people are forced
to clean sewers with their hands.
Their shit. With their hands.
They are beneath the lowest of the hierarchy. They're called Dalits.
At one point, they were forced to tie brooms around their waists
because their shadows were supposedly polluted.
- [Marion] Hmm? - Their shadows.
They had to sweep behind themselves when they walked.
How is it racist if they're all the same race?
Okay, do you think that… that Jews are white?
- Definitely. - The majority are.
But the same thing happened to Jews in Germany during the Holocaust.
The Nazis wanted to create an all-white republic.
But they hated, they hated the Jews,
so they said, how do we make the Jews not white?
So, they put them at the bottom of a hierarchy.
They said that they were greedy. They said that they were dishonest.
They blamed them for Germany losing the First World War.
They blamed them for everything bad that happened in Germany.
They were dogs, kill them, gas them, wipe them out.
The Jews and the Nazis were the same color.
We have to consider oppression in a way that does not centralize race.
We do it here in America, yes, because racism is all we know.
But these containers…
the Dalits in India, Jewish people in Germany,
uh, Black folks in America,
all these containers have something in common.
Race is not one of them.
It's caste.
Only took you ten minutes for that comeback.
[chuckles softly]
Figure out how to say more of what you just said.
Make it plain.
Talk to real people like you just did to me.
Real people, real things.
[James] You know we met in college.
So one time she comes up and saying, can I borrow a pen?
[Miss] You are making-- That is not true.
- He didn't know the day of the final. - [James laughs]
So, he's like, "I've seen you in my class before, and I'm just wondering,
do you know exactly what the day of the final?"
And I, mm, see, I think you were trying to get to me.
- [James] Let me let you in on a secret. - [Isabel] Okay.
- I knew when the final was. - [all laugh]
- [Isabel] See ya. - [James] That's my baby.
Night, night. Night, night, sweet dreams.
Isabel, come by more often, will you?
We seem to only get the lasagna when you around here.
- [laughs] - [scoffs]
I'm hearing that she's stingy
- with the lasagna. - [James] I don't know what it is.
Stop. You are lying too close to Sunday. Come on. [laughs]
[Isabel laughs]
[Miss] Love you.
- Good to see you. Good night. - [Isabel] Good night.
Good night.
Make sure they bathe with water, real water.
- Yes, ma'am. - [Miss] And a washcloth.
[James] I'll do my best, baby.
Do I, what, do I just… Do I talk slow? What do I…
- Okay, so I was in tenth grade. - [Isabel] Mm-hmm.
And we had just moved to Texas.
And my friend and I had this, uh, these walkie-talkies,
which, you know, we would use in between classes to talk or whatever.
And this was, you know, pre-cell phone,
- of course. - [Isabel] Right.
- Right. - Late eighties.
And the principal called me to his office. He was all suspicious.
Because he wanted to know why all these people were gathered around my locker.
So, I showed him the walkie-talkie.
And he asked my name.
And I said, Miss Hale.
And he said, "What is your first name?"
"It's Miss."
"I said, what is your first name?"
"My name's Miss."
He said, "I don't have time for all this foolishness, gal."
"What is your real name?"
I… I repeated my damn name four times.
That's a direct defiance of caste.
- The most personal I've heard yet. - Can you imagine that?
A young Black man plotting to force the respect of white people.
Your father tore a loophole through the hierarchy.
It's brilliant.
Brilliant. Go on. Go on.
So, the, the principal was furious,
so he tells his secretary to check my records, and of course,
they confirm that my legal name is Miss Hale.
So, he says to me, "Hale, I don't know any Hales."
"You're not from around here. Where's your father from?"
And I said, "He's from Alabama."
He said, "I knew you weren't from around here."
"Know how I knew?"
And I said, "No."
And he said, real cold…
"'Cause you're looking me in my eye."
"Colored folk around here know better."
I was…
I was scared.
- You know, I was a kid. - Yeah.
I had never felt…
that, that cold glare.
You know, he was looking me right in the eyes.
Demanding that I not look him in the eyes.
You know, my…
You know, Daddy would…
It's okay. It's okay.
Daddy would tell me again and again,
"Always live up to your name."
He say, "Miss."
"They don't have the corner on humanity."
"They don't have the corner on femininity."
"They don't have the corner on what it means to be a whole,
noble, honorable person."
Far from it.
[sighs]
Thank you.
You okay?
[melancholic music playing]
[Isabel] Most relationships end.
Friendships, romances, divorces, I mean, separations, people grow apart.
They break.
But we didn't break.
[sighs]
We fought that night.
It was about something so silly, Miss.
I should have spent more time with her. Daddy would want me to fix this.
For Christ's sake, would you stop, Isabel? Just stop.
It's her idea. She made a choice. She's a grown woman. Let her make it.
It's like you hide behind this thing
- with your mother. I just don't get it. - Hide?
- [Brett] Hiding. - Hiding? I'm not hiding.
- You're hiding. - [Isabel] I'm not hiding.
So silly.
And then…
he offered me some pasta to apologize. [sobs]
You want some of that pasta?
- Save me some. - Okay.
And then, that was it.
But we didn't break.
We did not break.
We were together.
Till the end.
He should be here, Miss.
He should be here.
[melancholic music continues]
And the one person that I could talk to about it.
She's gone too.
[breathes heavily]
What the hell am I supposed to do now?
- [sighs] - [Miss] You're okay.
[Isabel] I just want to scream. I just want to scream.
- I just want to scream. - [Miss] If you wanna scream, then scream.
[Isabel sniffles] I wanna scream.
Hmm.
[Gina] Roomy, fantastic light.
Will you update or sell as original?
I was thinking a fresh coat of paint.
[Gina] Vintage it is.
Yeah.
There might be water damage there.
Yes, with everything going on, I just…
I just basically locked up the house.
I have to deal with it.
- It's a process. - [sighs]
Isn't everything?
So, what is the price difference between fixing it up and selling it as is?
- [Gina] As is? - Yeah.
You're basically giving this little jewel away.
The area is hot right now with hipsters.
And these older homes, when they're fixed up,
can sometimes double in value.
If you could put a few thousand towards getting it fixed,
you would have a competitive situation on your hands with multiple bidders.
You write books, right?
A book.
I'm writing another one, but…
books don't pay as much as people think.
I get it.
Sell as a fixer and don't even worry about it.
Let someone else do the work.
So, let's discuss the contract.
Once the property is clear, we'll go ahead and do an open house.
That way people can come in and view the property
and see what they're willing to offer. Like I said, we'll get multiple bidders…
[Marion laughs]
[Isabel laughs] Who is that?
[Marion laughs] They didn't want to get in trouble.
She sucked her thumb and peed in the bed till she was twenty years old.
- I'm not, I'm not… - [laughs]
- Stop. So cute. So cute. [laughs] - [Isabel laughs]
- [Marion] Mm-hmm. - Look at Mama.
She cute.
- So fine. - [Isabel] Yeah.
- [Marion] How much is it? - Ugh.
All four estimates are over 10,000 dollars.
- Damn. - [Isabel] Yeah.
- You can't sell a roofless house. - Well.
- It'll have to wait till I get back. - [Marion] You leave when again?
Next month.
I have so much research to do here, and I have to start a new draft soon.
- Do you even know anybody in India? - Marion. Here's Uncle.
That's the point of traveling. Meeting new people.
Traveling to places where you are warmly welcomed by familiar faces…
is underrated.
Well, I might have found an Indian professor
- who can help me navigate. - [Marion coughs]
Might?
[coughs] No, no might.
[inhales]
[somber music playing]
[flight attendant speaks Hindi over P.A.]
[indistinct chatter]
[indistinct chatter over P.A.]
[traffic whizzing]
[indistinct chatter]
- [dramatic traditional music playing] - [traffic whizzing]
There you go. No, no, no.
- [Isabel] Thank you. - [hotel staff] Thank you, madam.
[traffic whizzing in distance]
[sighs, breathes heavily]
[cell phone chimes]
[Isabel] Okay, good. Good.
[sighs]
- [traffic whizzing] - [indistinct chatter]
[Isabel gasps]
- [indistinct chatter] - [traffic whizzing]
[Suraj] Isabel!
- Isabel! [laughs] - [Isabel laughs] Dr. Yengde. Suraj!
- So good to see you. - Hello.
Allow me to introduce my esteemed friend…
- Yes. - …Professor Ram Kamble.
- [Ram] The pleasure is mine. - Thank you.
- You know what we're gonna do?
We're gonna go straight. We're gonna walk right there.
- That's where we're gonna go. - [Isabel] Oh, we're doing that.
[Suraj] We're gonna do that.
- You excited? - [laughs] Yes, I am.
Welcome to India, Isabel. So good to have you.
[Isabel] I'm happy to be here.
[Suraj] There are signals on all the corners.
And this is one of the… This is not four-way, this is five-way.
[Isabel] It's five-way?
[Suraj] And if you add a person like me, I make my own way.
- So, it's like six-way. - [laughs] Six-way?
[Suraj] One, two, three, four, five.
Oh, a bus!
[Suraj] It's a beautiful market.
[indistinct chatter]
[speaks Hindi]
- I like this one. - [Ram] You like this one?
[speaks Hindi]
[scarf vendor speaks Hindi]
- She would like this. - [speaks Hindi]
[both speaking Hindi]
- [laughs] - [Ram speaks Hindi]
- For my cousin. - Oh, that'll look gorgeous.
Thank you.
Why is… why is the statue caged?
Ah. Quite observant.
He's Babasaheb, the leader of Dalits.
Isabel, he's Dr. Ambedkar.
This is the time when he had just completed the task
of drafting India's constitution.
There, he's holding it and standing tall.
You will find his statues all across the country.
From a busiest street, square, parks, railway stations, bus stations,
even in people's private properties.
Him standing is an affirmation of our existence.
To us, he's revered.
To others, they defile him.
Dr. Ambedkar's statues are one of the most vandalized in the country.
The cage is to keep the vandals away.
[pensive music playing]
[Suraj] Dr. Ambedkar is more than a champion
and a hero to the Dalit people.
He's the hope that lives within us.
He went into the heart of the problem of caste
and he saw purity was lying beneath the artifice of our caste.
- [birds chirping] - And where the human population,
uh, was chopped into what he called fixed and definite units.
In America, you have, uh, what you call the Blacks,
the browns, the Asians, the whites, and et cetera.
Similarly, we have in India
where the Dalits are supposed to be at the bottom
and the Brahmins at the top.
And between, there are various units of caste.
And what maintains this unit into continuing of caste system
is the unending violence in the form of rape, mutilation, and murder.
In India, a Dalit person is attacked every 15 minutes.
Every day, ten Dalit women are raped. And these are only the reported cases.
Rohit Vemula's friends, family, and the wider Dalit movement
called it an institutional murder.
And they called it this because it was not simply a case of suicide.
They said that this was an institution
that was systematically discriminating against a young Dalit student.
And this was important because for a lot of us, as young folks,
uh, who were looking for a life of dignity and respect,
and were looking to education and the university to give us that life,
it showed that the specter of caste, uh, was still haunting us.
[Suraj] In a world where Dalit people are brutalized
simply to keep us in our place,
Dr. Ambedkar remains our shining light.
Our guardian, our hero, our father.
The site of Dr. Ambedkar's last home is a museum now.
- Ah. - [Suraj] Quite magnificent.
As you can see, it's an open book concept.
[inspiring music playing]
[Suraj] While he is a giant among Dalits…
the world has failed to acknowledge his genius.
Dr. Ambedkar was separated from the kids of high caste
so as not to pollute them.
[indistinct chatter]
[Suraj] As a child, young Bhimrao Ambedkar was not allowed to touch
many of the things his classmates would touch.
He was not even allowed to touch water at the school.
This is because he was considered an untouchable.
That was the term used for Dalits at the time.
[schoolteacher speaking Hindi]
[Suraj] Young Ambedkar was not allowed to touch
or sit at a desk during class.
[speaks Hindi]
[speaking Hindi]
[speaks Hindi]
[Suraj] But he persevered. He continued to study and break barriers.
Dr. Ambedkar earned two PhDs.
One at Columbia University and the other at the London School of Economics.
After obtaining his PhDs and passing the bar…
- [indistinct chatter] - …Dr. Ambedkar returned to India
- as a heralded scholar. - [cow mooing]
[Dr. Ambedkar] We have been carrying on with untouchability
for the last 2,000 years.
Nobody has bothered about it, you see.
Yes, there are some, some disabilities which are very harmful.
For instance, people can't take water, people can't have land,
you see, to cultivate and earn their livelihood.
There is an insistence on conflating caste with race.
- Oh, yeah. - [Isabel] If I brought you
to the family reunion, what would you say? What would you say to them?
My cousin Mary, my… my mother…
What would you say to them
that's important for them to know…
about you, about India, about caste and our connection?
[Suraj] Our heroes found the connection and it is up to us to find it again
and build upon it in sibling solidarity.
When Bhimrao Ambedkar was a young Indian graduate student,
he found himself in New York City. Harlem, to be exact.
He saw kindred spirits among Black people in America.
Both in the oppression they faced and in their survival.
He immediately recognized the similarities
between how African Americans were treated and the treatment of Dalits.
- [bell tolling in distance] - [indistinct chatter]
[Suraj] Asha, you've been doing some work on this all, right?
Yes. Oh, my thesis centered on Dr. King's visit to India.
He saw many of these things firsthand while he and his wife toured the country.
I found the way in which he wrote about India
to be fascinating as someone afflicted by caste in their own country.
I used his essay in the magazine of United States
as the core of my research. Do you know Ebony magazine?
Yes.
Yes, I know Ebony magazine. [chuckles] Dr. King wrote about
- India in Ebony? - [Asha] Yes.
[chuckles] July, 1959. It is quite extraordinary.
[Suraj] And so, there is a connection between us.
The African-Americans, the Dalits, the indigenous people around the world.
Palestinian people, the Roma people, the Buraku people.
- [Isabel] Yes-- Mm-hmm. - The outcasts of Africa
are still fighting for their rights, be it Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal.
You go to Latin America, you find outcasts within the Mexican society
- or Brazilian society. - Mm-hmm.
And if we think about our histories through the vulnerability of love,
the symbols of hate and diets of violence will be replaced
by compassion, care, and solidarity.
This is the world that we have to imagine
for ourselves and for others
who have not yet seen the beauty that human beings have to offer.
[Dr. King] One afternoon, I went down to speak in the southern part of India,
and I remember that afternoon that the principal
got up to introduce me.
He said, "I would like to present to you
a fellow untouchable from the United States of America."
And for the moment I was peeved, I was shocked
that I would be introduced as an untouchable.
Pretty soon my mind ran back across to America.
And I had to say to myself, "I am an untouchable."
Segregation is evil and sinful because
it stigmatizes the segregated as an untouchable in a caste system.
This is why I'm convinced that we have a moral edict,
a moral mandate, to work to get rid of this unjust and evil system.
[cell phone chimes]
[somber music playing]
- I'll put the phone near her. - [Marion breathing with difficulty]
[Isabel on cell phone] Okay.
[sniffles] Baby?
You're on speaker, um, she's, uh, she hasn't been responding to folks.
I understand.
[Teddy sniffles]
[Isabel] Marion, it's Isabel.
Hi, cousin.
I called to say goodbye.
I believe you can hear me.
You mean so much to me.
I remember everything you have ever said to me.
From the time that we were kids…
until the last time I heard your voice.
I'll never forget it.
I'll never forget you.
You will walk with me.
You will live in me for as long as I'm here.
Watch over me.
Cover me, okay? [sobs]
I won't see you but… [sobs] …you'll see me.
There's more to life than… [sobs] …than what you can see.
You're going to experience it all. [sobs]
[breathes deeply]
I love you. [sobs] I love you. I love you.
[sobs]
I could stay around for a bit.
Don't you dare. You go.
So, you can come home and you can write your stories.
Folks need to know about this.
[birds chirping]
The pillars are working. You know, it gives it shape.
Good. Good.
And how many of them will there be?
Six or seven, maybe eight.
- And you are going to make this deadline? - [Isabel] I am going to make this
- deadline. - This self-imposed deadline.
Well, I don't have anyone to push me anymore, so I have to push myself.
[breathes deeply]
[gentle music playing]
[sighs]
[grunts]
A caste system needs scaffolding in order to maintain its hierarchies.
Dr. Ambedkar wrote,
caste is an artificial chopping up of the population into fixed units.
[jazz music playing]
[Isabel] Each unit is prevented from fusing into another
through the custom called endogamy.
[laughs, in German] Our rehearsing has paid off.
[in German] It's only taken six months to get that twirl down. [chuckles]
[in German] But… completely worthwhile.
[breathes deeply, in German] Let's go again.
[in German] Yeah, let me powder my nose first.
Yeah, yeah. [sighs]
[Isabel] In showing how endogamy is maintained,
we can prove the genesis and mechanism of caste.
Endogamy is defined as restricting marriage to people within the same caste.
- [indistinct chatter] - [jazz music playing]
[attendee 1 in German] have you heard they're asking for names and addresses?
[attendee 2 in German] They won't.
[attendee 1] They're looking for artists and people who like jazz.
I don't believe it. It's all blown out of proportion.
No. This happened at the Wonder Room last month.
[Isabel] This is an ironclad foundation of any caste system.
From ancient India, to the Nazi regime, to the American colonizers.
[indistinct chatter]
[in German] Laugh, dear.
Laugh, right now.
[laughs]
[Isabel] Endogamy enforces caste boundaries by forbidding marriage,
sexual relations, or even the appearance of romantic interest across caste lines.
It builds a firewall between certain people.
[August in German] No, no, no.
- [shouting in German] - [dogs barking]
[gun cocks]
[Isabel] By closing off legal family connection,
endogamy purposely blocks a sense of empathy
and shared destiny between people.
[yelling in German]
- Mama! - Stop!
- [child screams] - Stop!
- [screams] - [sobs] Mama!
- [yells] - [child screams]
[Isabel] It was the caste system, through the practice of endogamy,
which essentially regulated people's romantic choices
over the course of centuries,
that created and reinforced the idea of races.
By permitting only those with similar physical traits to legally mate.
Endogamy laws written and enforced by white men
designed the population of the United States.
[somber music playing]
[Isabel] If you were not a white man, and you violated that…
[indistinct chatter]
An unknowable number of lives were lost due to endogamy.
- [indistinct chatter] - [Isabel] The defining pillar of caste.
It triggered the most publicized cases of lynchings in America.
A protocol strictly enforced against Black men and white women.
[father] Front row seat, darling.
- [grunting, choking] - [rope creaking]
Isabel] One of the foremost scholars of caste in America once wrote,
"Tied to what one looked like,
membership in either the upper or the lowest caste is immutable."
[Isabel] "Fixed from birth to death, inescapable,
one may neither earn nor wed their way out."
That scholar was Dr. Allison Davis.
The Davis and Gardner team emerged with perhaps the most comprehensive study,
to this day, of the American caste system.
Their book, Deep South, is a quietly revolutionary landmark experiment
in interracial scholarship.
[Isabel] The Davises and the Gardners remained lifelong friends.
[indistinct chatter]
[Isabel] Nazi Germany, the United States, and India all reduced Jews,
African Americans, and Dalits to an undifferentiated mass
of nameless, faceless scapegoats.
[soft music playing]
[Isabel] Millennia ago, Dalits were called the untouchables of India.
And forced into the degrading work of manual scavenging.
The practice of cleaning excrement from toilets and open drains by hand
in exchange for leftover food.
The only thing that they have to protect their bodies is oil,
each other, and their prayers.
To refuse is to invite severe punishment or death.
This persists to this day.
The trade and sale of African people demolished communities,
obliterated families, and tore flesh from spirit.
[chains rattling]
[Isabel] Human beings were tortured to death and thrown overboard
on slave ships during the Middle Passage.
[people sobbing, wailing]
[Isabel] Upon their arrival at the concentration camps,
Jews were stripped of the clothing of their former lives.
[indistinct chatter]
[Isabel] Their heads were shaved.
Distinguishing features like sideburns or red hair were deleted from them.
They were no longer personalities to engage with.
They became a single mass,
purposely easier for SS officers to distance themselves from.
[speaking indistinctly]
[Isabel] Indian activists explained
that the manual scavenger is not a form of employment,
but an injustice akin to slavery.
It is one of the most prominent forms of discrimination against Dalits,
and it is central to the violation of their human rights.
To their dehumanization.
[crying, wailing]
[Isabel] Through violent storms at sea, starvation, mutilation, and rape,
Black people were stacked and squeezed into the hulls of ships
to be sold into further unfathomable terror.
[cries]
[Isabel] Their bodies did not belong to them
but to the dominating caste to do with however it wished.
[screams]
[Isabel] No longer daughter of a fisherman or nephew of the midwife.
- Loving mothers… - [crowd screaming]
…headstrong nephews, dedicated bakers and watchmakers,
all merged into a single mass of undifferentiated bodies,
no longer seen as humans deserving empathy…
but as objects over whom control could be exerted.
They were no longer people.
They were numbers.
[people clamoring]
[screaming, crying]
[struggling, screaming]
[screaming]
[gunshot echoing]
[Isabel] Dehumanized.
Now a soulless animal.
Not human.
[people crying]
[chains rattling]
[Isabel] It is harder to dehumanize a single person standing in front of you.
Harder to dehumanize an individual you've gotten the chance to know.
[gentle sobbing]
[Isabel] Which is why people and groups who seek power and division
don't bother with dehumanizing an individual.
Better to attach a stigma, a taint of pollution, to an entire group.
[sobs]
[Isabel] Dehumanize the group, and you've successfully dehumanized
every individual person within it.
Racism is not the same as caste,
because race does not matter in order for the system to work.
Little League team wins championship. [chuckles softly]
- [birds chirping] - [indistinct chatter]
- [laughs] - [Isabel] Mama,
- Little League team, splashes. [laughs] - Oh. It's true.
Go! Go, go, go!
[all cheer]
[Al's friend] It was a hot day like today.
We were pretty excited because we had just won the city championship.
And the coach told us he was bringing us to this park.
And, uh, we were going to get to eat and go swimming.
And we were quite excited, as you can imagine.
And then the park ranger came over and pointed out Al.
- [indistinct chatter] - [ranger] Hey, boy.
- Yes, sir. - [ranger] You can't be in here right now.
- You know better. Who you with? - [coach] Everything okay here?
- This boy with your team? - [coach] He's one of my players.
[ranger] You know how long it'd take for our maintenance crew to clean this up?
Disinfect it?
- [coach] Disinfect what? - [ranger] This is a whites-only pool.
We didn't know, being young kids, we didn't understand what was going on.
- [Isabel] Yeah. - And, um…
yet we wanted to go in the pool because it was so hot that day, too.
And then, the park ranger, he said, "If he goes in, nobody goes in."
["Splish Splash" playing]*
♪ Well, how was I to know There was a party going on? ♪
♪ They was a-splishing and a-splashing Reeling with the feeling ♪
♪ Moving and a-grooving Rocking and a-rolling, yeah ♪
[Al's friend] So, they took Al outside to a blanket out there.
But you know, we kept looking back at Al and seeing, why was he over there?
[Isabel] Mm-hmm.
So, a few of my friends and I went over to talk to him
and to make sure he was okay.
[Isabel] So, it felt strange when that happened, that he was over there
- and you guys were here. - Yeah, it felt separate.
- He was on our team. - [Isabel] Right, right.
And he was a big part of our team. And then they wouldn't let him in.
Some of the parents brought him over some food to eat.
[Isabel] Mm-hmm. He was out there by himself.
[Al's friend] By himself.
And then, the coach talked to the park ranger again and said,
"Hey, you got to let this kid in at least for a little swim."
- Yes, yes. - [Al's friend] So, he…
talked to the coach and he said,
"There's only one way I'm going to let this happen."
Mm-hmm.
- [indistinct chatter] - [whistle trilling]
Everybody out. Come on now.
Come on.
Come on out now. Come on.
[somber music playing]
You cannot touch that water, boy. You hear me?
Keep your balance.
Do not touch that water.
Stay still.
Real still.
Don't touch that water.
[Al's friend] It really affected us, and we didn't know what to do.
Right.
And it still bothers me today.
As a kid, just want to play baseball and swim.
We didn't know what to do.
And I wish I could do it over again.
Because I don't think I did enough.
How old were you?
[Al's friend] I was nine.
Nine years old.
[Isabel] Albright went on to become an artist and educator.
He was the first full-time Black faculty member
at his alma mater, Youngstown State University.
I missed talking to him for the book by a matter of months.
He passed away at age 82.
But a part of him died that afternoon in 1951.
You're going to be fine.
You're going to be just fine.
[mumbling indistinctly]
[soft music playing]
[sighs]
[Isabel over speaker] The tragedy of caste…
is that we are judged on the very things that we cannot change.
Signposts on our bodies of gender and ancestry, superficial differences…
that have nothing to do with who we are on the inside.
The goal of this work has not been to resolve issues
of a millennia-old phenomenon.
But to bear witness to its presence in our everyday lives,
to shine a light on its history, despite those who would deny it,
despite those who would withhold it from us, even.
Who try to convince us that we don't need to know.
We need to know.
You don't escape trauma…
by ignoring it.
You escape trauma by confronting it.
When you live in an old house.
You may not want to go in the basement after a storm
to see what the rains have brought, but choose not to look at your own peril.
We're all like homeowners who've inherited a house
on a piece of land that's beautiful on the outside,
but the soil is unstable.
People say I had nothing to do with how this all started.
I never owned slaves. I didn't mistreat untouchables.
I didn't gas Jews.
And yes, not one of us was around when this house was built.
But here we are.
The current occupants of a property with stress cracks
built into the foundation and a roof that must be replaced.
We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it.
We didn't erect the uneven pillars, but they are ours to deal with now.
The cracks won't fix themselves.
Any more deterioration is on our watch.
Caste is not simply hatred.
It is the worn grooves of routine and expectation,
patterns of a social order that have been in place so long
it looks natural when it isn't.
Caste is everywhere, yet invisible.
No one avoids exposure to its message, and the message is simple.
One kind of person is more deserving of freedom than another kind.
Freedom to love whoever you want to love.
Freedom to go wherever you want to go.
Freedom to express yourself however you want to express yourself.
Freedom to resist and fight for your human right to do so.
[somber music playing]
["I Am" playing]
♪ We are the color felt in the spring ♪
♪ You are the wind, breathe into me ♪
♪ You inherit me, I inherit you
♪ I am the language ♪
♪ You speak to me ♪
♪ As far as the eye could see ♪
♪ Everything has changed ♪
♪ Tell me how can we stand by ♪
♪ I don't wanna be the same ♪
♪ He toiora ahau nōu ♪
♪ Te toi nō Kurawaka ♪
♪ Taku rongomaiwhiti e ♪
♪ Tākiri ko te haeata ♪
♪ Anga atu ki te rā ♪
♪ Whiti, whiti ki te ora e ♪
♪ We are the waters ♪
♪ The rivers and streams ♪
♪ Flow through the armor ♪
♪ Of a dying breed ♪
♪ I am with you ♪
♪ And you are with me ♪
♪ Baptized in fire ♪
♪ We're lions in the ring ♪
♪ As far as the eye could see Everything has changed ♪
♪ Tell me, how can we stand by ♪
♪ I don't wanna be the same ♪
♪ He toiora ahau nōu ♪
♪ Te toi nō Kurawaka ♪
♪ Taku rongomaiwhiti e ♪
♪ Tākiri ko te haeata ♪
♪ Anga atu ki te rā ♪
♪ Whiti, whiti ki te ora e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō rongo e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō karere ♪
♪ Mau tonu e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō rongo e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō karere ♪
♪ Mau tonu e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō rongo e ♪
♪ Hou mai rā Tō karere ♪
♪ Mau tonu e ♪
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Mau tonu e ♪
♪ Tūturu whakamaua kia tina Tina ♪
♪ Haumi e hui e Tāiki e ♪
["Falling Into Place" playing]
♪ All of us ♪
♪ Waiting just to fall into focus ♪
♪ Every tear drop ♪
♪ I swear it's the last drop I shed ♪
♪ Side by side ♪
♪ All I see as I look behind us ♪
♪ Where the shadows that we cast ♪
♪ Are the shadows in our past ♪
♪ Everything ♪
♪ That brought us here ♪
♪ Is falling ♪
♪ Into place ♪
♪ Let yourself go ♪
♪ Trust me, you'll feel better In the morning ♪
♪ Secrets to know ♪
♪ Now I know nothing at all ♪
♪ Side by side ♪
♪ All I see as I look ♪
♪ Behind us ♪
♪ Where the shadows that we cast ♪
♪ Are the shadows in our past ♪
♪ And everything ♪
♪ That brought us here ♪
♪ Is falling ♪
♪ Into place ♪
♪ Everything ♪
♪ That brought us here ♪
♪ Is falling ♪
♪ Into place ♪