Editor's note: Keith Magee is a senior fellow and visiting professor of cultural justice at the University College London Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. He is the author of “Prophetic Justice: Essays and Reflections on Race, Religion and Politics.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.
CNN –
In a week when aspiring Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis told a CNN town hall, “The United States is not a racist country,” and his rival Nikki Haley told Fox News, “We have never been a racist country,” the release read Film’s “Origin” couldn’t be more timely.
Written and directed by the exceptionally talented Ava DuVernay, the film – a masterful adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's bestselling book Caste: The Origins of our Discontents – unflinchingly proves that the United States is indeed a racist country, and has been since its founding.
And the foundation of that racism is what Wilkerson calls a caste system that maintains white domination over everyone else so effectively that the Nazis were inspired by it. Caste, says Wilkerson, is the system that creates subjugation.
What Wilkerson calls in her book “the false god of race” was invented by slave-owning European colonists as a way to tell at a glance who belonged to which caste—and who belonged to whom.
The film “Origin,” released in theaters Friday, will leave no American viewer in doubt that they still live in a system designed solely to manufacture, justify, codify and perpetuate hatred based on skin color is.
Films like this play a critical role in helping Americans come to terms with their history. But we must do more than just learn about and honor the dead. We must free the living and their descendants.”
Keith Magee
DuVernay boldly chose to adapt Wilkerson's nonfiction book into a biographical drama, focusing on the writer's journey. Wilkerson struggles to cope with a personal tragedy and is horrified by the audio of the 911 call that recorded the murder of Trayvon Martin. He feels compelled to investigate the background of racism.
We follow Wilkerson's travels as she analyzes caste, comparing and relating its devastating effects on those she places at the bottom of the social hierarchy: Dalits (formerly known as “untouchables”) in India, Jews in Nazi Germany, and Blacks in the USA.
Allowing her to be the heroine of the film advances the narrative of the film. With powerful depictions of important historical moments and contemporary encounters, DuVernay faithfully tells Wilkerson's story, while the author's on-screen character, portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, tells the story of our country's flawed foundations.
By uncompromisingly staging the author's journey, “Origin” reminds us of the gratitude we owe to Wilkerson and others before her – including WEB Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr. – who not only live with the weight of life, they themselves racial injustice, but they made the effort to understand and expose our collective trauma. Ideas are important, says DuVernay. They don't just come out of nowhere. This is personal.
And let's be honest: It's not often that we see a successful black intellectual as the main character in a film. Ellis-Taylor is captivating in the role of Isabel, portraying her as ambitious, brilliant and dignified, while capturing the depths of her grief and her enormous capacity for love.
We watch as Isabel explores Germany's poignant memorials to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and, in one scene, discusses how successful postwar Germany was in consigning its 12-year-old caste system to the past. However, the USA is not Germany. Here, the fight to overcome centuries of racist oppression requires perseverance across generations.
Still, efforts to commemorate the victims of racial hatred in the United States are critical and growing. Films like this play a critical role in helping Americans come to terms with their history. But we must do more than just learn about and honor the dead. We must free the living and their descendants.
Of course, we must continue to fight to dismantle systemic racism – what Wilkerson calls the “infrastructure” of caste in her book. However, the codification of the unjustified has created a hatred that is so deeply rooted in society that it outlasts mere legal reform.
Hard-won and fragile civil rights gains have not yet protected black and brown Americans from the widespread harms that result from racial inequality, nor from the unbearable indignity of being viewed as inherently inferior by many of their fellow citizens.
The concept of caste works by dehumanizing members of the group who occupy a subordinate position, making it easier for the dominant group to subjugate them. In a quiet, meaningful scene in “Origin,” a MAGA hat-wearing plumber assigned to repair Isabel's flooded basement is initially cruelly dismissive of both her predicament and her recent bereavement. Hurt but undeterred, she asks if his mother is still alive. She touches his soul – he suddenly sees her as a different person.
“It’s harder to dehumanize a single person you’ve had the pleasure of knowing. This is why people and groups seeking power and division do not bother to dehumanize an individual. It is better to attach a stigma, a taint of defilement, to an entire group,” Wilkerson tells us in “Caste. This is why I believe empathy is the real key to overcoming inequality in the United States – we must rise above the invisible constraints of caste and simply get to know each other.
But the false social construct of race presents an obstacle – it leads us to believe that we can't possibly understand each other. It keeps us from seeing and rejoicing in our shared humanity. If we are to succeed in rehumanizing people who have been dehumanized for centuries, we as a nation must first deconstruct race itself.
I am not suggesting that we try to erase or deny differences – quite the opposite. Culture, ethnicity and heritage are real and valuable and should be valued. Our rich diversity in all its forms should only be understood as something valuable.
I know it will take a long time to deconstruct the race. However, there are reasons for optimism. Attitudes toward race are evolving among black Americans. Although most Black adults in the U.S. still view their racial identity as important or extremely important to their self-image, young Black Americans are less likely to say this than their older peers. I expect this trend to continue as identity becomes an increasingly complex mix of factors, including ancestry, economic status, faith and sexuality.
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At the same time, the racial makeup of the United States is changing. According to 2020 Census data, the share of people who identify as non-Hispanic white is declining. The good news is that most Americans don't actually think this is important – the majority of adults (including a whopping 62% of whites) now see this demographic shift as neither good nor bad for society. So if we begin to redefine and expand the intersecting communities to which we feel we belong, rather than the castes to which we are assigned, race may begin to lose its hold on us.
I hope DuVernay's powerful film inspires everyone who sees it to stand up to racism. I would urge you to see “Origin” and then leave the theater determined to make a connection with someone outside of what society might consider your caste. Listen to their stories, learn about their desires, and look for commonalities.
If we all do this regularly, we will eventually sweep away the rotten social structures that have divided us for far too long. Together we can put this country back in order, just as Wilkerson puts her old house in order in the film, by building new foundations based on true equality, empathy and love.
It's never to late. Every single one of us is in on the game because, as Wilkerson points out, the caste system diminishes us all, no matter where we stand in its invented hierarchy.