Ethical Treatment of Animals

"The creation of a caste system was a process of testing the bounds of human categories and not the result of a single edict. It was a decades-long sharpening of lines whenever the colonists had a decision to make." [P46]

"Slavery in this land was not merely an unfortunate thing that happened to black people. It was an American innovation, an American institution created by and for the benefit of the elites of the dominant caste and enforced by poorer members of the dominant caste who tied their lot to the caste system rather than to their conscience." [P48]

"It is caste or rather the policing of and adherence to the caste system. It’s the autonomic, unconscious, reflexive response to expectations from a thousand imaging inputs and neurological societal downloads that affix people [and animals] to certain roles based upon what they look like and what they historically have been assigned to or the characteristics and stereotypes by which they have been categorized. No [genetic], ethnic or racial category is immune to the messaging we all receive about the hierarchy, and thus no one escapes its consequences." [P72]

"Everything that happened to the Jews of Europe, to African-Americans during the lynching terrors of Jim Crow, to Native Americans as their land was plundered and their numbers decimated, to Dalits considered so low that their very shadow polluted those deemed above them—happened because a big enough majority had been persuaded and had been open to being persuaded, centuries ago or in the recent past, that these groups were ordained by God as beneath them, subhuman, deserving of their fate. Those gathered on that day in Berlin were neither good nor bad. They were human, insecure and susceptible to the propaganda that gave them an identity to believe in, to feel chosen and important.
What would any of us have done had we been in their places? How many people actually go up against so great a tide of seeming inevitability? How many can see the evil for what it is, as it is occurring? Who has the courage to stand up to the multitudes in the face of a charismatic demigod who makes you feel better about yourself, part of something bigger than yourself, that you have been primed to believe?
Germany bears witness to an uncomfortable truth—that evil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than we would like to believe when the right conditions congeal. It is easy to say, If we could just root out the despots before they take power or intercept their rise. If we could just wait until the bigots die away … It is much harder to look into the darkness in the hearts of ordinary people with unquiet minds, needing someone to feel better than, whose cheers and votes allow despots anywhere in the world to rise to power in the first place. It is harder to focus on the danger of common will, the weaknesses of the human immune system, the ease with which the toxins can infect succeeding generations.
Because it means the enemy, the threat, is not one man, it is us, all of us, lurking in humanity itself." [P237] From interview with Oprah:

How do you respond when you may be one of only a few people who can see what others cannot?
It requires tremendous fortitude and conviction about what is right and what is best for humanity. Everyone is called upon to stand for what they believe in at a time (like this).
If we don’t stand up now, then we will have an even harder time resisting whatever else may be coming. [Isabel Wilkerson]

[A dystopian level of authoritarianism which is hard to fathom] builds slowly and barely perceptibly, and if you’re not attuned to what is going on and you don’t act soon enough, then it’s so much harder to rectify something once it’s already on its path. Each critical situation that creates this standoff is a test of what we believe in and our awareness of what can happen. History is essentially a cautionary tale for humanity... you can’t solve what you can’t see, and you can’t fix what you haven’t identified.