CASTE: The Origins Of Our Discontents, A Review

Isabell Wilkerson

Isabell Wilkerson won the Pulitzer prize in Journalism while she was Chicago bureau chief for the New York Times. CASTE, The Orgins of Our Discontents, is a follow-up to her book THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS.

“We in the developed world are like homeowners who inherited a house on a piece of land that is beautiful on the outside, but whose soil is unstable loam and rock, heaving and contracting over generations, cracks patched but the deeper ruptures waved away for decades, centuries even… Not one of us was here when this house was built. Our immediate ancestors may have had nothing to do with it, but here we are, the current occupants of a property with stress cracks and bowed walls and fissures built into the foundation. We are the heirs to whatever is right or wrong with it. We did not erect the uneven pillars or joists, but they are ours to deal with now.” 

Within the opening pages of CASTE The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson expands upon the work of her previous book, THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS. This time concentrating on, with laser focus, the toxin of white supremacy circulating in the soul of America. 

“Like other old houses, America has an unseen skeleton, a caste system that is as central to its operation as are the studs and joists that we cannot see in the physical buildings we call home. Caste is the infrastructure of our divisions. It is the architecture of human hierarchy, the subconscious code of instructions for maintaining, in our case, a four-hundred-year-old social order.” 

One of Wilkerson’s main points is that it is a rigid and deep caste system in the U.S. that enables white supremacy and racism to function with such high efficiency. “Slavery so perverted the balance of power that it made the degradation of a subordinate caste seem normal and righteous… The most respected and beneficent of society people oversaw forced labor camps that were politely called plantations, concentrated with hundreds of unprotected prisoners whose crime was that they were born with dark skin. Good and loving mothers and fathers, pillars of their communities, personally inflicted gruesome tortures upon their fellow human beings.” 

Although the Civil War brought a legal end to slavery, Wilkerson points out that afterward, “The dominant caste (whites of European descent), devised a labyrinth of laws to hold the newly freed people on the bottom rung ever more tightly… People on the bottom rung could be beaten or killed with impunity for any breach of the caste system, like not stepping off the sidewalk fast enough or trying to vote.” She continues: “The colonists made decisions that created the caste system long before the arrival of the ancestors of the majority of people who now identify as Americans. The dominant caste controlled all resources, controlled whether, when, and if a black person would eat, sleep, reproduce, or live. The colonists created a caste of people who would by definition be seen as dumb because it was illegal to teach them to read or write, as lazy to justify the bullwhip…” 

Over a hundred years later, James Baldwin reflected upon the situation with amazing precision: “For the horrors of the American Negro’s life, there has been almost no language.”

In a nutshell, Wilkerson argues that America’s caste system was based on an arbitrary factor of skin color – upon which is built the equally arbitrary foundation of race. “Thus, each new immigrant – the ancestors of most current-day Americans – walked into a preexisting hierarchy, bipolar in construction, arising from slavery and pitting the extremes in human pigmentation at opposite ends. Each new immigrant had to figure out how and where to position themselves in the hierarchy of their adopted new land. Oppressed people from around the world, particularly from Europe, passed through Ellis Island, shed their old selves, and often their old names to gain admittance to the powerful dominant majority. Somewhere in the journey, Europeans became something they had never been or needed to be before. They went from being Czech or Hungarian or Polish to white, a political designation that only has meaning when set against something not white.” 

Wilkerson argues that the color of one’s skin became the foundation upon which an American caste system was built. “It was in the making of the New World that Europeans became white, Africans black, and everyone else yellow, red, or brown. It was in the making of the New World that humans were set apart on the basis of what they looked like, identified solely in contrast to one another, and ranked to form a caste system based on a new concept called race.” 

She explains, “In the United States, racism and casteism frequently occur at the same time, or overlap or figure into the same scenario. Casteism is about positioning and restricting those positions… Like the cast on a broken arm, like the cast in a play, a caste system holds everyone in a fixed place.” Wilkerson explores other caste systems, like that of India, and what was created in Nazi Germany. “Mindful of appearances beyond their borders, for the time being at least, the Nazis wondered how the United States had managed to turn its racial hierarchy into rigid law yet retain such a sterling reputation on the world stage.” 

In short, the Nazis, while seeking to establish their own set of rules (Nuremberg Laws) that enabled the deadly persecution of Jews and other groups deemed threats to Aryan culture, looked to the United States’ own system. “This code extended for generations,” writes Wilkerson, but “[Y]ears after the Nazis were defeated across the Atlantic, African-Americans were still being brutalized for the least appearance of stepping out of their place… In 1948 a black tenant farmer in Louise, Mississippi, was severely beaten by two whites, wrote historian James C. Cobb, ‘because he asked for a receipt after paying his water bill.’” 

And the situation persists, in modified form, to the present day. “If there is anything that distinguishes caste, however, it is, first the policing of roles expected of people based on what they look like, and second, the monitoring of boundaries – the disregard for the boundaries of subordinate castes or the passionate construction of them by those in the dominant caste, to keep the hierarchy in place… “With the resurgence of caste after the 2016 election, people in the dominant caste have been recorded calling the police on ordinary black citizens under a wide range of ordinary circumstances.” 

Midway through her book, Wilkerson gives her response while researching the Nazi caste system. She notes, “Germany bears witness to an uncomfortable truth – that evil is not one person but can be easily activated in more people than one 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 unjust 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… Because it means the enemy, the threat, is not one man, it is us, all of us, lurking in humanity itself.” It is the insidious nature of caste, deeply rooted in our own human foibles, that gives caste its alarming power. 

We don’t need to look too far back in American history to find chilling examples of this truth. “Across the United States, there are more than seventeen hundred monuments to the Confederacy, monuments to a breakaway republic whose constitution and leaders were unequivocal in declaring the purpose of their new nation. ‘Its foundations are laid,’ said Alexander Stephens, the vice-president of the Confederacy, ‘its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth…” 

For anyone left wondering about the problem with continued use of the Confederate flag or significance of monuments to the Confederacy, Wilkerson explains, “It was psychic trolling of the first magnitude. People still raw from the trauma of floggings and family rupture, and the descendants of those people, were now forced to live amid monuments to the men who had gone to war to keep them at the level of livestock. To enter a courthouse to stand trial in a case that they were all but certain to lose, survivors of slavery had to pass statutes of Confederate soldiers looking down from literal pedestals…” 

Unlike the U.S., Germany has handled the remembrance of the Holocaust with profound moral character. “They built a range of museums to preserve the story of the country’s descent into madness… In Germany displaying the swastika is a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. In the United States, the rebel flag is incorporated into the official state flag of Mississippi.” 

The final portion of CASTE is powerful as Wilkerson wraps up her examination of this complex issue. She begins by sharing a bit of a conversation she had in November 2018 with Taylor Branch, an eminent historian of the Civil Rights movement. They were talking about the inevitable demographic changes in the population make-up of the United States. The prediction that the white caste would be in the minority by 2042. She asked Taylor what that would mean. “The real question,” Branch replied, “would be if people were given the choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness?” 

As the answer to that question is being worked out, the costs of America’s caste system are numerous and well-documented – like disparities in income and health that affect every one of us. Wilkerson points to a need for a change of heart in order to begin to overcome the entrenchment of caste. “The tyranny of caste is that we are judged on the very things we cannot change; a chemical in the epidermis, the shape of one’s facial features, the signposts on our bodies of gender and ancestry – superficial differences that have nothing to do with who we are inside.” 

She continues, “A caste system persists in part because we, each and every one of us, allow it to exist – in large and small ways, in our everyday actions, in how we elevate or demean, embrace or exclude, on the basis of the meaning attached to people’s physical traits. If enough people buy into the lie of natural hierarchy, then it becomes the truth or is assumed to be.” 

But there is hope. 

“Once awakened, we then have a choice. We can be born to the dominant caste but choose not to dominate. We can be born to a subordinated caste but resist the box others force upon us. And all of us can sharpen our powers of discernment to see past the external and to value the character of a person rather than demean those who are already marginalized or worship those born to false pedestals. We need not bristle when those deemed subordinate break free, but rejoice that here may be one more human being who can add their true strengths to humanity.” 

Wilkerson makes the point that “As it stands, the United States is facing a crisis of identity unlike any before. The country is headed toward an inversion of its demographics, with its powerful white majority expected to be outnumbered by people not of European descent within two decades.” She concludes that “This will be a test of the cherished ideal of majority rule, the moral framework for caste dominance in America since its founding. White dominance has already been assured by the inherited advantages of the dominant caste in most every sphere of life… Will the United States adhere to its belief in majority rule if the majority does not look as it has throughout history? This will be the chance for America either to further entrench its inequalities or to choose to lead the world as the exceptional nation that we have proclaimed ourselves to be.” 

As to which way America will go, Wilkerson suggests that “It turns out that everyone benefits when society meets the needs of the disadvantaged… Many of the advancements that Americans enjoy and that are under assault in our current day – birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law, the right to vote, laws against discrimination on the basis of gender, race, national origin – are all the byproducts of the subordinate caste’s fight for justice in this country and ended up helping others as much as if not more than themselves.”

The choice is ultimately up to each one of us.

A Tribute to Abbott the Cat

Abbott lounging on the couch

When I think of Abbott, the first thing that comes to mind is: spunky.

He was a fighter!

Abbott (along with his brother Buddy) was rescued from a parking lot when they were eight months old. They had somehow gotten separated from their mother. And it was Abbott's persistently loud meow that got them rescued.

Abbott was also loaded with tenacity, (probably related to his spunk).

He was no one's fool, to put it mildly.

Abbott enjoyed being petted, but when he had enough of it, he let me know - usually by meowing and putting his paw in-between my hand and his fur.

He was a mouser. He actually caught a chipmunk. Once. In the middle of the night. I heard a funny sort of squeak, sat up in bed and realized the sound was coming from Abbott's direction. He was sitting in his bed, about to eat a meal.

I pulled the dead chipmunk from Abbott's mouth, but only through a tug-of-war with deep guttural growls coming from him.

Abbott, until fairly recently, would bound up the steps after using the litter box in the basement. He couldn't wait to get back upstairs. 

He was equally quick about going to the spot in the kitchen where his food bowl was when it was mealtime.

Abbott in his Chewy box

He had a great appetite and usually gobbled up everything and anything I gave him. (Ironically, in the past year or so, when he was given special prescription food, he didn't really care for it). The meals he had over the past three months were Friskies' Salmon Dinner Pate and Mariner's Catch. This isn't a product endorsement, but you should have seen the shine on his fur because of the fish oil and the Omega-3 in it!

The biggest proof of Abbott's tenacity and spunk was in the way he took on lymphoma. He was diagnosed almost nine years ago by an emergency care vet. The doctor showed me the x-ray of Abbott's intestine and pointed to the tumor. I asked how long I could expect Abbott to live. The doctor told me that, on average, he could live about two years after being diagnosed, with treatment.

Abbott was about eight-and-a-half years old when he was diagnosed. Shortly afterward we went to Blue Pearl Vet and Dr. Swanson became his oncologist for the next (almost) nine years.

From what I understand, that's quite a record. And for the majority of that time, Abbott lived a full, happy life. (Thank you Dr. Swanson, and thank you, Dr. Dame, who was Abbott's regular vet).

Cats normally are creatures of habit. 

Abbott was too, but, then, at times, he liked to switch things up. 

He had his own bed in our bedroom, but shortly after Buddy passed away, Abbott started to sleep on my bed during the day. Then, after a few weeks, he took to sleeping in a Chewy box which was just the right size for him.

Abbott on the bookshelf

Towards the end of his long life, one of Abbott's favorite things to do (and mine!) was to stretch out with me on the couch. 

At evening time, when I put my legs up on the coffee table, he would jump up sit on them, and let me stroke his back. It didn't take long for Abbott to start purring. And this time, nestled between my legs, he enjoyed prolonged petting and would purr his approval. He purred so deeply that you could feel the reverberations along his rib cage!

There are so many lessons I learned from Abbott. Like, don't be quick to give up. Let others know how you are feeling. Keep life interesting by mixing it up a little. And when you need help, let someone know!

Rest In Peace Abbott, the Miracle Cat! Thank you, so much, for all the wonderful memories, which live on! 

If you'd like to read my tribute to Buddy, Abbott's brother, here it is.

Meet Ferdi Van den Bergh, co-founder of Tjeko (Outreach for kids in Uganda)

Ferdi and Tatiana Van den Bergh

Ferdi Van den Bergh is the co-founder of Tjeko (operating in Uganda, East Africa) and Chairman of the Board of the Tjeko Foundation. He first went to Uganda as part of a Youth With a Mission team before coming to New York City to work for MetroWorld Child for eight years. He met his wife, Tatiana, while at Metro. Eventually, Ferdi went back to Uganda with Tatiana and their first child, Maëlle.

 

Tell Us About Tjeko’s Mission

Our website has the statement: “Every child deserves a childhood.”

That’s the mission of Tjeko. We’re a non-profit organization dedicated to providing opportunities for children in Uganda to play.

It sounds like a very simple mission. But there are nearly 18 million children living in Uganda, and most of them have no consistent playtime.

When we went back to Uganda, I made a good friend there who was honest and had a passion for children. Bosco Muiibi turned out to be a lifelong friend and co-founder.

We eventually set up a non-profit to operate a sponsorship program helping orphans get placed with extended families.

At the time, there was not much for children in the way of creative play in Uganda.  One day at an orphanage we noticed kids standing outside, watching the children inside the orphanage playing. That didn’t seem to make sense. So, we decided, why don’t we create an amazing place for children to play so they can grow up to become more resilient adults?

 

Why Is Playing  So Important for Children?

God is the Creator. God spoke everything into existence. If we’re made in God’s image, that means that there’s an element of the creator in us. Without this creative energy you have a very dull generation. We need to be able to play and laugh with our children.

Tjeko’s website goes deeper with this thought: “There are 17.9 million children living in Uganda: Most of the children go to school from eight to five. When they come home they have to contribute and fulfill their chores/tasks like fetching water, taking care of a younger brother or sister…in essence, they do not have a lot of time to spare. 

 

Added to that is the fact that in most areas, playgrounds or areas for recreation especially for children, do not exist and children have to make their own toys (which also break easily). In Uganda, playing is a luxury, Tjeko wants it to become something that goes without saying – a “matter of fact”. Children should be able to just be children. That is why we provide them with a safe place, a sparkling environment, where they can do what they want to do the most: play!”

 

How Has Tjeko Grown in the Past 10 Years?

In the beginning, we concentrated on one location for three years, partnering with local residents to run the program. Then, we began to replicate this template and brought it to other locations. By the end of this year, we hope to have fifteen staff and maybe double that by the end of 2022, working in seven different regions of Uganda.

In the beginning, our first team of young adults working with Tjeko were all Christian, but that isn’t currently the case. At each location we make an effort to hire local young adults to run Tjeko’s programs.

Tjeko programming consists of:

Tjeko Live

At primary schools in Africa we are active with a series of teaching programs “The Power of Imagination and Creativity.” The Tjeko LIVE school program is supported by locally trained game and communication specialists. They visit schools and give them a series of lessons and activities. In addition, they offer teachers and childcare workers special workshops. 

Tjeko Academy

Tjeko not only wants to give people something, but also equips them. We consciously collaborate with organizations and individuals on-site. Through the Tjeko Academy, young adults in Africa are trained to lead the Fun Fair. They receive training in, among other things, child work, leadership, presentation and communication. In addition, Tjeko encourages them to work constructively on their future, and provides them with useful tools for this.

The Tjeko Academy is primarily intended to train skilled and enthusiastic supervisors. The young adults take the acquired knowledge and skills with them and also benefit from it outside the Fun Fair.

Tjeko Fun Fair

A gigantic playground where children can fully enjoy themselves for one day. Think of go-karts, skippy balls, trampolines, air cushions, but also theater, creativity and relaxation. Forms of play and fun that African children can usually only dream of. The children are led from activity to activity and play, laugh, learn and enjoy throughout the day.

Tjeko Fun Services

Tjeko Fun Services is the Social Enterprise part of Tjeko. Our local team rents out the Tjeko Fun materials and sets off for parties and events. With the rental of the materials, income is generated to pay for the Tjeko activities.

The Van den Bergh family

The goal is that every team grows towards more financial self-reliance.

 

Can You Describe Some of the Challenges Tjeko Has Faced?

Corruption in Africa, and across the world, is a big issue. When we started Tjeko, Tatiana and I wrote down principles for everyone who worked for Tjeko. No corruption was among those rules. It has helped use more than once to make the tough decisions!

Another challenge is that Uganda wasn’t a county until outside colonialists established it. Within Uganda there are sixty-four separate tribes that speak fifty different languages.

Whenever Tjeko goes to a different region we always start with interns who are local and speak the language. There are political and cultural differences among the seven regions where we have done programming. It’s really a beautiful thing when you can partner with  local people!

We also wanted to be sure that as the workers focused on helping the children that they would be making a decent living and supporting their own families. One of our elements in the Tjeko Methode facilitates our staff to generate income. There is a huge advantage to make people work for their own income: It gives them dignity and a deep-rooted motivation.

Do You Have Any Words of Wisdom to Offer?

Well, we need to be aware of the danger of having a colonial mindset, especially when working in another country. Thinking our way is best, or ignoring local customs. Servant leadership should be the standard of operation. Meaning respecting native culture and those who work with you.

Secondly, Pastor Bill Wilson, our former director at Metro World Child in New York,  used to say, “Don’t get illusioned, so you won’t get disillusioned.” Don’t have the illusion that your organization can’t get on without you. Even during Covid-19, our Tjeko team is doing well without Tatiana and I being in Uganda.

You can check out Tjeko's website here.

The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerkson: A Review

Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration traces the lives of three migrants from the Deep South, to their lives in the North, over a span of multiple decades.

Wilkerson follows the lives of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster as they grow up and then leave Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida, escaping from the throes of what amounts to different forms of indentured servitude. Not to mention the perils of white supremacy, including the possibility of lynching.

Early on Wilkerson plainly spells out the economic disadvantage of being black in America. “The disparity in pay, reported without apology in the local papers for all to see, would have far-reaching effects. It Would mean that even the most promising of colored people, having received next to nothing from their slave foreparents, had to labor with the knowledge that they were now being underpaid by more than half, that they were so behind it would be impossible to accumulate the assets their white counterparts could, and they would, by definition, have less to leave succeeding generations than similar white families. Multiplied over the generations, it would mean a wealth deficit between the races that would require a miracle windfall or near asceticism on the part of colored families if they were to have any chance of catching up or amassing anything of value. Otherwise, the chasm would continue, as it did for blacks as a group even into the succeeding century, dampening the economic prospects of the children and grandchildren of both Jim Crow and the Great Migration before they were even born.”

Wilkerson explains that the Great Migration she is writing about happened roughly between WWI and the early 1970s, during which time millions of Southern blacks took stock of their prospects and decided to head North.

Fairly soon after the Great Migration began, plantation owners felt the loss of their labor.

“Chastened by their losses, some businessmen tried conciliation, one delegation going so far as to travel to Chicago to persuade former sharecroppers that things had changed and it was time they came back. (The sharecroppers showed no interest and instead took the opportunity to complain about being cheated and whipped while in their employ.) In the 1920s, the Tennessee Association of Commerce, the Department of Immigration of Louisiana, the Mississippi Welfare League, and the Southern Alluvial Land Association all sent representatives north to try to bring colored workers back… They returned empty-handed.”

Wilkerson notes that “[T]he Great Migration had more in common with the vast movements of refugees from famine, war, and genocide in other parts of the world, where oppressed people, whether fleeing twenty-first century Darfur or nineteenth-century Ireland, go great distances, journey across rivers, deserts, and oceans or as far as it takes to reach safety with the hope that life will be better wherever they land.”

In discussing the reasons behind this mass movement of black folk, Wilkerson says it went beyond mere economics. “[M]any of them picked cotton not by choice but because it was the only work allowed them in the cotton-growing states. In South Carolina, colored people had to apply for a permit to do any work other than agriculture after Reconstruction. It would not likely have been their choice had there been an alternative.”

Simply put, it was a matter of extreme oppression resulting in an increasingly soul-crushing life of diminishing options.

As for the historical formation of inner-city ghettos, Wilkerson notes: “The story played out in virtually every northern city – migrants sealed off in overcrowded colonies that would become the foundation for ghettos that would persist into the next century. These were the original colored quarters – the abandoned and identifiable no-man’s lands that came into being when the least-paid people were forced to pay the highest rents for the most dilapidated housing owned by absentee landlords trying to wring the most money out of a place nobody cared about.”

Midway through The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson speaks to the tension of life in such living conditions, bearing bitter fruit. “Contrary to modern-day assumptions, for much of the history of the United States – from the Draft Riots of the 1860s to the violence over desegregation a century later – riots were often carried out by disaffected whites against groups perceived as threats to their survival. Thus, riots would become to the North what lynchings were to the South, each a display of uncontained rage by put-upon people directed toward scapegoats of their condition.”

The irony of the situation was rich.

Isabel Wilkerson/Austin Chronicle

“Each outbreak pitted two groups that had more in common with each other than either of them realized. Both sides were made up of rural and small-town people who had traveled far in search of the American Dream, both relegated to the worst jobs by industrialists who pitted one group against the other. Each side was struggling to raise its families in a cold, fast, alien place far from their homelands and looked down upon by the earlier, more sophisticated arrivals. They were essentially the same people, except for the color of their skin.”

Even before the Great Migration began, the seeds for Northern ghettos were already there: “[M]any white neighborhoods began declining before colored residents even arrived… There emerged a perfect storm of nervous owners, falling prices, vacancies unfillable with white tenants or buyers, and a market of colored buyers who may not have been able to afford the neighborhood at first but now could with prices within their reach. The arrival of colored home buyers was often the final verdict on a neighborhood’s falling property value rather than the cause of it…

“The downward spiral created a vacuum that speculators could exploit for their own gain. They could scoop up properties in potentially unstable white neighborhoods and extract higher prices from colored people who were anxious to get in and were accustomed to being overcharged…”

Wilkerson highlights the frustration Martin Luther King, Jr. experienced in bringing his call for civil rights into the North; into Chicago. Unlike the South, this time King wasn’t battling against unjust laws, he was up against “the ill-defined fear and antipathy that made northern whites flee at the sight of a black neighbor, turn blacks away at realty offices, or not hire them if they chose. The ‘enemy’ was a feeling, a general unease that led to the flight of white people and businesses and sucked the resources out of the ghettos the migrants were quarantined into. No laws could make frightened white northerners care about blacks enough to permit them full access to the system they dominated.”

Within this foundation of the Great Migration, Wilkerson weaves the stories of Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster.

In the Epilogue of The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson leaves us with the powerful impression that: “With the benefit of hindsight, the century between Reconstruction and the end of the Great Migration perhaps may be seen as a necessary stage of upheaval. It was a transition from an era when one race owned another; to an era when the dominant class gave up ownership but kept control over the people it had once owned, at all costs, using violence even; to the eventual acceptance of the servant caste into the mainstream…

Wilkerson concludes: “Over the decades, perhaps the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration. Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or ill to the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations, but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the first place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long. By their actions, they did not dream the American Dream, they willed it into being by a definition of their own choosing. They did not ask to be accepted but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps few others recognized but that they had always been deep within their hearts.”

Isabell Wilkerson is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for her feature writing while the Chicago Bureau Chief of the New York Times. She is the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer in journalism. 

She spent fifteen years researching for The Warmth of Other Suns, interviewing 1,200 people.

Her own parents were part of the Great Migration, which ultimately included six million people.