'Origin' story: How Ava DuVernay's new movie connects the Holocaust, slavery and caste

(JTA) - Early in the new drama "Origin," the Pulitzer Prize-winning Black author Isabel Wilkerson (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) calls her cousin from Berlin to share that, as part of her research into American racism, she intends to learn more about the Nazis' treatment of Jews.

Her cousin is unimpressed.

"Leave Jewish folks alone," Marion (Niecy Nash) advises Isabel. "They don't need you. Write about us."

But this movie's version of Wilkerson can't abide by that. In her mind, the fates of Jews and Black people are connected by the hidden system of "caste": arbitrary societal hierarchies t...