Opinion by Keith Magee in CNN

Editor’s Note: Keith Magee is senior fellow and visiting professor in cultural justice at 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 would-be GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis told a CNN town hall, “The US is not a racist country,” and his rival Nikki Haley told Fox News, “We’ve never been a racist country,” the release of the movie “Origin” could not be more timely.

Arron Dunworth

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 demonstrates that the US is indeed a racist country, and has been since its very inception.

And underpinning that racism is what Wilkerson refers to as a caste system so effective at preserving the domination of White people over everyone else that the Nazis were inspired by it. Caste, Wilkerson says, is the system that creates subjugation.

What Wilkerson refers to in her book as “the false god of race” was invented by slave-owning European colonists as a convenient way of identifying at a glance who belonged to which caste — and who belonged to whom.

The movie “Origin,” which opened in wide release on Friday, will leave no American viewer in any doubt that they are still living under a system designed entirely for the manufacture, justification, codification and perpetuation of hate based on skin color.

Movies like this one have a crucial role to play in helping Americans confront their history. But we need to do more than learn about and honor the dead. We need to liberate the living and their descendants.”

Boldly choosing to turn Wilkerson’s non-fiction book into a biographical drama, DuVernay focuses on the writer’s journey. Struggling to cope with personal tragedy, Wilkerson is horrified by the audio of the 911 call that recorded Trayvon Martin’s killing and feels compelled to investigate what lies beneath racism.

We follow Wilkerson’s travels as she dissects caste, comparing and connecting its devastating impact on those it places at the bottom of the social hierarchy: Dalits (previously known as “untouchables”) in India, Jews in Nazi Germany and Black people in the US.

Allowing her to be the film’s heroine helps advance the movie’s narrative. Drawing hard-hitting depictions of key historical moments and present-day encounters, DuVernay faithfully tells Wilkerson’s story, while the author’s on-screen character, portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, relates the story of our country’s faulty foundations.

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