Speaker 1: Today, we have Heather McGee on the podcast. Heather is
Speaker 1: an expert in economic and social policy. The former president
Speaker 1: of the inequality focused think tank Demos. McGee has drafted legislation,
Speaker 1: testified before Congress, and contributed regularly to news shows, including
Speaker 1: NBC's Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of
Speaker 1: Color of Change, the nation's largest online racial justice organization.
Speaker 1: McGee holds a BA in American Studies from Yale University
Speaker 1: and a jd from the University of California at Berkeley
Speaker 1: School of Law. Her latest book is called The Sum
Speaker 1: of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We can
Speaker 1: prosper Together. Heather, thanks so much for being on my
Speaker 1: show today. Hey, good to be with you. I'm a
Speaker 1: fellow Yelle alumnius ques So I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little about the development of your thinking about this topic
Speaker 1: and why you know you're so passionate about it and
Speaker 1: what you know kind of trace that development a little bit. So,
Speaker 1: you spent years working on economic policy for Demos Right,
Speaker 1: which is a liberal think tank. How did that work
Speaker 1: relate to what you're doing today. What are some things
Speaker 1: that you saw, you know, some of the the kind of
Speaker 1: conversations you had when you worked there that made you
Speaker 1: start to go in this direction. Well, I really was
Speaker 1: lucky to get an entry level job when I was
Speaker 1: twenty two years old at a startup think tank that
Speaker 1: was focused on an issue that wasn't really top of
Speaker 1: mind for a lot of policymakers and media folks at
Speaker 1: the time, which was rising inequality. The fact that we
Speaker 1: were having more and more concentration of wealth, that the
Speaker 1: quality of jobs for working in middle class families was
Speaker 1: starting to decline, and the costs for the basics healthcare, housing, childcare,
Speaker 1: et cetera, was was sort of shooting through the roof.
Speaker 1: And in previous is in economic policy in the United States,
Speaker 1: there had been big consensus making efforts to try to
Speaker 1: address what was beginning to be sort of wide scale problems.
Speaker 1: And so we did what you're sort of supposed to do.
Speaker 1: We brought the research to the policy makers, We testified,
Speaker 1: we drafted legislation, We pointed out what was going on
Speaker 1: at the kitchen tables of working families across the country.
Speaker 1: And yet so often the overwhelming statistical evidence seemed to
Speaker 1: fall on deaf years, and there was this sort of
Speaker 1: undercurrent of opposition to doing anything about these big problems
Speaker 1: that were keeping families up at night. And oftentimes the
Speaker 1: issues that I was working on were economic issues and
Speaker 1: they had racial disparities. You know, for example, healthcare, right
Speaker 1: it was an issue where employers were shedding healthcare benefits
Speaker 1: and people were finding it hard to afford health care
Speaker 1: in the private market, and that's an issue that's sort
Speaker 1: of an economic and social policy one. But people of
Speaker 1: color were more likely to have jobs that where employers
Speaker 1: didn't offer healthcare benefits, and so we sort of saw
Speaker 1: race as kind of an add on to this larger
Speaker 1: issue of inequality. Discrimination and disadvantage compounds the effects of
Speaker 1: inequality for families of color. But after nearly two decades,
Speaker 1: I kind of climbed the ranks from an entry level
Speaker 1: role in the economic program at my organization to becoming president.
Speaker 1: I realized that more and more there was a fundamental
Speaker 1: disconnect between policymakers and working families or across the country,
Speaker 1: and that our political conversation about what we sort of
Speaker 1: owed one another and how we should address really widespread
Speaker 1: problems was really twisted and kind of warped by a
Speaker 1: lot of stereotypes and degraded ideas about people we're suffering,
Speaker 1: and a general sort of knee jerk anti government response
Speaker 1: that seemed just to put the United States as an outlier.
Speaker 1: And so I began to ask this question, why is
Speaker 1: it that we can't seem to have nice things, Scott?
Speaker 1: Why is it that Americans can't seem to have nice things?
Speaker 1: And by that I don't mean like drive through espresso.
Speaker 1: I mean nice things like, you know, affordable healthcare and
Speaker 1: a well funded public school in every neighborhood, and wages
Speaker 1: that keep workers out of poverty, and modern world class infrastructure.
Speaker 1: And on some of these issues, particularly around infrastructure and
Speaker 1: good paying jobs, we used to lead the world. So
Speaker 1: I began to ask what happened? And why do we
Speaker 1: keep having these policies that make it equality worse? And
Speaker 1: why is our politics so unresponsive to the needs of
Speaker 1: working families. So I quit my job, I hit the road.
Speaker 1: I went on a number of trips across the country,
Speaker 1: from California and Mississippi and Maine and back again, and
Speaker 1: I found what seemed to me to be the answer
Speaker 1: that I was missing. Yeah, And as I was reading
Speaker 1: It's your story, I think also your experience with pregnancy
Speaker 1: and motherhood also had an impact as well. You're thinking
Speaker 1: about it, Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean I I was
Speaker 1: pregnant with my first and not only child, but with
Speaker 1: with you know, for the first time when I made
Speaker 1: this decision. I think a little bit of that had
Speaker 1: to do with the feeling of if I was going
Speaker 1: to birth the baby of a book and birth a
Speaker 1: real baby, I needed to not have you know, seventy
Speaker 1: five other babies which were my staff members that I
Speaker 1: was raising money for and all that, and was of like,
Speaker 1: there's only so much you know, to give here. But
Speaker 1: also it was a feeling of, you know, if I
Speaker 1: had spent nearly two decades using the tools of the
Speaker 1: policy advocacy trade and asking questions that were about statistical
Speaker 1: analysis and about wages and jobs and benefits and public
Speaker 1: spending and taxes, and that if I was going to
Speaker 1: you know, work for the first time, was going to
Speaker 1: take me away from something I loved right in addition
Speaker 1: to being something I love. And I thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: let me let me just do what I really need
Speaker 1: to do. Let me let me not keep doing what
Speaker 1: I've been doing, which has in some ways hit a wall.
Speaker 1: Let me use my time and use you know, whatever
Speaker 1: I have as a person to my utmost let me,
Speaker 1: let me be of my highest best use. And that's where,
Speaker 1: and maybe this is really relevant to you, that's where
Speaker 1: I started to inquire about whole different fields of research
Speaker 1: around psychology and social science, public opinion, political science, not
Speaker 1: just economics. And it opened up a whole new world. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the more perspectives the better, right,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to kind of integrate them. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: that's wonder So thanks for that background. You're in your book.
Speaker 1: You say that it's an invitation of hope. I love that.
Speaker 1: First of all. I love that. What is it hope for? Well,
Speaker 1: it's a hope for in America in which we really
Speaker 1: see ourselves in one another, in which we are not
Speaker 1: so divided along lines of race and class and politics,
Speaker 1: in which we understand that no matter where you come from,
Speaker 1: what you look like, who you love, we all pretty
Speaker 1: much want the same things. Right. We want to be
Speaker 1: able to meet our basic needs. We want to shot
Speaker 1: at fulfilling our dreams. We want to be respected and
Speaker 1: safe and feel valued by our neighbors and by our
Speaker 1: fellow citizens, and that ultimately the really important things that
Speaker 1: matter in life. We can't do on our own. You know,
Speaker 1: we have a very individualistic culture in the United States,
Speaker 1: and yet the things that really matter, things that are
Speaker 1: really important, we've got to do together. I can't I
Speaker 1: can recycle as much as I want. I can't avert
Speaker 1: global climate change disasters on my own. You know, I
Speaker 1: can teach my kid to read, but I can't make
Speaker 1: sure there's a well funded school in his neighborhood on
Speaker 1: my own. You know, I can't ensure that none of
Speaker 1: my neighbors is living in poverty. I can't do that
Speaker 1: on my own. And those are the things that we
Speaker 1: have to do together. And in a multi racial democracy,
Speaker 1: as our country is, as our country is promised to be,
Speaker 1: you know, we've got to come together and stop demonizing
Speaker 1: one another and get the meanness out of our out
Speaker 1: of our discourse about who one another is, and really
Speaker 1: be able to trust our communities to know what's best
Speaker 1: for themselves, and to be able to be responsive as
Speaker 1: a collective to the needs of our different communities. Here here, here, here,
Speaker 1: I couldn't agree with that more. But you know, as
Speaker 1: the racial composition of America changes, you have a large
Speaker 1: section of people that are very worried you know that
Speaker 1: business as usual for them is changing, and they are
Speaker 1: thinking about it in a zero sum way. As you
Speaker 1: point out, first of all, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: just talk about this zero some idea. First of all,
Speaker 1: you talk about there's kind of an asymmetry that you've
Speaker 1: noticed where you think we'll talk if you could talk
Speaker 1: about that asymmetry among different demographics in terms of the
Speaker 1: way they think about it as zero sum or not
Speaker 1: zero sum. Yeah. So this was one of the first
Speaker 1: sociological insights that really set me off on my journey
Speaker 1: and really turned the light bulb on for me. I
Speaker 1: spoke with a set of academics who had done research
Speaker 1: on this idea of the zero sum racial competition, the
Speaker 1: idea that progress for one group has to come at
Speaker 1: the expense of the other, that a dollar more in
Speaker 1: my pocket must mean a dollar less in yours. And
Speaker 1: that's an idea that leads to a lot of you know, obviously,
Speaker 1: a lot of divis vision, a lot of self sabotaging
Speaker 1: behavior because there's this resentment of the people who you
Speaker 1: see is on the opposing team, right you, You want
Speaker 1: more than anything for them not to score points. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if that means that you want score points, right,
Speaker 1: and that thinking that for somebody else to gain something,
Speaker 1: you have to lose is really prominent among white Americans
Speaker 1: and much less so among black folks. And you know,
Speaker 1: we don't think that progress for us has to comment
Speaker 1: white people's expense by and large, and yet it's a
Speaker 1: really predominant worldview among white Americans. And when I first read,
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of the Marquee study on this,
Speaker 1: this zero sum question, which is really called whites now
Speaker 1: see race as a zero sum game that they're losing,
Speaker 1: which was a study done during the Obama era. And
Speaker 1: then there were a lot more studies that talked about
Speaker 1: something very similar, which is the sense of group status threat.
Speaker 1: That the rising diversity is seen by many white Americans
Speaker 1: as a threat to their status, that it will end
Speaker 1: up badly for them, and that in turn changes their
Speaker 1: ideas about things that are nominally race neutral. Right. So
Speaker 1: in these experiments, for example, a white independent voter will
Speaker 1: be shown a headline that says, you know, people of
Speaker 1: colored to become the majority in twenty forty two, and
Speaker 1: they will take, you know, opinion, They will have opinion
Speaker 1: conversations before and after seeing that headline, and before to
Speaker 1: after there'll be this major conservative shift on issues like
Speaker 1: raising the minimum wage and national health insurance and even
Speaker 1: things like drilling in the Arctic. And it's a very
Speaker 1: interesting We've obviously seen that play out in our politics, right,
Speaker 1: that's become a political strategy of the right wing. But
Speaker 1: I'm also interested in I know why powerful forces would
Speaker 1: be selling that story, but I'm interested in why ordinary
Speaker 1: folks are buying it. Why they see the idea of
Speaker 1: a truly equal America as oppression for themselves, as opposed
Speaker 1: to just equality, while at the same time often denying
Speaker 1: that they have any privilege. Right, That's the funny jiu jitsu. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, there is no racism. I don't have privilege,
Speaker 1: and yet all of my kind of behaviors and rhetoric
Speaker 1: would suggest that I'm very afraid of losing something. So
Speaker 1: what is that something that you're afraid of losing if
Speaker 1: you don't think you have elevated status. Right, Well, there's
Speaker 1: a lot in pact there in packet. It's good stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: there's large sections of white Americans who are poor. They
Speaker 1: feel like they're losing they are losing in the system
Speaker 1: as well, and as you point out, this doesn't have
Speaker 1: to be zero sum. So recognizing that there's that white
Speaker 1: people suffer to and black people know is is definitely
Speaker 1: way forward as opposed to saying that only as one
Speaker 1: race sufferers and another race never suffers, that's not that's
Speaker 1: not a way to uniting the country. So they what
Speaker 1: do they feel The thing is, you know, the whiteness
Speaker 1: is is it's a white heterogeneous group. Right, So it
Speaker 1: seems like when you're saying this, it seems like it's
Speaker 1: breaking down very much on political lines because you certainly
Speaker 1: have large swaths of white liberals who at least they'll say,
Speaker 1: you know that that they don't view it as a
Speaker 1: seer sum game. So what's the justification for like talking
Speaker 1: about white people as a as a as as like
Speaker 1: a group. I'm curious about that. Yeah. So, so there
Speaker 1: are two pieces of that. One, white liberals are are
Speaker 1: the minority of white people and so and this is
Speaker 1: something that often Wow, I didn't know that. I didn't
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. No, I mean this is this
Speaker 1: is this is very interesting thing that because whiteness sort
Speaker 1: of grows, right, whiteness sort of you know, ends up
Speaker 1: taking up a lot of space and kind of representation.
Speaker 1: You would think if you're in a white liberal enclave,
Speaker 1: or if you are a white liberal and your friends
Speaker 1: are white liberals, that sort of you know, liberalism is
Speaker 1: a project of of of white folks. But in fact,
Speaker 1: just a few indicators the majority of no Democrat has
Speaker 1: won the majority of the white vote since Lyndon Johnson
Speaker 1: signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights accent law. That
Speaker 1: was it. That was the break. Before that, As I
Speaker 1: talk about in the sum of Us, white Americans were
Speaker 1: actually very progressive. Really believe the majority of white Americans
Speaker 1: two thirds of white Americans believed in the Midnight ten
Speaker 1: fifties and in nineteen sixty that government ought to guarantee
Speaker 1: a job for everyone who wanted one who couldn't find one,
Speaker 1: and that there ought to be a minimum income in
Speaker 1: the country so no one would fall below a certain
Speaker 1: threshold and the government should guarantee that. Those are big
Speaker 1: liberal ideas, right, that's like a big government vision. And
Speaker 1: you know, most white people were new deal Democrats, right.
Speaker 1: They wanted social security, they wanted public jobs and the WPA,
Speaker 1: and you know, just massive government public works because they
Speaker 1: had benefited from it and between nineteen sixty and nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, which was really a period of you know,
Speaker 1: sort of an explosion of civil rights activity and a
Speaker 1: period when the Democratic Party really associated itself not just
Speaker 1: with the New Deal, but with civil rights. You saw
Speaker 1: the share of white Americans who believed in such a
Speaker 1: strong role for government, and those two government guarantees, right,
Speaker 1: a guaranteed job and guaranteed income fall in half from
Speaker 1: nearly seventy percentineteen sixty to just thirty five percent in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. And of course, then you know Kennedy,
Speaker 1: who was really associating the party with civil rights. His
Speaker 1: successor would be the last Democrat to win the majority
Speaker 1: of the white vote. And so, in many ways, the
Speaker 1: story of what happened to our politics to sort of
Speaker 1: break the coalition of working in middle class white people
Speaker 1: who had been in the liberal camp, who had thought that,
Speaker 1: you know, government should set the rules for what business
Speaker 1: can and can't do, should provide protections for families, should
Speaker 1: invest in the future, should tax the wealthy and plow
Speaker 1: those resources into the common good. That really broke with
Speaker 1: the civil rights movement and in the some of us.
Speaker 1: I have a story that kind of is a memorable
Speaker 1: way for us to think about that, which is what
Speaker 1: happened to public swimming pools. We used to have these
Speaker 1: grand resort style pools in America that were publicly funded
Speaker 1: and that were you know, could hold thousands of swimmers
Speaker 1: at a time, and many of them were segregated and
Speaker 1: for whites only, not just in the South but across
Speaker 1: the country. And once integration in the civil rights movement
Speaker 1: promised to let black families swim, too, many towns across
Speaker 1: the country drained their public pools rather than integrate them.
Speaker 1: And so what that meant was that white families also
Speaker 1: lost out on the pool. So to black families, it
Speaker 1: meant that what was once a public good then became
Speaker 1: a private luxury. Right, if you were rich enough to
Speaker 1: build a backyard swimming pool, you could still swim, or
Speaker 1: if you could join a private, fee based membership swimming
Speaker 1: club which cropped up all over the country. And I
Speaker 1: used that story of the drained pool to talk about
Speaker 1: what happened to a country that had found the formula
Speaker 1: for middle class prosperity, right high wages, high levels of
Speaker 1: labor unions and collective bargaining, a minimum wage that reached
Speaker 1: to peak in nineteen sixty eight, high levels of taxation
Speaker 1: on the marginal kind of last dollar income of millionaires,
Speaker 1: and big public investments like free college. Government used to
Speaker 1: pick up the tab for college, and all of that
Speaker 1: had a racial asterisk. It was for whites only. And
Speaker 1: once integration promised to put people on an even playing
Speaker 1: field and expand and do for black families what had
Speaker 1: been done for white families for generation, white folks sort
Speaker 1: of left the bargain. And yes, there are, still, of
Speaker 1: course many white liberals, but they are the minority of
Speaker 1: the white population, and our politics and inequality that has
Speaker 1: come has really been shaped by that political factor more
Speaker 1: than any other. Well, thank you for for educating me
Speaker 1: about that, because I mean, I'm clearly interested in the
Speaker 1: truth and not just my own perception. But my own
Speaker 1: perception was different, you know, in the sense we I mean,
Speaker 1: we elected you know Biden one. You know, he's a liberal.
Speaker 1: We have kam law, you know of African American uh
Speaker 1: And the majority of white people voted against that, the
Speaker 1: majority of white people voted for So the statistic the
Speaker 1: majority of white people voted against Biden, that's the statistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. You know, and it could
Speaker 1: also just be this the circles I swim in, of course,
Speaker 1: and so so it's like it's like I'm taking the
Speaker 1: water for granted, so to speak of a fish and water,
Speaker 1: you know, metaphor. Okay, well, so cool. So I want
Speaker 1: to I want to learn more. So, uh, the idea
Speaker 1: of white privilege. You talked about that a second. You
Speaker 1: said a lot of white people don't want to admit
Speaker 1: it that they have white pros. I think that that
Speaker 1: that term is one of the most misunderstood terms. I
Speaker 1: would love it if you could actually define what that means,
Speaker 1: because I think that sometimes some people take a really
Speaker 1: charactertured version of it, which is not even what a
Speaker 1: lot of black people mean when they say it, you know,
Speaker 1: and they say, oh, they think I white privile they
Speaker 1: think I don't suffer. Ever, now I don't think that's
Speaker 1: what you're saying, right, So if you could, please, let's
Speaker 1: let's got this on the record. Yeah. I think white
Speaker 1: privilege is the privileges that are afforded to people with
Speaker 1: white skin in a society with a lot of bias
Speaker 1: against people who don't have white skin. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that all white people are rich or all white
Speaker 1: people have it easy. But it does mean that generally speaking,
Speaker 1: if a white person is down on his luck, is struggling,
Speaker 1: is poor, it's not because he's white. And it also
Speaker 1: means most importantly, and I think this is really a
Speaker 1: contribution I'm trying to make with some of us. When
Speaker 1: racial justice advocates talk about white privilege, we don't want
Speaker 1: to end white privilege by here, let me put it
Speaker 1: this way. So white privilege means today that white people
Speaker 1: as a whole have greater access to affordable healthcare, have
Speaker 1: better funded schools, are less liable to be discriminated against
Speaker 1: because of their color or the way their name is spelled,
Speaker 1: you know, when trying to get a job. And it's
Speaker 1: not that in the world that we seek, we want
Speaker 1: white people. And of course, you know, quite importantly, white
Speaker 1: people are less likely to have to fear the police.
Speaker 1: And it's not that in the world we seek we
Speaker 1: want white people to fear the police, or not have
Speaker 1: good schools, or not have good jobs, or not have healthcare.
Speaker 1: We want them to write. And the only problem should
Speaker 1: be that should be something that everybody should agree with
Speaker 1: that it's not fair for in a country where the
Speaker 1: government explicitly segregated and discriminated and approved of massive thefts
Speaker 1: of black land and property, and all of that well
Speaker 1: through the twentieth century. It's not fair that one's skin
Speaker 1: color and the community that one was born into is
Speaker 1: so shaped by racist decisions. That it's not fair that
Speaker 1: the it's not fair that your outcomes in life are
Speaker 1: so shaped by racist decisions. And the world we seek
Speaker 1: is one in which we all have equal opportunity, and
Speaker 1: nobody's invested in denying the truth of what our country
Speaker 1: is and has been. And I think it's really important.
Speaker 1: The sort of knee jerk I'm not privileged, or the
Speaker 1: knee jerk opposition to addressing racial justice or even learning
Speaker 1: about racial injustice, I think really comes from that zero
Speaker 1: semi right that if the public and the government pays
Speaker 1: attention to the needs of this community, it's going to
Speaker 1: cost me somehow, and they're going to stop paying attention
Speaker 1: to my needs. And that's that's simply not true. Right.
Speaker 1: If you look at the proposals right now that would
Speaker 1: be a massive refilling of the pool of public goods,
Speaker 1: The American Jobs Plan, the American Families Plan, there's something
Speaker 1: in there for every family. Right, there's rural broadband which
Speaker 1: just proportionately would impact you know, white conservative districts. But
Speaker 1: there's also you know, massive housing and rent subsidies that
Speaker 1: would help people in high cost urban areas. I mean,
Speaker 1: we've got to realize that we are on the same
Speaker 1: team and that we are not each other's enemy. And
Speaker 1: in fact, the downward mobility, the laws of good factory
Speaker 1: jobs that has often kind of animates white grievance, it's
Speaker 1: not about what brown and black people have done. They're
Speaker 1: not the ones who shuttered the factories. They're not the
Speaker 1: ones who you know, had massive tax cuts that have
Speaker 1: you know, impoverished our communities. They're not the ones who
Speaker 1: are refusing Medicaid expansion and healthcare which would keep rural
Speaker 1: healthcare and hospitals open. Right. It's it's the rich and powerful,
Speaker 1: and so the blame game that has always been the
Speaker 1: story has been that the zero sum story is a
Speaker 1: lie sold by powerful, self interested elites to redirect blame
Speaker 1: for what's going on away from themselves and towards frankly,
Speaker 1: usually brown and black people who are struggling even more
Speaker 1: than the white people who are buying that zero sum story. Awesome.
Speaker 1: So this is this is this is a really good
Speaker 1: launching pad for a discussion between equality of opportunity versus
Speaker 1: equality of outcome. You know, some people have criticized the
Speaker 1: focus on equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity,
Speaker 1: making the case that not every racial disparity is necessarily unjust. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you would agree with that. So, knowing that case,
Speaker 1: to what do you think that there can ever be
Speaker 1: like an assumption that some things are the result of
Speaker 1: racism that are actually more multidetermined, like certain inequalities. Have
Speaker 1: you ever seen that? Well? Yeah, sure, I mean I
Speaker 1: just think that usually let's start from a recognition that
Speaker 1: most people of all races, no probably ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: percent of how much racist policymaking has determined economic opportunity
Speaker 1: in America. Right, most people don't know anything about redlining, right,
Speaker 1: which was the practice that was done by the New
Speaker 1: Deal Roosevelt government in a massive expansion of home ownership
Speaker 1: for white working class people who never would have dreamed
Speaker 1: that they could own homes. There were massive creation of
Speaker 1: subsidized housing, the subsidization of a new kind of mortgage
Speaker 1: that would allow people to pay things, pay off a
Speaker 1: home over thirty years, and massive down payment assistance so
Speaker 1: that most people didn't even have to have a down payment.
Speaker 1: And that was all done based on maps that the
Speaker 1: federal government drew in the nineteen thirties and that were
Speaker 1: used until the nineteen seventies that said black neighborhoods, drew
Speaker 1: lines around black neighborhoods and said do not lend to
Speaker 1: these areas. Crazy, So most people don't know that. So
Speaker 1: when you talk about, okay, well there are inequalities today,
Speaker 1: and you don't know that basic fact because it's not
Speaker 1: taughtner textbooks. It's not part of the general public understanding
Speaker 1: the same way that you know, lunch counters and Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King and school segregation are taught. If we're lucky, right,
Speaker 1: then it seems like, well, why is it that these
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods are so impoverished. Why don't they have you know,
Speaker 1: lots of small businesses and stores because there was literally
Speaker 1: no credit. Credit was denied by government policy from those areas.
Speaker 1: And what we do know is that wealth begets wealth
Speaker 1: right today largely because of that denial of wealth and
Speaker 1: because we had things like you know, whole black neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that managed to thrive, nonetheless being destroyed during the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties and fifties to make way for highway developments. And
Speaker 1: then you know, the highways could have gone anywhere, but
Speaker 1: as policy, they just rated the black neighborhoods lower and said, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to do emminent domain and destroy thousands of
Speaker 1: businesses and homes and scatter these neighborhoods. And that was policy, right.
Speaker 1: So if you don't know that, then you think, well,
Speaker 1: there's just something wrong with black people. Why can't they
Speaker 1: get their neighborhoods together, right, And so we have a
Speaker 1: racial wealth divide in this country. And wealth not your income, right,
Speaker 1: the income gap between blacks and whites, despite rampant job discriminations,
Speaker 1: has really narrowed, right. But it's wealth. It's where it's
Speaker 1: whether you have a home that you own and so
Speaker 1: you have home equity to borrow from to pay for
Speaker 1: your kids college, to whether you have a pension and
Speaker 1: a four to one k, whether you have saving some inheritance.
Speaker 1: You know, it was so funny to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I went to these great schools and I had all
Speaker 1: these white friends, and it was when we it was
Speaker 1: time to go to college. They all just like had
Speaker 1: all this random money that just like came from nowhere.
Speaker 1: It was like an aunt, an uncle, you know, a
Speaker 1: grandparent's just going to be something that was going to
Speaker 1: pay for your college. And it just was like, well,
Speaker 1: I thought we were kind of the same, you know,
Speaker 1: like we both work as hard. Like, you know, my
Speaker 1: parents were professionals. Your parents were professionals, but there was
Speaker 1: this other sort of hidden benefit that just sort of
Speaker 1: swooped in and changed their lives, right so that you know,
Speaker 1: my family all had to borrow to go to college,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of my white friends went because
Speaker 1: it was taken care of. And right now, the average
Speaker 1: black college graduate has less wealth than the average white
Speaker 1: high school dropout. So when you tell me there's some
Speaker 1: reason other than racism for these economic disparities, I think
Speaker 1: if you really know what our country has done in
Speaker 1: terms of wealth accumulation, and then you say that that's
Speaker 1: one thing, But most of the time that comes from
Speaker 1: just like kind of reading the way neighborhood look and
Speaker 1: just sort of assuming, you know, sort of like a
Speaker 1: common sense and in the absence of of real knowledge
Speaker 1: about what's been done and how history shows up in
Speaker 1: your wallets. So I think we have to be more
Speaker 1: intellectually curious about why it is that there are these
Speaker 1: group based disparities, because if not, then what it comes
Speaker 1: down to is maybe there's just something different about these
Speaker 1: groups of people, and maybe there's something better about white people.
Speaker 1: Is why they always end up on top. And then
Speaker 1: you know, that's a slippery soap, that is a slipper slope,
Speaker 1: and that is a great fear with going too much
Speaker 1: into the responsibility line of thinking. Well, you talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, problems with the responsibility narrative in your book.
Speaker 1: What's the responsibility narrative? Well that if afric Americans are
Speaker 1: not succeeding, that the idea is, well, they need to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for having more personal responsibility. Yeah, personal responsbility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah, that is this That is a big
Speaker 1: slippery slope, right, But at the same time, you also
Speaker 1: do want to encourage responsibility. You know, there's probably a
Speaker 1: lot of cases with people who are not succeeding. It
Speaker 1: that it's not doesn't come down in racism, So it's
Speaker 1: it's also tricky. Yeah, I mean sure, but you know
Speaker 1: there are a lot of white people who are not
Speaker 1: succeeding true. You know what I mean, I think, I
Speaker 1: think basically, I mean, then this is what it comes
Speaker 1: down to, Scott. You know, I think in general, hard
Speaker 1: work with all the barriers that you know, Black communities
Speaker 1: that have been strategically disinvested, have phased the idea that
Speaker 1: hard work is kind of like absent in those communities.
Speaker 1: First of all, the majority of black people are not
Speaker 1: in poverty, right, and we tend to see poverty as
Speaker 1: a Black problem or think the majority of Black families
Speaker 1: are impoverished, and that's not the case, right at all.
Speaker 1: And the majority of black families are working in middle
Speaker 1: class folks. They're not a lot of rich black people,
Speaker 1: but they're you know, most people are working in middle
Speaker 1: class and work even harder because they have no cushion. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, the average household wealth of a black woman
Speaker 1: is around five dollars, So that means every paycheck comes
Speaker 1: in and goes out, right, it's a constant and even
Speaker 1: if that paycheck is fifty thousand dollars a year, right,
Speaker 1: there's just no cushion. There was nothing that was free,
Speaker 1: that was handed out at birth or you know, showed
Speaker 1: up in a trust for them when when their parents died,
Speaker 1: and and that's I think it's really I think it's
Speaker 1: really a mistake to assume that the qualities that Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think it's a mistake to assume that they're
Speaker 1: more people of color who are, you know, lazier, not
Speaker 1: working hard. Then there are white people who are lazier,
Speaker 1: not working hard. And I think if you know your history,
Speaker 1: you know where that trope of lazy black people came from.
Speaker 1: It was to justify slavery, Right, is what is lazier
Speaker 1: than you literally not working and owning people who work
Speaker 1: for free for you? Sure, what's lazier than as many
Speaker 1: billionaires have done during this pandemic seeing your wealth go
Speaker 1: up just because of the stock market. Like, the most
Speaker 1: work you're doing on your investments is opening the envelope
Speaker 1: and seeing the dividends and the stock bibex and the
Speaker 1: twenty five percent returns. It's not because of any more
Speaker 1: work than you did. That's just gambling, that's just passive income.
Speaker 1: And yet we value wealth, and the tax code taxes
Speaker 1: wealth at a lower rate than it taxes work than
Speaker 1: people who wake up before dawn and go to clean
Speaker 1: offices and go to stock grocery shells and go to
Speaker 1: work in childcare centers. I mean, we have our hierarchy
Speaker 1: of human value completely upside down in this country, and
Speaker 1: I think it comes from our original sin of allowing
Speaker 1: an economic system that was based on stolen land, stolen people,
Speaker 1: and still in labor fair fair. So I think what's
Speaker 1: really helpful in this sky thing is just going through
Speaker 1: more examples like these vivid kind of stories, because I think,
Speaker 1: like you said, a lot of people aren't even aware
Speaker 1: of a lot of this stuff. So did you you
Speaker 1: talked about the subprime mortgage crisis already and how that
Speaker 1: was fueled by racism. Yeah, no, we haven't talked about it.
Speaker 1: It's a chapter we Yeah, sure, Yeah, it's a chapter
Speaker 1: in my book. It's something that I care a lot
Speaker 1: about because it was the issue that I sort of
Speaker 1: cut my teeth on in economic policy. I was working
Speaker 1: on what was sort of this crisis that was going
Speaker 1: on in the early two thousands, and nobody really knew
Speaker 1: about it or cared about it. So crime wasn't a
Speaker 1: household name. This was years before the financial crash. But
Speaker 1: what happened was, you know, because of that redlining that
Speaker 1: I talked about the ways in which black families were
Speaker 1: segregated and were, uh, were denied mortgages for so long
Speaker 1: and had to you know, use alternative finance. And that
Speaker 1: was even worse. You had about a few years, like
Speaker 1: a decade when black families, because of things like the
Speaker 1: Community Reinvestment Act, were able to get the same kind
Speaker 1: of loans that white families were. And then you had
Speaker 1: deregulation and the idea that the financial sector should sort
Speaker 1: of police itself, and you had these wild, this wild
Speaker 1: West of new kinds of lenders and brokers that were
Speaker 1: issuing these new kinds of loans that weren't like a
Speaker 1: thirty or fixed rate loan. They were loans that were
Speaker 1: you know, had weird new terms like balloon payments and
Speaker 1: prepayment penalties and exploding interest rates. And they were tested
Speaker 1: out and aggressively marketed first in the late nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: and early two thousands, when very few people were paying
Speaker 1: attention on black home owning neighborhoods. And so two of
Speaker 1: the myths that I really wanted to debunk in this
Speaker 1: part of the book is one the idea which I
Speaker 1: heard when I was trying to advocate in Washington for
Speaker 1: regulators to do something about what was going on in
Speaker 1: these middle class black neighborhoods across the country as they
Speaker 1: were getting these loans and they were ending up in foreclosure,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the kind of white policymaker impression.
Speaker 1: The stereotype was, well, you know, these people shouldn't really
Speaker 1: have been able to afford homes in the first place,
Speaker 1: but they had gotten good loans and were homeowners. And
Speaker 1: then they were got a knock on the door, received,
Speaker 1: you know, a whole bunch of phone calls saying, would
Speaker 1: you like to consolidate your debt, would you like to
Speaker 1: get a lower interest rate, would you like to refinance
Speaker 1: your loan? Sure, sounds great. And what was done then
Speaker 1: was that they were then sold loans that stripped the equity.
Speaker 1: They had so many fees up front that suddenly their
Speaker 1: home they had less in their home than they did
Speaker 1: before they signed the paperwork, and that had exploding interest
Speaker 1: rates and prepayment penalties and balloon payments, and so they
Speaker 1: were ending up in foreclosure. But these were homeowners. These
Speaker 1: were not people. For the most part, the vast majority
Speaker 1: of subprime loans when to people who were already homeowners,
Speaker 1: so it was a net negative, not like sort of
Speaker 1: the price we pay for loosening the standards. And then
Speaker 1: second and most importantly, and most importantly, the majority of
Speaker 1: subprime loans went to people with good credit, and black
Speaker 1: and brown homeowners with the same credit scores as white
Speaker 1: homeowners were three times as likely to receive some time loans.
Speaker 1: It was simply about aggressive marketing and lenders who knew
Speaker 1: that they could get away with it in black and
Speaker 1: brown communities because nobody was going to stop them, because
Speaker 1: of that stereotype that I just talked about, and because
Speaker 1: it was communities that had rarely been treated well by
Speaker 1: banks in the first place. Right And so in the book,
Speaker 1: I tell the story of the Tomlins, or this beautiful
Speaker 1: now elderly black family, and you know, the broker who
Speaker 1: sold them their predatory refinance loan, you know, said, you know,
Speaker 1: God must have sent me to you, and you know,
Speaker 1: just like it was like use car dealership types of tactics,
Speaker 1: and yet it was ultimately racist and discriminatory lending, and
Speaker 1: all the major lenders would ultimately be fined for discriminatory lending,
Speaker 1: right the you know, the kind of just like old
Speaker 1: style racist language that was being thrown around in these
Speaker 1: sort of boiler rooms, just trying to target these families
Speaker 1: and borrow that they knew they could sort of get
Speaker 1: away with anything with, and policymakers and regulators turned the
Speaker 1: other way and excused the levels of foreclosure that you know,
Speaker 1: were a crisis and black families in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two, and then it wasn't until
Speaker 1: Wall Street saw how much money you could make from
Speaker 1: charging someone ten percent interest on a two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars loan with three points up front and with a
Speaker 1: balloon payment that they said, Okay, we love we love
Speaker 1: this product, and we're going to do basically financial engineering
Speaker 1: to divide up these loans and spread them across different
Speaker 1: mortgage backed securities so that there's no big concentration of
Speaker 1: risk in any one of these securities. Sort of spread
Speaker 1: the risk, keep selling it, keep selling it, and it.
Speaker 1: There became this massive demand from Wall Street for these mortgages,
Speaker 1: and so that pushed the mortgages out of the black
Speaker 1: and brown neighborhoods into the why and whier mortgage market.
Speaker 1: And then you had, you know what, when everybody started
Speaker 1: paying attention in two thousand and seven, In two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, where it was one of every five mortgages
Speaker 1: was in this mold, and you know, people were just
Speaker 1: buying extra houses to flip them because there was a
Speaker 1: sense that the mortgage market and the housing market would
Speaker 1: see no bottom. But it is my firm experience, having
Speaker 1: been on the front lines of this fight from two
Speaker 1: thousand and two through the cleanup of the mess, when
Speaker 1: I was one of the core advocates writing the Wall
Speaker 1: Street Reform Bill and advocating for its passage in two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine twenty ten, that if it weren't for racism,
Speaker 1: both in the discriminatory lending and targeting and the predatory
Speaker 1: marketing and the racist indifference of people with the power
Speaker 1: to stop it, we would not have had a financial
Speaker 1: crisis in America. That's mind boggling and so important to
Speaker 1: point out. So you're pretty confident of that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: am incredible, incredible, What an eye opening book that you've written.
Speaker 1: A lot of people need to read it. Another thing
Speaker 1: that really another thing really gripped me as I was
Speaker 1: reading your book, is that you met a reformed white
Speaker 1: supremacist who now preaches anti racism. Is that right? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I met a couple only one ended up in the book.
Speaker 1: But so her name was Angela, you know, for for
Speaker 1: folks who think about sort of the psychology of hate
Speaker 1: and and and something really really important and powerful that
Speaker 1: my conversations with white supremacists made really clear to me
Speaker 1: was this thing of projection, right, this psychological phenomenon where
Speaker 1: you take the parts of yourself you don't like and
Speaker 1: you project them onto others and you hate it about
Speaker 1: other people. Right, that's a big piece of of what
Speaker 1: what has you know, how race has been formulated and
Speaker 1: manufactured because you know, it's it's like the white folks
Speaker 1: in power as we sort of started creating the racial
Speaker 1: stereotypes that are still with us today. We're doing that,
Speaker 1: you know, en mass right, because they had the power to.
Speaker 1: And so Angela, in her own life, you know, really
Speaker 1: hated her own weakness. She became a bully because she
Speaker 1: was bullied, and so she was in neo Nazi and
Speaker 1: she became reformed when she was in prison and a
Speaker 1: black woman became her friend, which you know, I never
Speaker 1: got to talk to that black woman, but I'm even
Speaker 1: more interested in her and what was going on with hers.
Speaker 1: She went up to the yard to this right, to
Speaker 1: this woman covered in Nazi tattoos crazy and she realized,
Speaker 1: you know, Angela just had a change of heart and
Speaker 1: an awakening, and she taught me a lot about the
Speaker 1: way that the sort of narrative of white supremacy gets
Speaker 1: mainstream and that inequalities and disparities are are justified. And
Speaker 1: there's a certain strong attachment to defending the status quo
Speaker 1: because of a sense of what are the real truth
Speaker 1: and the real story would say about about yourself as
Speaker 1: a white person? How is this white supremacy you talked
Speaker 1: to you? How are they how are they preaching anti
Speaker 1: racism these days? So what are they up to along
Speaker 1: those lines? You mean, like Angela King and those folks
Speaker 1: the life So she's part She's one of the co
Speaker 1: founders of a group called Life After Hate, Okay, which
Speaker 1: does I think really important work which tries to is
Speaker 1: a group of former neo Nazis and white supremacists and
Speaker 1: tries to organize people out of that life and out
Speaker 1: of that ideology. And I think it's such important work, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Department of Homeland Security in our National
Speaker 1: Security Apparatus has named white supremacist extremist as the most
Speaker 1: quote persistent and legal excuse me, has named white supremacist
Speaker 1: extremism and terrorism as the most quote persistent and lethal
Speaker 1: threat to the homeland unquote. Right, So this is not
Speaker 1: like a fringe issue. This is an important thing that
Speaker 1: we have to resource much more widely. And of course, then,
Speaker 1: you know, a huge part of the problem here is
Speaker 1: that we've had these white supremacist ideologies growing mainstream on
Speaker 1: conservative news media, obviously with the former president, and so
Speaker 1: it's given cover of respect respectability to ideas that if
Speaker 1: taken to their logical conclusion, right, the idea that white
Speaker 1: people should fear a more diverse America, that immigrants are
Speaker 1: making America worse, that black people are all violent and
Speaker 1: you have to arm yourself with weapons of war to
Speaker 1: you know, out of a fear of sort of marauding
Speaker 1: gangs of black people. You know, this is really scary stuff.
Speaker 1: And then of course the big lie of the election
Speaker 1: being stolen it and Scott, you know, you didn't know
Speaker 1: that the majority of white people voted for Trump, but
Speaker 1: if you did, then it makes the big lie make
Speaker 1: a little more sense. Right. The sort of logic is
Speaker 1: the person who won the majority of the white vote
Speaker 1: is the legitimate president. Of America and whatever else happened
Speaker 1: in those cities by those people who are criminal and
Speaker 1: did illegal things and stole something that was rightly ours. Right,
Speaker 1: that's where the racist logic of election fraud and voter
Speaker 1: fraud and the big lie comes in. And if you
Speaker 1: know your history, then you know when you heard the
Speaker 1: right wing talking about election fraud and basically trying to
Speaker 1: make illegitimate. A multiracial majority, right racial majority, including many
Speaker 1: white people, but not the majority of white people, did
Speaker 1: vote for Biden and Harris, and yet the ideas that
Speaker 1: wasn't legitimate somehow, And that is a very old not
Speaker 1: old as an ancient, but it's been around for a
Speaker 1: long time. Trope that as I described in my book
Speaker 1: in the chapter on democracy. You know, I finished writing
Speaker 1: the book before January sixth, but I describe in great
Speaker 1: detail something that happened during reconstruction after the Civil War
Speaker 1: in Louisiana when a white mob was so infuriated about
Speaker 1: election results that they stormed the courthouse where the election
Speaker 1: results were going to be certified. A bunch of black
Speaker 1: people surrounded the courth courthouse to defend it, and the
Speaker 1: white mom massacred the black people even after they had
Speaker 1: surrendered and they burned the courthouse. And for me, that's
Speaker 1: an example of this white mob that ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: would soon come into power, right the party and the
Speaker 1: faction that they were representing, being so unwilling to submit
Speaker 1: to a multi racial democracy that they burned the edifice
Speaker 1: of their own government to the ground. And so the
Speaker 1: eerie parallels with with January sixth and what could have
Speaker 1: happened and what did happen to six people who lost
Speaker 1: their lives. You know, if you know your history, you
Speaker 1: could have seen that that's where that rhetoric coming from
Speaker 1: the White House, and you know right wing disinformation was
Speaker 1: going to lead. Yeah, you do write in your book
Speaker 1: how the election of Donald Trump made you realize how
Speaker 1: most white voters weren't operating in their own rational economic
Speaker 1: self interest. So these examples are quite right that they're
Speaker 1: not these individuals not operating and they're even in their
Speaker 1: own rational economic self interest. You argued that you believe
Speaker 1: his populist agenda quote promise to wreak economic, social, and
Speaker 1: environmental havoc on them along with everyone else. Can you
Speaker 1: please elaborate that a little bit so Trump's I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have called it a populist agenda, because I don't think
Speaker 1: it was called it. So a populist agenda would have
Speaker 1: been wouldn't have had his one major signature legislative accomplishment be,
Speaker 1: you know, two trillion dollarsand tax cuts largely to the wealthy.
Speaker 1: That and corporations that would then include loopholes that actually
Speaker 1: raise taxes in the working in middle class. You know,
Speaker 1: three years down the line. That's not a populist, right.
Speaker 1: A populist wants to bring big corporations, big polluters, big oils,
Speaker 1: big big tech, big big concentrated power, the robber barons,
Speaker 1: and the billionaires. Wants to bring them to heal to
Speaker 1: ensure that they're not abusing workers and abusing you know,
Speaker 1: our planet and our air and water. That's not what
Speaker 1: he did, right. He loosened the rules on as many
Speaker 1: industries as he could, right, you know. So you know,
Speaker 1: I think that the I include in the book a
Speaker 1: chapter on the relationship between white male identity politics and
Speaker 1: climate denihilism, which I wasn't intending to write when I
Speaker 1: set out to write the book because I didn't know
Speaker 1: that there was a link. I didn't actually think about
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, the party that is so
Speaker 1: opposed to taking action on climate change is overwhelmingly white
Speaker 1: and male. And that you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the public opinion data, the majority of white Americans are
Speaker 1: in the sort of squishier, skeptical, doubtful, not that alarmed
Speaker 1: or concerned. I think that it's probably not worth it
Speaker 1: to make big changes camp And that's very different to
Speaker 1: your point about the sort of water we swim in.
Speaker 1: You know, you think of your typical environmentalists, You think
Speaker 1: of like a white guy and a Patagonia in vest climbing,
Speaker 1: you know, like that, you actually think the environmentalism like
Speaker 1: is sort of a white thing, right, But in fact,
Speaker 1: there's a big, like twenty to thirty point gulf between
Speaker 1: black and brown Americans and white Americans on how concerned
Speaker 1: we are about climate change and environmental pollution. And that
Speaker 1: is partially because black and brown Americans are one and
Speaker 1: a half and twice as likely to live in polluted
Speaker 1: areas and to drink unclean water and live near places,
Speaker 1: you know, toxic sites and all of that. And that's
Speaker 1: because of environmental racism, because the people who are in
Speaker 1: power get to think, well, we can just sort of
Speaker 1: you know, shunt the excesses of our industrial economy onto
Speaker 1: the kind of other side of the tracks. And yet
Speaker 1: one of the things that I learned in the course
Speaker 1: of writing with some of us was if you have
Speaker 1: that dynamic where people in power, I think that they
Speaker 1: can sort of just you know, offshore like to the
Speaker 1: other neighborhood, to a black or brown neighborhood pollution. They
Speaker 1: tend not to demand that the corporation control the pollution,
Speaker 1: right because it's not going to affect them. And so
Speaker 1: that means that there's more pollution in total than there
Speaker 1: would have been had there been the sense that, oh,
Speaker 1: this is going to impact me and people I care about.
Speaker 1: And so actually more segregated cities have more cancer causing
Speaker 1: pollution for everyone because the usually white power structure is
Speaker 1: a sort of operating under that zero sum illusion, right
Speaker 1: that I can sort of profit from the benefits of
Speaker 1: this and that the cost can go on the other
Speaker 1: side of the human divide. But that is an illusion.
Speaker 1: And so you know, that study was called is environmental
Speaker 1: justice good for White folks Too? Write? You know, is
Speaker 1: linking the you know, sort of racist pollution good for
Speaker 1: white people too? And that's really the message throughout my
Speaker 1: book is that racism has a cost for everyone that
Speaker 1: we've got to know. We've got to all learn the
Speaker 1: basic facts about our country and our systems because they're distorting.
Speaker 1: Because racism and our politics and our policy making is
Speaker 1: distorting are functioning as a society. It's eroding the things
Speaker 1: we hold in common. It's draining the pool of public resources.
Speaker 1: It's giving more and more power to the wealthy and
Speaker 1: self interested elite. It's making it harder for working in
Speaker 1: middle class people to thrive of all backgrounds. It's undermining
Speaker 1: support for government, it's undermining support for collective action and
Speaker 1: collective bargaining because of this disdain and this distrust. When
Speaker 1: you have that division, it's easy for us to be
Speaker 1: conquered by self interested forces who want to keep the
Speaker 1: economic and political power exactly as they have it. Why
Speaker 1: do more people know about this stuff? You know? What
Speaker 1: do you think is kind of the biggest barrier to miss?
Speaker 1: You know, there's so much misinformation being spread these days, right,
Speaker 1: what do you see is the biggest barrier? You know,
Speaker 1: this would be my last question. I think the biggest
Speaker 1: barrier is that in general, our systems, our education system,
Speaker 1: our media our politics have been dominated by white people,
Speaker 1: and there's been a campaign to minimize our knowledge of
Speaker 1: the wounds of our history because there's a desire to
Speaker 1: keep up the sort of disneyfied story of America, and
Speaker 1: there's a fear of retribution, there's a fear of loss,
Speaker 1: there's a fear of guilt and responsibility and blame. But
Speaker 1: those are like childish. Those are you know, childish impulses
Speaker 1: and grown ups kind of face the facts and move forward.
Speaker 1: And it feels like we're sort of stuck in an
Speaker 1: adolescent phase in this country. And what you're seeing now
Speaker 1: with this right wing desire to stop schools from teaching
Speaker 1: about race and racism is just another phase of what
Speaker 1: is known as the sort of lost cause campaign to
Speaker 1: try to change the story of the Civil War and
Speaker 1: change the story of Jim Crow to be one that
Speaker 1: is more sympathetic and that minimizes the extent of the racism.
Speaker 1: And so I think we're miseducated by our schools. Less
Speaker 1: than ten percent of high school seniors surveyed by the
Speaker 1: Southern Poverty Law Center identified that slavery was a primary
Speaker 1: cause of the Civil War. That's just insane, right, We've
Speaker 1: been robbed of our own history. And so in the
Speaker 1: absence of that knowledge, and I'm talking, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the history I'm talking about in my book is
Speaker 1: from you know, two thousand and nine, right, And even
Speaker 1: if it is from you know, eighteen twenty one, that's
Speaker 1: not so long ago. Other societies, school children are memorizing,
Speaker 1: you know, thousands of years worth of dynasties, right, and
Speaker 1: we have a couple hundred years to know the basic
Speaker 1: facts of And it's that psychological desire to minimize, to project,
Speaker 1: to deflect that is ultimately robbing us of our collective history.
Speaker 1: It's keeping us divided from one another and leaving us
Speaker 1: vulnerable to the exploitation of the powerful self interest in elite.
Speaker 1: And I think that, you know, we've got to be smarter,
Speaker 1: we've got to be stronger, we've got to be tougher,
Speaker 1: we've got to grow up. We've got to grow up
Speaker 1: and not accept the easy answers that make us feel
Speaker 1: better for what's happening in our country, because you know,
Speaker 1: time is running out. Time is running out for the planet,
Speaker 1: time is running out on democracy, it's running out on inequality.
Speaker 1: And we used to have the formula in this country
Speaker 1: for broadly shared prosperity and for tackling big problems together.
Speaker 1: And you know, in my reading, once the right wing
Speaker 1: really tripled down on racial resentment and the controlling of
Speaker 1: our democracy and rigging the rules to keep power concentrated.
Speaker 1: You know, they sort of gave up on problem solving,
Speaker 1: They gave up on trying to actually make people's lives
Speaker 1: better and try to sort of steward our common resources.
Speaker 1: And the majority of white people are still giving them
Speaker 1: power every single election cycle, still returning that power to
Speaker 1: a worldview and ideology a party that is selling the
Speaker 1: zero sum and bankrupting us as a result. And you
Speaker 1: are going from zero sum to win win. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: all about that. So let's send on the spirit of
Speaker 1: hope that we started on as well. Was the point
Speaker 1: of your book so high? Yeah. I talk about in
Speaker 1: the book that even though there's this there's this zero
Speaker 1: sum worldview that's being sold, I met across the country
Speaker 1: people who rejected the zero sum and who who were
Speaker 1: willing to fight for what I call the solidarity dividend,
Speaker 1: which is these gains that we can unlock when we
Speaker 1: come together across lines of race to work in the
Speaker 1: public interest and work for the common good, and to
Speaker 1: recognize that we've got to refill the pool. We can't
Speaker 1: let racism keep draining it because it's it's costing us all.
Speaker 1: And so I do believe that is our future. That
Speaker 1: is that is what is promised to us. That's to
Speaker 1: me what a multiracial democracy can can create as a
Speaker 1: real understanding of our common humanity. Because of the proximity
Speaker 1: of so much difference in the United States, I think
Speaker 1: that's where we're going, and I hope that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: But you know, everybody who agrees with that has really
Speaker 1: got to fight on their hands because the forces of
Speaker 1: disinformation and division have never been more well resourced and
Speaker 1: had more sophisticated technological tools. So there's no there's no
Speaker 1: time to be sitting on the sidelines. Right. If you
Speaker 1: if you think we should be teaching about our history
Speaker 1: in our schools, you got to talk about it, right.
Speaker 1: You got to say this is good for my white
Speaker 1: kids too, right to learn the history of the country
Speaker 1: and the and the society that they're born into. If
Speaker 1: you think that we need to do everything we can
Speaker 1: to lift the floor for workers in poverty, white, black,
Speaker 1: and Brown, you got to speak up about it, you know.
Speaker 1: And the list and list, the list goes on and on.
Speaker 1: It's so, this is the problem with the culture war
Speaker 1: is that you have people on the other side's who
Speaker 1: will say the argument that if you think that it's
Speaker 1: terrible that that we're teaching critical race theory and schools,
Speaker 1: you got to speak up. This is the division of
Speaker 1: this culture wars, that people are in their echo chambers
Speaker 1: saying to each other, you know, you need to speak up,
Speaker 1: and people are speaking up against different things. And man,
Speaker 1: I've I just I so wish we could unite us
Speaker 1: all like you are. Like you say in the beginning,
Speaker 1: we all have the same basic needs, we have the
Speaker 1: same basic we want the same things. And you make
Speaker 1: a very very compelling case in your book for why
Speaker 1: racism hurts everyone. So look, I just want to be
Speaker 1: say I'm really grateful for you coming on my podcast today,
Speaker 1: Heather and talk to my audience. I know you're super busy.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate your time and much gratitude. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the conversation. Take care of yourself, take care
Speaker 1: of each other. Okay, bye. Thanks for listening to this
Speaker 1: episode of the Psychology Podcast if you'd like to react
Speaker 1: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 1: to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: That's the Psychology podcast dot com. Thanks for being such
Speaker 1: a great supporter of the show, and tune in next
Speaker 1: time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.
Speaker 1: I