Speaker 1: Hey, I'm Baritun Day Thurston and this is how to
Speaker 1: citizen with Baritune Day in season two. We're talking about
Speaker 1: the money, because to be real is hard to citizen
Speaker 1: when we can barely pay the bills. A few years ago,
Speaker 1: I got a Facebook message from someone claiming to be
Speaker 1: my cousin. She had seen me on television and found
Speaker 1: me on the internet. Now, when you're on television, a
Speaker 1: lot of people claim to be your cousin, so I
Speaker 1: was a little bit suspicious. But we met up in
Speaker 1: a safe public place and she indeed was my cousin.
Speaker 1: She had photos I have had vague memories. They definitely
Speaker 1: weren't doctored. She was on my father's side of the family,
Speaker 1: people I hadn't seen since his death when I was
Speaker 1: a very young child. My cousin revealed to me that
Speaker 1: my father's mother was still alive. That would make her
Speaker 1: my only living grandparents. I was so used to just
Speaker 1: me and my older sister being the whole family. The
Speaker 1: idea of a few generations separated that was a big deal.
Speaker 1: So I met up with my grandmother. Of course, I
Speaker 1: asked a lot of questions about my father, and then
Speaker 1: I caught myself, and I said, I said, ask this
Speaker 1: nineties something year old black woman about herself, her journey,
Speaker 1: her childhood. When were you born? Where did you grow
Speaker 1: up grandma, nineteen twenties, Orangeburg, South Carolina. Did you go
Speaker 1: to school? I asked her, Oh, yeah, we went to school.
Speaker 1: Where did you live? On my daddy's farm, all six
Speaker 1: of us kids, And we were proud because he owned
Speaker 1: his own farm. He wasn't a share cropper. He at
Speaker 1: really owned his phone. What was that like? And what
Speaker 1: was school like? And she told me that every year
Speaker 1: all the kids would have to gather the farm, not
Speaker 1: just her daddy's farm, but the farms of other white
Speaker 1: residents in the area. And naive me, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is like a jobs program. All the kids
Speaker 1: have to do this. I don't know what life in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and thirties was like. But no, that
Speaker 1: was too simple to naive, to innocent. She and her
Speaker 1: siblings had to work for free on the farms of
Speaker 1: white residents in that area because her father needed to
Speaker 1: get credit extended by shop owners in the main shopping district.
Speaker 1: They couldn't make everything they needed. You had to buy
Speaker 1: stuff and people use credit. But as a condition of
Speaker 1: extending him credit, those shopkeepers demanded and were able to get,
Speaker 1: the free labor of his children that I was not
Speaker 1: prepared for. And it made me angry because not only
Speaker 1: was my grandmother's labor exploited, her childhood was exploited. She
Speaker 1: was taken out of school, another cost to be paid
Speaker 1: by only some people in America. My grandmother had to
Speaker 1: work for free, had to miss out on literal educational opportunities.
Speaker 1: She left Orangeburg with her husband pretty much as soon
Speaker 1: as she could. It's why I grew up in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Doesn't own that land anymore either. Today's wealth
Speaker 1: inequality may not look exactly the same as it did
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenties and nineteen thirty South Carolina, but we
Speaker 1: still live with it. And it's not a vague thing,
Speaker 1: Oh wealth inequality from academic doing the study. No, it's
Speaker 1: it's real, and it exists along racial lines. The rich
Speaker 1: tend to be wider, the poor tend to be black
Speaker 1: or in. That is not a mistake, that's by design.
Speaker 1: Where does that come from? I wanted to find out.
Speaker 1: They closed the entire parks and Recreation department, They sold
Speaker 1: off the animals in the zoo, all to avoid sharing
Speaker 1: it with black folks. We're spending this entire season looking
Speaker 1: at the division rooted in wealth inequality in this country,
Speaker 1: and of course, like we always do what we can
Speaker 1: do about it, but to do something about it, we've
Speaker 1: got to understand it. After the break, my guest Heather
Speaker 1: McGee breaks down the driving force of American economic exclusion
Speaker 1: via the swimming pool. Oh M, this is happening. What's up, hi, sweetheart?
Speaker 1: Is very good to be with you. My guest, Heather
Speaker 1: McGee is the former president of the anti racist advocacy
Speaker 1: organization DEMOS. She traveled all over the United States to
Speaker 1: see for herself the economic impact racism was having on
Speaker 1: all Americans and to write her book, The Sum of Us,
Speaker 1: What Racism cost Everyone and How we can Prosper Together.
Speaker 1: A simple question, Can you introduce yourself and what you do.
Speaker 1: My name is Heather McGee. I am the author of
Speaker 1: the new book The Some of Us, What Racism costs
Speaker 1: Everyone and how we can prosper together. That's all you
Speaker 1: need to know about me anymore. I'm just a writer,
Speaker 1: you know, That's all I am. I wander the country
Speaker 1: collecting stories. You know, we have like typing machines now
Speaker 1: right school? What what were you before you were just
Speaker 1: a writer? I was a policy wonk for about twenty years.
Speaker 1: I helped to build and then I was the president
Speaker 1: of Demos, which advanced and designed solutions to inequality. You know,
Speaker 1: for me, my ultimate goal was to try to make
Speaker 1: more economic opportunity for more people and to have more
Speaker 1: justice for all. Well, how did you first get interested
Speaker 1: in the economy? You know, I can't unscramble that egg
Speaker 1: very well, and I'm really bad at my own origin story.
Speaker 1: But I was born on South side of Chicago. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing evictions and plant closures and the various things
Speaker 1: that were going on. The new figure show unemployment spreading,
Speaker 1: leaving nine point nine million Americans without jobs. Alert since
Speaker 1: laborers out by station wagon to perform hundreds of evictions
Speaker 1: for the county each year, with members of my family
Speaker 1: losing job lubs and being foreclosed on and all of that.
Speaker 1: And and I was raised by a single mother, and
Speaker 1: I saw the demonization of black, particularly single moms in
Speaker 1: the nineties under the welfare reform debate. It just felt
Speaker 1: like the kind of dominant narrative for why, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of deserving no question around the economy, like
Speaker 1: the bootstraps narrative, the idea that basically people were poor
Speaker 1: because of bad decisions was really false. It didn't fit.
Speaker 1: Didn't that up, you know? So I I was always
Speaker 1: interested in the big why. What is this bootstrap narrative?
Speaker 1: It's the idea basically that the people who are doing
Speaker 1: well economically are doing so because they're simply better than
Speaker 1: everybody else, and that if you are struggling, if you
Speaker 1: find yourself broke, it's probably because of some bad decisions
Speaker 1: that you made. It's a very individualistic way of seeing
Speaker 1: the world. And I've since learned that narrative is itself
Speaker 1: really racialized, right. It's that idea that there's just such
Speaker 1: a hierarchy of human value and human worth and that
Speaker 1: other ring that distancing is made very easy by the
Speaker 1: illusion of racial difference. So you're coming up in the
Speaker 1: eighties in Chicago and you're hearing this narrative, this bootstrap
Speaker 1: narrative of deserved nous. But you said it didn't add up?
Speaker 1: So what was the conflict? What didn't square well? I
Speaker 1: just felt like the people I knew who worked the
Speaker 1: hardest were those single moms. You know, my mom was
Speaker 1: always working, and she was always working in the community
Speaker 1: with other usually black single moms, who were you know,
Speaker 1: making a way out of no way. The more I
Speaker 1: learned that the things that people often think of as choices.
Speaker 1: Am I able to continue to going to school to
Speaker 1: college or do I have to drop out in order
Speaker 1: to feed my family? Am I able to stay at
Speaker 1: home with my newborn? Or do I have to go
Speaker 1: back to work. Am I able to buy a house?
Speaker 1: Or am I always going to rent? These are all
Speaker 1: things that are often interpreted by individuals as individual choices,
Speaker 1: but the terms of them are really set at the
Speaker 1: policy level. And so for me, when I first started
Speaker 1: to really see that and understand that is that there
Speaker 1: laws and policies and decisions that are made by powerful
Speaker 1: actors that close or open doors to individuals along the
Speaker 1: path of their life, it was a big aha. It
Speaker 1: was a big like Okay, now now we're talking like
Speaker 1: this is how we can really make life a little
Speaker 1: bit sweeter for more people. So you describe this realization
Speaker 1: and that the choice is available are determined by policies
Speaker 1: that other people make. Do you remember an early moment
Speaker 1: where you're like Oh, that policy creates the set of
Speaker 1: choices people have to select from. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: during the welfare form debate, which centered off and around
Speaker 1: single mothers, there was a lot that was discussed in
Speaker 1: the politics of it about encouraging work welfare to work.
Speaker 1: Welfare is not a lifestyle. There's as sound clips of
Speaker 1: Bill Clinton out there, we don't want to make this
Speaker 1: a lifestyle. What we are trying to do today is
Speaker 1: to overcome the flaws of the welfare system for the
Speaker 1: people who are trapped on. From now on, our nation's
Speaker 1: answer to this great social challenge will no longer be
Speaker 1: never any cycle of welfare. It will be the dignity
Speaker 1: of power and the athocate work. Yeah where which you know,
Speaker 1: when it was clear that if you could find a job,
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually gonna nothing, none of the options We're
Speaker 1: gonna pay enough for somebody to actually not be poor anymore.
Speaker 1: Welfare kept you basically poor. A minimum waves job kept
Speaker 1: you poor. The ability to work your way into the
Speaker 1: middle class had long disappeared. When you say that, the
Speaker 1: so the pathway to the middle class was closed? When
Speaker 1: why did that happen? Well, this is the story that
Speaker 1: I then learned once I started working at Demos when
Speaker 1: I was twenty two, and I was the first hire
Speaker 1: other than the director of the program in the Economic
Speaker 1: Opportunity Program, and this was phenomenal. This was my dream job.
Speaker 1: So it was then that I really learned kind of
Speaker 1: the progressive economic orthodoxy, which teaches that there was a
Speaker 1: period of dramatic expansion of the middle class. Hunger drove
Speaker 1: our people to the breadlines. Thankfully, we waited, waited for
Speaker 1: some sign of better days. Then came the federal government's
Speaker 1: work program One by Want, where you know, tens of
Speaker 1: millions of people made different working class into the middle
Speaker 1: class through this massive economic expansion in insecurity, you know,
Speaker 1: through the New Deal, through social securities, through the subsidization
Speaker 1: of housing. They were guaranteed benefit pensions. We had these
Speaker 1: state funded colleges in every state where the government picked
Speaker 1: up the tab for college. Hundreds of homes have been
Speaker 1: bread from the bondage of poverty, their bread winners buying
Speaker 1: security and hope in their new jobs. It was just
Speaker 1: sort of this period of time where everything kind of
Speaker 1: aligned to make the greatest middle class the world had
Speaker 1: ever seen. It sounds like the American dream. It sounds
Speaker 1: like the American Dream, ding ding ding, You good. That's it.
Speaker 1: That was it. That was when we had it, you know.
Speaker 1: But the question is who was the we. So much
Speaker 1: of what I just described was done from a federal
Speaker 1: policy level in an explicitly racially exclusive way. Both Social
Speaker 1: Security and the labor standards excluded the categories that black
Speaker 1: folks mostly worked in agriculture and domestic work. The g
Speaker 1: I Bill excluded millions of black veterans because of segregation
Speaker 1: in higher education. And so each of these ways that
Speaker 1: the middle class was subsidized, that we had handouts and
Speaker 1: free stuff for white people in the early twentieth century
Speaker 1: created the American Dream and on racially exclusive terms, and
Speaker 1: then the Civil rights movement basically called the question said okay,
Speaker 1: are we're going to live up to our ideals? And economically?
Speaker 1: This is where the story that's at the heart of
Speaker 1: my book that some of us comes in. It was
Speaker 1: in addition to all those great freebees, there was also
Speaker 1: this building boom of public amenities like parks and libraries
Speaker 1: and schools and actually swimming pools. And what happened when
Speaker 1: many of these swimming pools that were segregated for whites
Speaker 1: only were forced to integrate, and black famili said, hey,
Speaker 1: those are our tax dollars creating this so called public
Speaker 1: swimming pool. And they do these grand resort style pools,
Speaker 1: like thousands of swimmers. They were desegregated, and black people
Speaker 1: showed up and white people hung out with them, and
Speaker 1: they swam together, and they played together, and they lived
Speaker 1: happily ever after, and they made babies. And that's why
Speaker 1: there's no there's no race anymore because nineteen fifties the
Speaker 1: swimming pool created all of these mixed marriages. Well so,
Speaker 1: so obviously that's more of an American fantasy. We're describing
Speaker 1: what actually happened. What actually happened was that in town
Speaker 1: after town, and it's very important to me to point
Speaker 1: out not just in the Jim Crow South, but in
Speaker 1: Ohio and Washington State and New Jersey, the town's drained
Speaker 1: the public pools rather than integrate them. And you mean
Speaker 1: literally like took the water out, literally took the water out,
Speaker 1: backed up trucks of dirt, dumped it in, paved it,
Speaker 1: over seated it with grass. In Montgomery, Alabama, where I
Speaker 1: went on the journey to right the some of us,
Speaker 1: they closed the entire Parks and Recreation department. They sold
Speaker 1: off the animals in the zoo, and they kept the
Speaker 1: Parks and Recreation Department of Montgomery closed for a decade,
Speaker 1: all to avoid sharing it with black folks. The idea
Speaker 1: that what's the saying you would cut off your nose
Speaker 1: despite your face, that you would not only deny i
Speaker 1: black people access to the free goodies that everybody's tax
Speaker 1: dollars are paying for m but that you would I mean,
Speaker 1: you cancel the public park, you canceled the swimming pool
Speaker 1: for all the children and all the families. In your research,
Speaker 1: did you find any resistance to that, extreme resistance with
Speaker 1: somebody out there like, um, actually, look, maybe we could
Speaker 1: just timeshare. I mean, what do we literally have to
Speaker 1: fill the pool with concrete? That's that's pretty far, Um,
Speaker 1: there was. I mean, as always throughout history, there have
Speaker 1: been the race traders, right, there have been white folks
Speaker 1: who said no, you know, who have stood up and
Speaker 1: stood in solidarity with black folks. They're white folks who
Speaker 1: didn't want to stand in solidarity with black folks, but
Speaker 1: were just upset because the pool was gone. But what happened,
Speaker 1: and this has really been very similar to the loss
Speaker 1: of public benefits throughout our society. Right, like take take
Speaker 1: public colleges. What is once a public good becomes a
Speaker 1: private luxury. And so then you get this rat race.
Speaker 1: Right then it's like, okay, you have that individualized response. Right,
Speaker 1: let me take another job, let me mortgage in my house,
Speaker 1: let me re fi, you know, let me let me
Speaker 1: figure it out on my own. And that's been the
Speaker 1: sort of slow, you know, ratcheting down of our expectations
Speaker 1: of what the public could do for us, and we
Speaker 1: put it all on our own shoulders. And so literally,
Speaker 1: with the pool story, what ended up happening is you
Speaker 1: saw this advent of backyard pools in the Washington, D c. Area.
Speaker 1: You had, after pool integration, over a hundred private members
Speaker 1: only swim clubs that sprang up out of nowhere. And
Speaker 1: so sure you could pay a few hundred dollars a
Speaker 1: year for your kid to swim. Used to be free. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll keep it moving. I'll make more money.
Speaker 1: So you're you're privatizing public goods and limiting access to
Speaker 1: those who can afford it, which is public policy connected
Speaker 1: to your economics. Look at you, professor, Okay, So so
Speaker 1: tell me this though, I'm trying to flash back to
Speaker 1: this desegregating America, and I'm trying to put my health
Speaker 1: inside of the mind and body of a white American
Speaker 1: who's like, the black people are coming. No, we got
Speaker 1: got shut down these pools. But do they have enough
Speaker 1: discipline and savvy to explain it in a way that
Speaker 1: doesn't say we just don't want to share this with
Speaker 1: black people. You know, the pools are pretty clear. Actually
Speaker 1: you saw me. I tried to help him out. I
Speaker 1: was like, think, come on, they must have had some
Speaker 1: kind of stories, some some kind of bus sell it. No.
Speaker 1: I mean so in St. Louis, possibly the largest pool
Speaker 1: in America at the time, the first day of the
Speaker 1: integrated swimming there there was a mob of two hundred
Speaker 1: white folks who came and beat every black person in sight.
Speaker 1: I later saw an interview with one of the white
Speaker 1: guys who ended up in the hospital from the melee,
Speaker 1: and he later on would say, you know, in his
Speaker 1: elder years, he would say, you know, we thought we
Speaker 1: were doing the right thing. You know, they were taught
Speaker 1: this is the thing. They were taught by our government,
Speaker 1: by their church, by all of the rules of society
Speaker 1: that we were so unclean and unworthy that we should
Speaker 1: not be allowed to swim with them, go to school
Speaker 1: with them, drink from the same water fountains them, walk
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk next to them. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: And what do you take from all of that information
Speaker 1: is that there's something terribly wrong with these people, and
Speaker 1: so we must guard what is ours from the incursion
Speaker 1: of them into it, us and them exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: you've got this book. It's called The Sum of Us.
Speaker 1: Tell me more about this book. Ah, So, The Some
Speaker 1: of Us is my attempt after nearly twenty years working
Speaker 1: in economic policy, trying to get the right data in
Speaker 1: the hands of policymakers, and mostly finding it to be
Speaker 1: far too difficult to convince the people in power to
Speaker 1: do the thing that was obviously in the economic interest
Speaker 1: of most people and in the interest of economic growth
Speaker 1: in our country. So you say, you're proposing these policies
Speaker 1: that are obviously in the benefit of most people and
Speaker 1: economic growth. So that, to me sounds like one of
Speaker 1: those win win situations. Why was it hard to sell
Speaker 1: these ideas racism? Dang it? Not again. No, I'm sort
Speaker 1: of joking, but I'm not really joking. Um, that's what
Speaker 1: I wanted to find out, right. The first line in
Speaker 1: my book is have you ever wondered why we can't
Speaker 1: seem to have nice things? And by nice things, I
Speaker 1: really do mean like really universal healthcare, a modern world
Speaker 1: class or even just reliable infrastructure, a public health system
Speaker 1: to contain and handle pandemics and save lives. And it
Speaker 1: was clear that kind of the tools that I had
Speaker 1: been using, you know, the economic policy research, the legislative
Speaker 1: drafting and the congressional testimony and all of that was
Speaker 1: basically falling on deaf years, and inequality was getting wider
Speaker 1: and wider every year. I just felt like I needed
Speaker 1: to spend some time to figure out what was really
Speaker 1: going on underneath the surface. And what I ended up
Speaker 1: finding was that the biggest impediment to our progress in America,
Speaker 1: the reason why we can't have those nice things, is
Speaker 1: that there's this zero sum worldview, this idea that there's
Speaker 1: an US and of them, we're not actually all on
Speaker 1: the same team, and that, in fact, progress for people
Speaker 1: of color has to come at white folks expense. And
Speaker 1: I say that because white people are much more likely
Speaker 1: to have this zero sum worldview. Black folks don't believe
Speaker 1: that progress for us has to come at white folks expense.
Speaker 1: And it's that zero sum worldview that has led many
Speaker 1: white folks, in fact, the majority since the Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Movement too politically sort of cheer the destruction of and
Speaker 1: resent the provision of public goods that could help them
Speaker 1: and their families in many instances because it could help
Speaker 1: the people on the other team. After the break, how
Speaker 1: this US versus them mentality got started, and how we
Speaker 1: can undo it. So, Heather, what I'm hearing from you
Speaker 1: is that, at least since the Civil Rights Movement, white
Speaker 1: Americans have been opposing policies that would make life better
Speaker 1: for them because those same policies would also benefit black people.
Speaker 1: Is there something unique about this white American response? Or
Speaker 1: is that just human nature? Such a good question, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, right because on the one hand,
Speaker 1: if it if it is just human nature, if it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're we're just tribal, you know, it's who we are.
Speaker 1: We're competitive by nature. And I was like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: then I give up. You know, we'll figure out some
Speaker 1: other route, you know. Um. But the fact that it
Speaker 1: was a view held more by white Americans and less
Speaker 1: by Americans of color, and that white people in dead
Speaker 1: arn't in France and England and Spain didn't feel the
Speaker 1: same way, right, they loved their public goods. It felt like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta get to the to the bottom of this.
Speaker 1: And that's why the the first thing I did was
Speaker 1: kind of immersed myself in an unvarnished history of the
Speaker 1: country through that lens. Okay, where did the zero sum
Speaker 1: story come from? And so looking back at our history,
Speaker 1: the zero sum was an essential foundation for the economic
Speaker 1: structure of our country at the beginning, where our original
Speaker 1: economic model was stolen people, stolen land, and stolen labor.
Speaker 1: And in order to justify that within a Christian society,
Speaker 1: they had to make those people who were being stolen
Speaker 1: less than human and therefore they had to create this
Speaker 1: racial hierarchy, this racial taxonomy, and the model was I profit,
Speaker 1: you lose. You don't get to share any of the
Speaker 1: games of your land, your effort, your labor, nothing. Slavery
Speaker 1: and settler colonialism is about as zero sung as it comes.
Speaker 1: But even then, and this was the real like aha
Speaker 1: for me, I had to admit that actually that worst
Speaker 1: possible economic model only truly maximally benefited a narrow elite
Speaker 1: back then of white people, and so that white slave owning,
Speaker 1: landowning elite had to convince the far more numerous, landless,
Speaker 1: indentured white folks who were sitting there in the you know,
Speaker 1: rocky fields alongside the black folks, that they were better
Speaker 1: than the person down down the row, and that in fact,
Speaker 1: justice or freedom for black folks would be a threat
Speaker 1: to white folks. Period. The old divide and conquer, Ye
Speaker 1: old divide and conquer. So that's where it came from,
Speaker 1: and then it's been reanimated generation after generation. This idea
Speaker 1: of job competition giving white folks everyday white folks just
Speaker 1: enough taste of privilege that they could choose their race
Speaker 1: over their class as pretty convincing story, backed up by
Speaker 1: a few centuries now of storytelling. So tell me about
Speaker 1: the traveling you did while you were researching and writing
Speaker 1: this book. So I talked to a whole bunch of people.
Speaker 1: So I went, for example, to Mississippi, where the workers
Speaker 1: at a car factory had just voted against organizing into
Speaker 1: a union with the United Auto Workers. Nisson is unable
Speaker 1: to provide decent wages at decent working conditions here in Captain, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: And for me growing up in the Midwest, where those
Speaker 1: kinds of jobs, those unionized manufacturing jobs were the best jobs,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, why would anybody vote know to
Speaker 1: having that kind of power. So I wanted to go
Speaker 1: down and sit with folks, and so I flew and
Speaker 1: then I drove to a UM, a kind of nondescript
Speaker 1: workers center in a strip mall, which was the place
Speaker 1: where the pro union workers would kind of meet before
Speaker 1: their shift and hang out and talking between shifts. And
Speaker 1: I sat in the lobby with them over a series
Speaker 1: of days and just talk to them about the conditions
Speaker 1: of the plant, the lives that they led, what they
Speaker 1: hoped for, what they had hoped that unionizing would bring them,
Speaker 1: And race was always the topic of the conversation. So
Speaker 1: we had far more black workers than white workers who
Speaker 1: had been supportive of the union. And they were clear
Speaker 1: to me that the word union itself was kind of
Speaker 1: a dog whistle in the South for some that lazy,
Speaker 1: undeserving black folks needed as this one guy, Joey said
Speaker 1: to me, white guy with a sleeve of tattoos and
Speaker 1: cut off sleeve shirt, said the white folks down here.
Speaker 1: They got their Southern mentality. I am voting for it
Speaker 1: if the blacks are for it. If the blacks are
Speaker 1: for it, then I'm against it. Like that is the mentality.
Speaker 1: They talked about the way that white folks did have
Speaker 1: an advantage in the plant as. It was that there
Speaker 1: was a real ladder of hierarchy, and that the white
Speaker 1: folks were much more likely to have what they called
Speaker 1: the cushier jobs. As one guy said, you can tell
Speaker 1: they pushed because they can leave work and go straight
Speaker 1: to the happy hour. They don't have to go home
Speaker 1: and shower, right, And so it was those kinds of
Speaker 1: little perks, right, the little advantages of whiteness. And honestly,
Speaker 1: after the first day, I went back to my hotel
Speaker 1: room and I was like, well, maybe white folks are right,
Speaker 1: Maybe this is better for them than having a union
Speaker 1: with rules that are going to put them on the
Speaker 1: same level. Right, And then I had to remind myself, right,
Speaker 1: but nobody has good health care, nobody has job security,
Speaker 1: nobody has the things that should really matter, things that
Speaker 1: could actually transform your life. It's like two people in
Speaker 1: a cold room. One's got a coat, one doesn't. But
Speaker 1: if they just sort of joined together and like shouldered,
Speaker 1: opened the door, then walked out into the sun where
Speaker 1: it's seventy degrees. They both be good, you know, but
Speaker 1: it's the boss that keeps them in the cold room
Speaker 1: right and keeps that sense of I'm going to have
Speaker 1: a little bit of advantage over what is generally speaking
Speaker 1: a crappy system, and I'm going to cling to that
Speaker 1: advantage rather than opening my hand and joining forces with
Speaker 1: somebody I've been taught to disdain and distrust, even if
Speaker 1: both of our lives will be better. White folks have
Speaker 1: been taught that if there is a risk in society,
Speaker 1: they're gonna be protected from it, and burdens are going
Speaker 1: to fall on the people that the burdens always fall on.
Speaker 1: Now that is both true when it comes to pollution
Speaker 1: and environmental degradation and and the vulnerability of when lights
Speaker 1: go out and the power goes out in the pandemic arise, right,
Speaker 1: those disparities will exist. It's not like white people are
Speaker 1: completely spared. So it is an illusion, just like race
Speaker 1: is an illusion. Just like this racial hierarchy is an illusion,
Speaker 1: but it's one that is present enough to have them
Speaker 1: like hedge in their bats a little bit, but it's
Speaker 1: the toll is is mounting, right. I mean, before the
Speaker 1: pandemic unplugged our economy and threw millions of people out
Speaker 1: of work, nearly half of adult workers were only making
Speaker 1: ten dollars an hour or eighteen thousand dollars a year
Speaker 1: on average, the low wage workers. Right, This, this economy
Speaker 1: that's sort of where the rules are are rigged to
Speaker 1: squeeze down and down and down is the economy that
Speaker 1: black and brown folks have always known. It was the
Speaker 1: economy that was created for us to live in. And
Speaker 1: now many more white people are living in it too,
Speaker 1: because they've so cast their lot with a sense of
Speaker 1: racial allegiance to a white elite. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about something that we hear a lot about. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about wealth inequality. What is wealth inequality? And why do
Speaker 1: you care about it? Why should we care about isn't
Speaker 1: it a feature of society since time and memorial? You
Speaker 1: got rich people, got poor people. What's the big deal?
Speaker 1: So wealth, as opposed to income, income is your paycheck, right.
Speaker 1: Wealth is how much money you have in the bank,
Speaker 1: no matter what paycheck is coming in or not, it's
Speaker 1: in your savings. Account. It's about the value of your house.
Speaker 1: It's about pension or four one k you might have
Speaker 1: our inn i ra. It's about the things that don't
Speaker 1: come and go with how much effort you put in.
Speaker 1: It's just the ship you have. And that is where
Speaker 1: history shows up in your wallet. It's was your family
Speaker 1: there in line with the right color skin at the time,
Speaker 1: and the government was still handing out houses with no
Speaker 1: down payment? Right? Was your family in line when they
Speaker 1: were handing out jobs that were unionized, that had a pension.
Speaker 1: Were you in line when they were handing out debt
Speaker 1: free college or were you born into a family that
Speaker 1: was excluded from all that by design? So when we
Speaker 1: talk about wealth inequality, we are talking about the people
Speaker 1: who make their money by opening an envelope that comes
Speaker 1: from their stockbroker, versus the people who make money going
Speaker 1: into a job like that's a whole different level, right,
Speaker 1: And there are are many people whose money just sits
Speaker 1: there and makes money and it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with how tired they get in a day. So your
Speaker 1: money works rather than you're working, thank you, exactly. So
Speaker 1: the richest one percent owns more than the entire middle
Speaker 1: class combined today then you look at race, and that's
Speaker 1: where you start to bring it down to the sort
Speaker 1: of real brass tax level, where the average family headed
Speaker 1: by a white high school dropout has more wealth than
Speaker 1: the average black family headed by a college graduate. So
Speaker 1: that doesn't that doesn't sound right. So I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: you to double check your math on that because that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound very American. So you just try try one
Speaker 1: more time. Just all right, let me do a quick calculation.
Speaker 1: The average household headed by a white high school dropout
Speaker 1: has about thirty four thousand dollars in average wealth. For
Speaker 1: a household headed by a black college graduate, the average
Speaker 1: wealth is less than thirty dollars. So what that means
Speaker 1: is that individual myth of the thing that is holding
Speaker 1: black folks back now is a lack of education, a
Speaker 1: lack of income, a lack of what the nice economists
Speaker 1: call human capital is largely false. And it's really about
Speaker 1: whether or not you were the right at the right place,
Speaker 1: in the right time and history, with the right skin
Speaker 1: color to get free stuff that then begets more and
Speaker 1: more free stuff. Your money creates money. If you've got
Speaker 1: house and home equity, then you can borrow against that
Speaker 1: to pay for college tuition, then your kid doesn't have
Speaker 1: to go into debt. Then they can graduate and take
Speaker 1: an unpaid internship or spend six months working at a
Speaker 1: startup that doesn't pay them. Your biggest takeaways from your
Speaker 1: journey putting this book together. The thing that my journey
Speaker 1: to write the book taught me is that race and
Speaker 1: racism is always there. It's always there in our politics,
Speaker 1: in our policy making, even when we don't think it is.
Speaker 1: And the zero sum racial hierarchy is a tail as
Speaker 1: old as time, and yet we have come to the
Speaker 1: moral and productive end of it, and we've got to
Speaker 1: start replacing it with the solidarity dividend, where we refill
Speaker 1: the pool of public goods for everyone. But we recognize
Speaker 1: it because of racist policymaking. We're not all standing at
Speaker 1: the same depths in that drained pool. So some people
Speaker 1: are underwater completely, some people are treading water. And so
Speaker 1: one size is never gonna fit all, never has, never will,
Speaker 1: And that we meet each other, we are on the
Speaker 1: same team. What is the solidarity dividends? Solidarity dividends are
Speaker 1: the gains that we can unlock, but only if we
Speaker 1: work together across lines of race. The things that we
Speaker 1: all need that we simply can't do on our own.
Speaker 1: Cleaner air, higher wages, better funded schools. But as long
Speaker 1: as we're divided, we're not going to do that. What
Speaker 1: signs are you seeing that we can climb out of
Speaker 1: this hole? Because as much as I try to be motivational,
Speaker 1: inspirational and honest, the honest part of me is like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, this racial narrative story, it's it's
Speaker 1: been on the run. This is the series that always
Speaker 1: gets renewed and people keep watching. So what's the other story?
Speaker 1: What's the other show? So the pessimistic story is January six, right,
Speaker 1: is we have had at a white supremacists, anti democratic
Speaker 1: attempt to siege the capital and lynch are elected representatives
Speaker 1: to throw out the results of an election, something we
Speaker 1: have not seen since reconstruction, and something in terms of
Speaker 1: in the national capital we have never seen. That's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: That's pretty bad. That's pretty pretty exhibit a of exactly
Speaker 1: the stakes of this racial narrative, of the desire to
Speaker 1: burn down the edifice of our democracy rather than have
Speaker 1: it be a multiracial democracy. But the reason for hope
Speaker 1: is January five is the day that came before when
Speaker 1: in Georgia, say it again. In Georgia, a multi racial
Speaker 1: anti racist coalition got together gott In Formation behind Stacy
Speaker 1: Abrams and the successor to Martin Luther King's Church and
Speaker 1: a nice white Jewish guy. It said, We're march in Washington.
Speaker 1: Let freedom bring. NBC News Now projecting that John ass Off,
Speaker 1: the Democrat, will win the Senate runoff in the state
Speaker 1: of Georgia, projects Raphael Warnock as the winner. Eighty two
Speaker 1: year old hands that used to pick somebody else's cotton
Speaker 1: went to the polls and picked her youngest son to
Speaker 1: be a United States Senator. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: and and you know we are talking right now after
Speaker 1: President Joe Biden signed a bill that is poised to
Speaker 1: cut child poverty in half. Historic legislation is about rebuilding
Speaker 1: the backbone of this country. That is the biggest grant
Speaker 1: Indigenous communities in our history. That is going to include
Speaker 1: money for vaccines and reopening schools, and to address homelessness
Speaker 1: and affordable housing and school lunches and give families three
Speaker 1: a month to make sure that they don't have to
Speaker 1: choose between feeding their kids and keeping the lights on.
Speaker 1: How do you tell a white person not just to
Speaker 1: like help we the black people, but like there's something
Speaker 1: in this for you. This country tells the story how
Speaker 1: great we are. We went to the moon, we defeated
Speaker 1: the Nazis, we did we created you know, uh, wet naps.
Speaker 1: You know, like we've done a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of powerful things. And I'm like, guess what we did
Speaker 1: all that with most of the players, like not on
Speaker 1: the field. We might have been to mars by. Now
Speaker 1: if we let women have their own bank accounts, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, we could have created that much
Speaker 1: more wealth. So when you think about what a healthy
Speaker 1: economy looks like and the connection to racial equity or equality,
Speaker 1: how do you think about that story? What is in
Speaker 1: it for the some of us when we grant access
Speaker 1: to an opportunity to all of us? That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is a case for reparations. Remember, the
Speaker 1: white high school dropout has more wealth in the black
Speaker 1: college educated person. We got a wealth issue to work
Speaker 1: out with here. But we do have to recognize that
Speaker 1: the conversation about preparations is going to be heard in
Speaker 1: that zero sum framework, right, It's going to be what's
Speaker 1: the cost out of my pocket? Why are you giving
Speaker 1: money to them? What about me? Black lives matter? What
Speaker 1: about white lives? But the way I see it is
Speaker 1: we hit on the formula in the United States for
Speaker 1: the greatest middle class the world had ever seen, the
Speaker 1: most prosperous economy of the modern era, and the foundations
Speaker 1: of that were investing in ordinary folks and giving them
Speaker 1: the cushion to be able to meet their needs and
Speaker 1: fulfill their dreams. And then the majority of white folk
Speaker 1: turned their back on that formula because it was expanded
Speaker 1: to black folks. And if we were to actually say
Speaker 1: that the government that made the policies to strip wealth,
Speaker 1: to enslave all of that, the government is the one
Speaker 1: that owes Black America, not white people have to cut
Speaker 1: a check to their nearest black neighbor, you know, it
Speaker 1: is the government that needs to give black families something
Speaker 1: so that there is that cushion in that platform for
Speaker 1: them for us to build our dreams. And that you
Speaker 1: can't look at the thirteen to one racial wealth divide,
Speaker 1: so much of which is about inherited wealth and not
Speaker 1: see that if we did reparations, it will be seed
Speaker 1: capital for the America that is becoming. That's what I
Speaker 1: see reparations as it's investing in our people, in our future. Again, reparations,
Speaker 1: it's not a giveaway, it's an investment. Heather McGee, it
Speaker 1: has been a pleasure. Thank you so so much. Thank
Speaker 1: you Mary to thank you for this beautiful, beautiful podcast.
Speaker 1: As you might be able to tell, I really enjoyed
Speaker 1: that conversation with Heather. Our economy is based on exclusion,
Speaker 1: historically speaking and in the present. And this is not
Speaker 1: an intellectual point. This is this is real stuff here,
Speaker 1: It actually matters. And when we think about what the
Speaker 1: alternative is to build an economy built on inclusion and participation,
Speaker 1: something more small, d democratic, we have to leave that
Speaker 1: zero sum mentality that I'm here to take your stuff,
Speaker 1: or that charitable mentality we've got to help these poor
Speaker 1: black people get ahead and catch up. No, we've got
Speaker 1: to help ourselves by benefiting from the contributions When everybody participates.
Speaker 1: That's how we win, that's how we do better. We
Speaker 1: do it together. So how do we get that, How
Speaker 1: do we build that economy, that participatory, more democratic economy
Speaker 1: where we benefit from everybody's participation rather than fearing The
Speaker 1: good news is you know, we're gonna go there. That's
Speaker 1: what we do here. Next week we're gonna talk to
Speaker 1: someone for whom inclusion is not a charitable effort, it's
Speaker 1: just smart business. So many sort of quote unquote social
Speaker 1: enterprises are frankly stupid. I don't like this idea that
Speaker 1: there's one group of customers that you sell to and
Speaker 1: there's another group of customers that you do charity for.
Speaker 1: Next week, we talked to Sam Pulp of Every Take.
Speaker 1: Now for the fun part, where we give you things
Speaker 1: you can do to citizen better. I want you to
Speaker 1: think first. That's the first action. Just think, Just try
Speaker 1: to remember where your family fits into this story. Our
Speaker 1: history is deeply rooted in this idea that when one
Speaker 1: group gains, another group has to lose. Has anyone you know,
Speaker 1: has anyone in your family expressed those ideas? Where do
Speaker 1: you think that comes from? Why do you think this
Speaker 1: person expressed those things? Just think about it. It's that simple.
Speaker 1: The next thing I want you to do is read
Speaker 1: Heather McGee's book. Check it out from your local library,
Speaker 1: take it off the reserve list, or support a local bookshop.
Speaker 1: In fact, we've set up bookshop dot org slash how
Speaker 1: to Citizen with a bunch of books, including Heathers, that
Speaker 1: we think will help us all in this journey. And finally,
Speaker 1: I want you to do something a little more public
Speaker 1: that shows what a solidarity dividend might actually feel like.
Speaker 1: Let's fight for fifteen. As Heather explained, these solidarity dividends
Speaker 1: are the gains we get when we work together across
Speaker 1: racial divides for the benefit of us all. Fight for
Speaker 1: fifteen is an international movement for workers rights and a
Speaker 1: fifteen dollar minimum wage. The website is fight for fifteen
Speaker 1: dot org and there are several ways for you to
Speaker 1: get involved. Pick one. If you're taking to these actions,
Speaker 1: please brag about yourself online using the hashtag how to
Speaker 1: Citizen and send us general feedback or ideas for the
Speaker 1: show to comments at how to citizen dot com. Speaking
Speaker 1: of that domain name, visit how to citizen dot com
Speaker 1: to sign up for our newsletter or learn about upcoming events.
Speaker 1: And if you like the show, spread the word tell somebody.
Speaker 1: If you don't, definitely just keep it to yourself. Appreciate you.
Speaker 1: How does Citizen with barrettune Day is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio podcasts and dust like productions. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are Me barrettun Day, Thurston, Elizabeth Stewart, and Misha Yusa.
Speaker 1: Our producers are Stephanie Cone and Ali Kilts. Kelly Prime
Speaker 1: is our editor, Valentino Rivera is our engineer, and Sam
Speaker 1: Paulson is our apprentice. Original music by Andrew Eapen. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced and sound designed by Stephanie Cone. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Joel Smith from I Heart Radio.