WEBVTT - Why Is Our Economy So … White? (with Heather McGhee) 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.120 Hey, I'm Baritun Day Thurston and this is how to 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:09.080 citizen with Baritune Day in season two. We're talking about 0:00:09.119 --> 0:00:12.840 the money, because to be real is hard to citizen 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:23.000 when we can barely pay the bills. A few years ago, 0:00:23.640 --> 0:00:27.680 I got a Facebook message from someone claiming to be 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:32.640 my cousin. She had seen me on television and found 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:35.919 me on the internet. Now, when you're on television, a 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.479 lot of people claim to be your cousin, so I 0:00:38.560 --> 0:00:41.879 was a little bit suspicious. But we met up in 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:45.000 a safe public place and she indeed was my cousin. 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.519 She had photos I have had vague memories. They definitely 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:53.640 weren't doctored. She was on my father's side of the family, 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:56.960 people I hadn't seen since his death when I was 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.440 a very young child. My cousin revealed to me that 0:01:01.160 --> 0:01:06.240 my father's mother was still alive. That would make her 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:10.880 my only living grandparents. I was so used to just 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.480 me and my older sister being the whole family. The 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:17.640 idea of a few generations separated that was a big deal. 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:22.520 So I met up with my grandmother. Of course, I 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.679 asked a lot of questions about my father, and then 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.400 I caught myself, and I said, I said, ask this 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:34.520 nineties something year old black woman about herself, her journey, 0:01:34.760 --> 0:01:40.959 her childhood. When were you born? Where did you grow 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:46.240 up grandma, nineteen twenties, Orangeburg, South Carolina. Did you go 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.640 to school? I asked her, Oh, yeah, we went to school. 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:54.000 Where did you live? On my daddy's farm, all six 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:56.800 of us kids, And we were proud because he owned 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:59.880 his own farm. He wasn't a share cropper. He at 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:03.520 really owned his phone. What was that like? And what 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:07.520 was school like? And she told me that every year 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:11.239 all the kids would have to gather the farm, not 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:14.919 just her daddy's farm, but the farms of other white 0:02:14.960 --> 0:02:18.440 residents in the area. And naive me, I thought, oh, 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.560 maybe this is like a jobs program. All the kids 0:02:20.960 --> 0:02:22.480 have to do this. I don't know what life in 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:26.360 the nineteen twenties and thirties was like. But no, that 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:29.560 was too simple to naive, to innocent. She and her 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.480 siblings had to work for free on the farms of 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:39.520 white residents in that area because her father needed to 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:44.280 get credit extended by shop owners in the main shopping district. 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:46.839 They couldn't make everything they needed. You had to buy 0:02:46.880 --> 0:02:49.400 stuff and people use credit. But as a condition of 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:54.760 extending him credit, those shopkeepers demanded and were able to get, 0:02:55.400 --> 0:03:02.360 the free labor of his children that I was not 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:08.200 prepared for. And it made me angry because not only 0:03:08.720 --> 0:03:14.080 was my grandmother's labor exploited, her childhood was exploited. She 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:17.959 was taken out of school, another cost to be paid 0:03:18.040 --> 0:03:24.520 by only some people in America. My grandmother had to 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:30.680 work for free, had to miss out on literal educational opportunities. 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:35.000 She left Orangeburg with her husband pretty much as soon 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:36.920 as she could. It's why I grew up in Washington, 0:03:37.000 --> 0:03:42.240 d C. Doesn't own that land anymore either. Today's wealth 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:45.839 inequality may not look exactly the same as it did 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:48.600 in nineteen twenties and nineteen thirty South Carolina, but we 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.280 still live with it. And it's not a vague thing, 0:03:52.360 --> 0:03:56.000 Oh wealth inequality from academic doing the study. No, it's 0:03:56.320 --> 0:04:01.960 it's real, and it exists along racial lines. The rich 0:04:02.080 --> 0:04:05.320 tend to be wider, the poor tend to be black 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.120 or in. That is not a mistake, that's by design. 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.560 Where does that come from? I wanted to find out. 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:17.920 They closed the entire parks and Recreation department, They sold 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:22.400 off the animals in the zoo, all to avoid sharing 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:28.200 it with black folks. We're spending this entire season looking 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:31.560 at the division rooted in wealth inequality in this country, 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.720 and of course, like we always do what we can 0:04:34.760 --> 0:04:39.200 do about it, but to do something about it, we've 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:43.640 got to understand it. After the break, my guest Heather 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:47.479 McGee breaks down the driving force of American economic exclusion 0:04:47.640 --> 0:05:05.640 via the swimming pool. Oh M, this is happening. What's up, hi, sweetheart? 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:09.000 Is very good to be with you. My guest, Heather 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:12.400 McGee is the former president of the anti racist advocacy 0:05:12.520 --> 0:05:16.479 organization DEMOS. She traveled all over the United States to 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:19.880 see for herself the economic impact racism was having on 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:23.720 all Americans and to write her book, The Sum of Us, 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.680 What Racism cost Everyone and How we can Prosper Together. 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:32.440 A simple question, Can you introduce yourself and what you do. 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:36.600 My name is Heather McGee. I am the author of 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:39.800 the new book The Some of Us, What Racism costs 0:05:40.360 --> 0:05:45.719 Everyone and how we can prosper together. That's all you 0:05:45.760 --> 0:05:48.440 need to know about me anymore. I'm just a writer, 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:51.920 you know, That's all I am. I wander the country 0:05:53.760 --> 0:05:57.360 collecting stories. You know, we have like typing machines now 0:05:57.480 --> 0:06:04.120 right school? What what were you before you were just 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:09.160 a writer? I was a policy wonk for about twenty years. 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:11.400 I helped to build and then I was the president 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:16.279 of Demos, which advanced and designed solutions to inequality. You know, 0:06:16.400 --> 0:06:20.120 for me, my ultimate goal was to try to make 0:06:20.680 --> 0:06:24.680 more economic opportunity for more people and to have more 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:27.960 justice for all. Well, how did you first get interested 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:32.359 in the economy? You know, I can't unscramble that egg 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.159 very well, and I'm really bad at my own origin story. 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:39.720 But I was born on South side of Chicago. I 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:44.880 remember seeing evictions and plant closures and the various things 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.080 that were going on. The new figure show unemployment spreading, 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:52.520 leaving nine point nine million Americans without jobs. Alert since 0:06:52.640 --> 0:06:56.120 laborers out by station wagon to perform hundreds of evictions 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:58.839 for the county each year, with members of my family 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.760 losing job lubs and being foreclosed on and all of that. 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:05.400 And and I was raised by a single mother, and 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:09.159 I saw the demonization of black, particularly single moms in 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.600 the nineties under the welfare reform debate. It just felt 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.880 like the kind of dominant narrative for why, you know, 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:19.720 the sort of deserving no question around the economy, like 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:25.840 the bootstraps narrative, the idea that basically people were poor 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:29.800 because of bad decisions was really false. It didn't fit. 0:07:29.880 --> 0:07:33.400 Didn't that up, you know? So I I was always 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:38.080 interested in the big why. What is this bootstrap narrative? 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:44.440 It's the idea basically that the people who are doing 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:49.080 well economically are doing so because they're simply better than 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.360 everybody else, and that if you are struggling, if you 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.640 find yourself broke, it's probably because of some bad decisions 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:59.120 that you made. It's a very individualistic way of seeing 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:04.440 the world. And I've since learned that narrative is itself 0:08:04.440 --> 0:08:07.520 really racialized, right. It's that idea that there's just such 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:11.600 a hierarchy of human value and human worth and that 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:15.720 other ring that distancing is made very easy by the 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.800 illusion of racial difference. So you're coming up in the 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:26.840 eighties in Chicago and you're hearing this narrative, this bootstrap 0:08:27.000 --> 0:08:31.440 narrative of deserved nous. But you said it didn't add up? 0:08:32.040 --> 0:08:35.880 So what was the conflict? What didn't square well? I 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:37.840 just felt like the people I knew who worked the 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:42.360 hardest were those single moms. You know, my mom was 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:47.199 always working, and she was always working in the community 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:54.120 with other usually black single moms, who were you know, 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:57.960 making a way out of no way. The more I 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:03.560 learned that the things that people often think of as choices. 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:08.240 Am I able to continue to going to school to 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:10.560 college or do I have to drop out in order 0:09:10.600 --> 0:09:13.640 to feed my family? Am I able to stay at 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:15.800 home with my newborn? Or do I have to go 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.040 back to work. Am I able to buy a house? 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:21.319 Or am I always going to rent? These are all 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.640 things that are often interpreted by individuals as individual choices, 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.720 but the terms of them are really set at the 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.199 policy level. And so for me, when I first started 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.599 to really see that and understand that is that there 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:41.199 laws and policies and decisions that are made by powerful 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:46.679 actors that close or open doors to individuals along the 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.480 path of their life, it was a big aha. It 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:51.960 was a big like Okay, now now we're talking like 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:55.240 this is how we can really make life a little 0:09:55.240 --> 0:10:00.000 bit sweeter for more people. So you describe this realization 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.760 and that the choice is available are determined by policies 0:10:03.920 --> 0:10:07.440 that other people make. Do you remember an early moment 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:12.240 where you're like Oh, that policy creates the set of 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:17.440 choices people have to select from. I mean, I think 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:21.920 during the welfare form debate, which centered off and around 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:28.800 single mothers, there was a lot that was discussed in 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:33.480 the politics of it about encouraging work welfare to work. 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:36.920 Welfare is not a lifestyle. There's as sound clips of 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.160 Bill Clinton out there, we don't want to make this 0:10:39.320 --> 0:10:42.640 a lifestyle. What we are trying to do today is 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.600 to overcome the flaws of the welfare system for the 0:10:46.640 --> 0:10:50.199 people who are trapped on. From now on, our nation's 0:10:50.200 --> 0:10:53.080 answer to this great social challenge will no longer be 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:56.000 never any cycle of welfare. It will be the dignity 0:10:56.040 --> 0:11:01.640 of power and the athocate work. Yeah where which you know, 0:11:01.840 --> 0:11:09.959 when it was clear that if you could find a job, 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.959 it wasn't actually gonna nothing, none of the options We're 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:17.679 gonna pay enough for somebody to actually not be poor anymore. 0:11:17.880 --> 0:11:21.880 Welfare kept you basically poor. A minimum waves job kept 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:27.120 you poor. The ability to work your way into the 0:11:27.120 --> 0:11:31.880 middle class had long disappeared. When you say that, the 0:11:32.960 --> 0:11:37.960 so the pathway to the middle class was closed? When 0:11:38.559 --> 0:11:43.880 why did that happen? Well, this is the story that 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:47.360 I then learned once I started working at Demos when 0:11:47.360 --> 0:11:50.600 I was twenty two, and I was the first hire 0:11:50.840 --> 0:11:53.880 other than the director of the program in the Economic 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:57.200 Opportunity Program, and this was phenomenal. This was my dream job. 0:11:57.640 --> 0:12:00.320 So it was then that I really learned kind of 0:12:00.360 --> 0:12:05.000 the progressive economic orthodoxy, which teaches that there was a 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:10.520 period of dramatic expansion of the middle class. Hunger drove 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:13.880 our people to the breadlines. Thankfully, we waited, waited for 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.319 some sign of better days. Then came the federal government's 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:21.440 work program One by Want, where you know, tens of 0:12:21.480 --> 0:12:25.360 millions of people made different working class into the middle 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:30.080 class through this massive economic expansion in insecurity, you know, 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:33.400 through the New Deal, through social securities, through the subsidization 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:38.800 of housing. They were guaranteed benefit pensions. We had these 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:43.200 state funded colleges in every state where the government picked 0:12:43.240 --> 0:12:46.840 up the tab for college. Hundreds of homes have been 0:12:46.880 --> 0:12:49.840 bread from the bondage of poverty, their bread winners buying 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:52.559 security and hope in their new jobs. It was just 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:55.480 sort of this period of time where everything kind of 0:12:55.559 --> 0:12:59.120 aligned to make the greatest middle class the world had 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.800 ever seen. It sounds like the American dream. It sounds 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:05.480 like the American Dream, ding ding ding, You good. That's it. 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:07.600 That was it. That was when we had it, you know. 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:10.920 But the question is who was the we. So much 0:13:10.960 --> 0:13:15.160 of what I just described was done from a federal 0:13:15.240 --> 0:13:21.360 policy level in an explicitly racially exclusive way. Both Social 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:26.000 Security and the labor standards excluded the categories that black 0:13:26.040 --> 0:13:30.000 folks mostly worked in agriculture and domestic work. The g 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:35.239 I Bill excluded millions of black veterans because of segregation 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:39.640 in higher education. And so each of these ways that 0:13:39.720 --> 0:13:44.040 the middle class was subsidized, that we had handouts and 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:48.280 free stuff for white people in the early twentieth century 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:54.680 created the American Dream and on racially exclusive terms, and 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:59.319 then the Civil rights movement basically called the question said okay, 0:13:59.559 --> 0:14:05.200 are we're going to live up to our ideals? And economically? 0:14:05.280 --> 0:14:07.920 This is where the story that's at the heart of 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:10.800 my book that some of us comes in. It was 0:14:11.200 --> 0:14:14.760 in addition to all those great freebees, there was also 0:14:15.520 --> 0:14:18.280 this building boom of public amenities like parks and libraries 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:23.600 and schools and actually swimming pools. And what happened when 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.680 many of these swimming pools that were segregated for whites 0:14:26.720 --> 0:14:30.000 only were forced to integrate, and black famili said, hey, 0:14:30.040 --> 0:14:32.560 those are our tax dollars creating this so called public 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:35.480 swimming pool. And they do these grand resort style pools, 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:39.200 like thousands of swimmers. They were desegregated, and black people 0:14:39.240 --> 0:14:41.920 showed up and white people hung out with them, and 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.800 they swam together, and they played together, and they lived 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.560 happily ever after, and they made babies. And that's why 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:54.520 there's no there's no race anymore because nineteen fifties the 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:59.160 swimming pool created all of these mixed marriages. Well so, 0:14:59.160 --> 0:15:02.200 so obviously that's more of an American fantasy. We're describing 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:06.480 what actually happened. What actually happened was that in town 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.240 after town, and it's very important to me to point 0:15:09.280 --> 0:15:11.600 out not just in the Jim Crow South, but in 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:16.960 Ohio and Washington State and New Jersey, the town's drained 0:15:17.000 --> 0:15:19.920 the public pools rather than integrate them. And you mean 0:15:20.120 --> 0:15:24.120 literally like took the water out, literally took the water out, 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:27.600 backed up trucks of dirt, dumped it in, paved it, 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.240 over seated it with grass. In Montgomery, Alabama, where I 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:33.080 went on the journey to right the some of us, 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.920 they closed the entire Parks and Recreation department. They sold 0:15:36.920 --> 0:15:40.640 off the animals in the zoo, and they kept the 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.280 Parks and Recreation Department of Montgomery closed for a decade, 0:15:45.760 --> 0:15:51.800 all to avoid sharing it with black folks. The idea 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:56.640 that what's the saying you would cut off your nose 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.080 despite your face, that you would not only deny i 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:06.160 black people access to the free goodies that everybody's tax 0:16:06.200 --> 0:16:10.560 dollars are paying for m but that you would I mean, 0:16:11.640 --> 0:16:14.920 you cancel the public park, you canceled the swimming pool 0:16:15.600 --> 0:16:19.360 for all the children and all the families. In your research, 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:23.680 did you find any resistance to that, extreme resistance with 0:16:23.760 --> 0:16:28.160 somebody out there like, um, actually, look, maybe we could 0:16:28.160 --> 0:16:30.880 just timeshare. I mean, what do we literally have to 0:16:30.960 --> 0:16:36.240 fill the pool with concrete? That's that's pretty far, Um, 0:16:36.320 --> 0:16:39.240 there was. I mean, as always throughout history, there have 0:16:39.280 --> 0:16:41.520 been the race traders, right, there have been white folks 0:16:41.560 --> 0:16:45.160 who said no, you know, who have stood up and 0:16:45.200 --> 0:16:48.640 stood in solidarity with black folks. They're white folks who 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:50.920 didn't want to stand in solidarity with black folks, but 0:16:51.000 --> 0:16:54.240 were just upset because the pool was gone. But what happened, 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.520 and this has really been very similar to the loss 0:16:57.520 --> 0:17:00.840 of public benefits throughout our society. Right, like take take 0:17:00.880 --> 0:17:04.280 public colleges. What is once a public good becomes a 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:07.160 private luxury. And so then you get this rat race. 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:10.479 Right then it's like, okay, you have that individualized response. Right, 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:13.080 let me take another job, let me mortgage in my house, 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:14.840 let me re fi, you know, let me let me 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:17.639 figure it out on my own. And that's been the 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:22.280 sort of slow, you know, ratcheting down of our expectations 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.439 of what the public could do for us, and we 0:17:24.520 --> 0:17:27.800 put it all on our own shoulders. And so literally, 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:30.520 with the pool story, what ended up happening is you 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:36.280 saw this advent of backyard pools in the Washington, D c. Area. 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:41.600 You had, after pool integration, over a hundred private members 0:17:41.600 --> 0:17:44.520 only swim clubs that sprang up out of nowhere. And 0:17:44.560 --> 0:17:46.199 so sure you could pay a few hundred dollars a 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.160 year for your kid to swim. Used to be free. Okay, 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:51.960 all right, we'll keep it moving. I'll make more money. 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:57.199 So you're you're privatizing public goods and limiting access to 0:17:57.240 --> 0:18:00.520 those who can afford it, which is public policy connected 0:18:00.640 --> 0:18:05.600 to your economics. Look at you, professor, Okay, So so 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:09.000 tell me this though, I'm trying to flash back to 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.960 this desegregating America, and I'm trying to put my health 0:18:13.080 --> 0:18:15.480 inside of the mind and body of a white American 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.840 who's like, the black people are coming. No, we got 0:18:19.080 --> 0:18:23.600 got shut down these pools. But do they have enough 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:30.959 discipline and savvy to explain it in a way that 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:32.879 doesn't say we just don't want to share this with 0:18:32.960 --> 0:18:36.520 black people. You know, the pools are pretty clear. Actually 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:38.800 you saw me. I tried to help him out. I 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:40.320 was like, think, come on, they must have had some 0:18:40.400 --> 0:18:44.440 kind of stories, some some kind of bus sell it. No. 0:18:44.600 --> 0:18:49.679 I mean so in St. Louis, possibly the largest pool 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.600 in America at the time, the first day of the 0:18:53.680 --> 0:18:57.480 integrated swimming there there was a mob of two hundred 0:18:57.720 --> 0:19:01.280 white folks who came and beat every black person in sight. 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:04.840 I later saw an interview with one of the white 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:08.040 guys who ended up in the hospital from the melee, 0:19:08.800 --> 0:19:12.480 and he later on would say, you know, in his 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.160 elder years, he would say, you know, we thought we 0:19:15.160 --> 0:19:18.400 were doing the right thing. You know, they were taught 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:24.560 this is the thing. They were taught by our government, 0:19:25.080 --> 0:19:29.639 by their church, by all of the rules of society 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:34.119 that we were so unclean and unworthy that we should 0:19:34.119 --> 0:19:37.679 not be allowed to swim with them, go to school 0:19:37.680 --> 0:19:39.960 with them, drink from the same water fountains them, walk 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:41.959 on the sidewalk next to them. I mean, you know, 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.680 And what do you take from all of that information 0:19:45.800 --> 0:19:49.439 is that there's something terribly wrong with these people, and 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:53.720 so we must guard what is ours from the incursion 0:19:53.800 --> 0:20:01.439 of them into it, us and them exactly. Yeah, So 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:07.400 you've got this book. It's called The Sum of Us. 0:20:08.240 --> 0:20:13.119 Tell me more about this book. Ah, So, The Some 0:20:13.320 --> 0:20:17.240 of Us is my attempt after nearly twenty years working 0:20:17.240 --> 0:20:20.600 in economic policy, trying to get the right data in 0:20:20.680 --> 0:20:25.639 the hands of policymakers, and mostly finding it to be 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:29.840 far too difficult to convince the people in power to 0:20:29.920 --> 0:20:32.879 do the thing that was obviously in the economic interest 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.960 of most people and in the interest of economic growth 0:20:36.000 --> 0:20:41.840 in our country. So you say, you're proposing these policies 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.680 that are obviously in the benefit of most people and 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:48.919 economic growth. So that, to me sounds like one of 0:20:48.960 --> 0:20:53.720 those win win situations. Why was it hard to sell 0:20:53.880 --> 0:21:02.560 these ideas racism? Dang it? Not again. No, I'm sort 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.800 of joking, but I'm not really joking. Um, that's what 0:21:05.920 --> 0:21:07.760 I wanted to find out, right. The first line in 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.400 my book is have you ever wondered why we can't 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:12.960 seem to have nice things? And by nice things, I 0:21:13.000 --> 0:21:18.159 really do mean like really universal healthcare, a modern world 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:22.600 class or even just reliable infrastructure, a public health system 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:28.040 to contain and handle pandemics and save lives. And it 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:31.920 was clear that kind of the tools that I had 0:21:31.960 --> 0:21:36.320 been using, you know, the economic policy research, the legislative 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:40.480 drafting and the congressional testimony and all of that was 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:44.520 basically falling on deaf years, and inequality was getting wider 0:21:44.560 --> 0:21:48.760 and wider every year. I just felt like I needed 0:21:48.800 --> 0:21:52.040 to spend some time to figure out what was really 0:21:52.080 --> 0:21:55.960 going on underneath the surface. And what I ended up 0:21:55.960 --> 0:22:00.600 finding was that the biggest impediment to our progress in America, 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.439 the reason why we can't have those nice things, is 0:22:04.560 --> 0:22:11.240 that there's this zero sum worldview, this idea that there's 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:13.480 an US and of them, we're not actually all on 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:19.720 the same team, and that, in fact, progress for people 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:22.679 of color has to come at white folks expense. And 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.200 I say that because white people are much more likely 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:30.679 to have this zero sum worldview. Black folks don't believe 0:22:30.760 --> 0:22:33.280 that progress for us has to come at white folks expense. 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:38.159 And it's that zero sum worldview that has led many 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.280 white folks, in fact, the majority since the Civil Rights 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:48.919 Movement too politically sort of cheer the destruction of and 0:22:49.000 --> 0:22:54.280 resent the provision of public goods that could help them 0:22:54.320 --> 0:22:57.440 and their families in many instances because it could help 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:04.440 the people on the other team. After the break, how 0:23:04.480 --> 0:23:07.840 this US versus them mentality got started, and how we 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:20.960 can undo it. So, Heather, what I'm hearing from you 0:23:21.080 --> 0:23:23.879 is that, at least since the Civil Rights Movement, white 0:23:23.880 --> 0:23:26.920 Americans have been opposing policies that would make life better 0:23:26.960 --> 0:23:31.200 for them because those same policies would also benefit black people. 0:23:32.160 --> 0:23:35.199 Is there something unique about this white American response? Or 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:38.359 is that just human nature? Such a good question, and 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:40.640 I wanted to know, right because on the one hand, 0:23:40.680 --> 0:23:42.760 if it if it is just human nature, if it's like, oh, 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:44.680 we're we're just tribal, you know, it's who we are. 0:23:44.880 --> 0:23:47.199 We're competitive by nature. And I was like, Okay, well 0:23:47.200 --> 0:23:49.600 then I give up. You know, we'll figure out some 0:23:49.640 --> 0:23:53.040 other route, you know. Um. But the fact that it 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:56.600 was a view held more by white Americans and less 0:23:56.680 --> 0:23:59.840 by Americans of color, and that white people in dead 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:03.240 arn't in France and England and Spain didn't feel the 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:07.680 same way, right, they loved their public goods. It felt like, Okay, 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:09.280 I gotta get to the to the bottom of this. 0:24:09.400 --> 0:24:12.639 And that's why the the first thing I did was 0:24:13.040 --> 0:24:15.960 kind of immersed myself in an unvarnished history of the 0:24:16.000 --> 0:24:18.720 country through that lens. Okay, where did the zero sum 0:24:18.960 --> 0:24:23.080 story come from? And so looking back at our history, 0:24:23.200 --> 0:24:28.160 the zero sum was an essential foundation for the economic 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:32.240 structure of our country at the beginning, where our original 0:24:32.240 --> 0:24:36.240 economic model was stolen people, stolen land, and stolen labor. 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:42.240 And in order to justify that within a Christian society, 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:46.440 they had to make those people who were being stolen 0:24:47.080 --> 0:24:50.000 less than human and therefore they had to create this 0:24:50.359 --> 0:24:55.720 racial hierarchy, this racial taxonomy, and the model was I profit, 0:24:55.800 --> 0:24:58.159 you lose. You don't get to share any of the 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.560 games of your land, your effort, your labor, nothing. Slavery 0:25:02.640 --> 0:25:05.920 and settler colonialism is about as zero sung as it comes. 0:25:07.080 --> 0:25:10.600 But even then, and this was the real like aha 0:25:10.800 --> 0:25:17.120 for me, I had to admit that actually that worst 0:25:17.280 --> 0:25:23.160 possible economic model only truly maximally benefited a narrow elite 0:25:23.160 --> 0:25:27.639 back then of white people, and so that white slave owning, 0:25:27.720 --> 0:25:33.480 landowning elite had to convince the far more numerous, landless, 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:37.159 indentured white folks who were sitting there in the you know, 0:25:37.320 --> 0:25:42.119 rocky fields alongside the black folks, that they were better 0:25:42.200 --> 0:25:48.040 than the person down down the row, and that in fact, 0:25:48.880 --> 0:25:52.880 justice or freedom for black folks would be a threat 0:25:53.080 --> 0:25:57.800 to white folks. Period. The old divide and conquer, Ye 0:25:57.920 --> 0:26:01.439 old divide and conquer. So that's where it came from, 0:26:01.480 --> 0:26:04.600 and then it's been reanimated generation after generation. This idea 0:26:04.600 --> 0:26:08.800 of job competition giving white folks everyday white folks just 0:26:09.080 --> 0:26:16.120 enough taste of privilege that they could choose their race 0:26:16.520 --> 0:26:22.520 over their class as pretty convincing story, backed up by 0:26:22.760 --> 0:26:27.520 a few centuries now of storytelling. So tell me about 0:26:27.560 --> 0:26:29.879 the traveling you did while you were researching and writing 0:26:29.920 --> 0:26:33.000 this book. So I talked to a whole bunch of people. 0:26:34.040 --> 0:26:42.240 So I went, for example, to Mississippi, where the workers 0:26:42.240 --> 0:26:47.159 at a car factory had just voted against organizing into 0:26:47.200 --> 0:26:51.600 a union with the United Auto Workers. Nisson is unable 0:26:51.680 --> 0:26:58.800 to provide decent wages at decent working conditions here in Captain, Mississippi, 0:26:59.160 --> 0:27:03.000 And for me growing up in the Midwest, where those 0:27:03.080 --> 0:27:07.600 kinds of jobs, those unionized manufacturing jobs were the best jobs, 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:11.119 I was like, Okay, why would anybody vote know to 0:27:11.520 --> 0:27:14.560 having that kind of power. So I wanted to go 0:27:14.840 --> 0:27:17.159 down and sit with folks, and so I flew and 0:27:17.160 --> 0:27:21.840 then I drove to a UM, a kind of nondescript 0:27:22.040 --> 0:27:26.600 workers center in a strip mall, which was the place 0:27:26.640 --> 0:27:29.800 where the pro union workers would kind of meet before 0:27:29.800 --> 0:27:32.800