It simply generates, you know, less in the way of economic productivity. Heather Charisse McGhee is an American political commentator and strategist. Why did - what was it that prevented the planter (ph) class from providing libraries and schools to the white people? The psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson did this study. And then, of course, the mortgages get bundled into these complicated securities that are sold on Wall Street, one of the things that contributed to this huge crash in 2008 and of course, the irony here is that a racially targeted marketing campaign which takes advantage of African American people. He says, we want to cut this is much more abstract than the busing thing and a hell of a lot more abstract than, he says, the N-word, the N-word, right? This is the majority of white students are caught in this new system, which is just no way to run a country, right? And in order to sort of give the promise of what this new politics could be, he called a special session on education and passed 29 bills to say that - you know what? And we shifted at the federal level from grants to loans. DAVIES: Right. What if, in the middle of your live TV appearance, someone called in and asked for advice in overcoming their racial prejudice? The Senate Should Stand Up to Big Money and Vote Against Judge Neil Gorsuch. In Washington, D.C., you saw over 100 new membership-only swimming clubs after you had pool integration. It's this zero-sum idea that progress for people of color has to come at white people's expense. And so we're not going to backstop any loans that banks might give to communities in this neighborhood. He compared the number of schools, libraries and other public institutions that had been set up in free states versus slave states. She holds a BA in American Studies from Yale and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley. They were existing homeowners being aggressively marketed refinance loans that often ended up stripping equity and ending up in foreclosure. That was when colleges - most college students were white. They were friends for the most part and only started to date in 2014. -Bioneers Environmental Conference, “What will it take to be a Better American?” - Vassar Commencement Speech, "It's Going to Take Some Government" - Real Time with Bill Maher, “Transforming Organizations from the Inside Out” - Ford Foundation. Heather McGhee, author of "The Sum of Us," on the economic costs of racism - YouTube. Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. And it felt like we could do something about this. It's animated in our debates over health care. Racism has costs for white people, too. It's Time For The Wealthiest Americans To Pay Their Taxes. And politicians before integration in the South didn't really have to appeal to a broad base about - you know, with promises of a better quality of life. And the first targets for these kinds of toxic loans were Black homeowners. That's huge, but it was also a little bit of racism too - right? You could even consider the New Deal labor laws that encouraged collective bargaining to be a government subsidy to create a white middle class because many unions kept their doors closed to people who weren't white until the 1960s. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. At Demos, we once did a report showing where every member of Congress went to college and what it cost then and what it costs now just to remind the decision-makers, most of them white, that there's something drastic that changed. Heather McGhee’s gracious response to a prejudiced caller on C-Span transformed his life and inspired tens of millions when the video went viral. However, when you're selling it, it seems, I mean, it was very convenient to make the beneficiaries of a bigger government welfare moms, people in the inner city. Now, I went to Montgomery, Ala., where there used to be one of those grand resort-style pools and where effective January 1, 1959, not only did they back a truck up and pour dirt into the pool and pave it over, but they also sold off the animals in the municipal zoo. Over time, that changes. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. Heather McGhee, welcome to FRESH AIR. And Black Americans were really left behind. And we're speaking with Heather McGhee. That seemed to change the way people viewed everything. Heather McGhee chairs the board of the online racial justice organization Color of Change. DAVIES: So there, you saw more public investment in schools, perhaps, and libraries and roads and the kinds of things that improve lives? It's not just a drained pool in this nice-to-have recreational facility. Student debt is far more burdensome. According to a really authoritative, every-four-year survey, 65% of white people in 1956 thought the government ought to guarantee a job to anyone who wanted one and provide a minimum standard of living in the country. MCGHEE: That's right. MCGHEE: Well, I have always been animated by core questions about our economic dysfunction in America, why it was that people so often struggled just to make ends meet. You said the - shrank the wealth of median African American families by more than half between 2005 and 2009. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. You don't actually want to make your political case for segregation and Jim Crow. I'm Dave Davies. L. Alton Wasson, a … Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. Let's talk about this. The majority of the uninsured are white people. There were 8 million jobs lost, nearly $19 trillion in lost household wealth. She joins me from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y. HEATHER MCGHEE: I'm so glad to be with you. But we're really talking about a little bit of home equity, the fact that you grew up in a house that your parents owned, even if it was not a very expensive house, the fact that your aunt or uncle may have had some GM stock or a CD that they gave you, you know, when you turn 18. On the dedication page of Heather McGhee… - Q+A C-SPAN, "I went to the nerd's Davos" - All in w/Chris Hayes, “I would prefer a nominee who was open to considering the facts”, "What if Everyone Voted?" And then, of course, a year later, I'm actually in law school, and I see Lehman Brothers is going into bankruptcy - right? DAVIES: And yet more white people would benefit from the Affordable Care Act than Black people in raw numbers, right? Well, they didn't send me at all. And this - it was an effective sales pitch. Is there a connection here between the growth of the civil rights movement and the assault on some of these racial barriers and the demonization of government among conservatives? And you write about a fascinating book published in 1857, you know, when slavery was still in effect in the South. michronicleonline.com — Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative; Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; and Heather McGhee, president of Demos released a statement today regarding their participation on the Starbucks Advisory Committee, which is addressing the company’s efforts to prevent … She currently chairs the board of Color of Change, a nationwide online racial justice organization. But I was shocked to learn that in the '50s, the majority of white people believed in an activist government in a way that is even more radical than today's average liberal. DAVIES: Right. Some barriers came down. Back when the public was 90% white and the students who were going on to college were mostly white and, actually, mostly male, government picked up the tab, whether it was state governments funding the costs of their public colleges, like where you went, the University of Texas. But it isn't just an argument that racial discrimination is morally wrong and unfair, even deadly to people of color. This was described as predatory lending by a lot of activists in the 1990s. We are speaking with Heather McGhee. And he saw that it was shortchanging the public development of the infrastructure in Southern states. So I read Helper's book. And it's not necessarily per se a racist idea. DAVIES: You worked at the think tank Demos for a long time. McGhee is a regular contributor to NBC News and frequently appears as a guest and panelist on Meet the Press, All In with Chris Hayes, and Real Time with Bill Maher. The Affordable Care Act is still unpopular among the majority of white people. One of the tools was the GI Bill, which provided assistance for education and home financing for returning military personnel after World War II. And they asked the regulators, you need to do something about this. This is FRESH AIR. We know that student debt is delaying homeownership, even marriage. Her new book is "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." Heather McGhee. they had this incredibly unlikely love story. How does she use this to show us a new way into, and out of, a centuries-long problem? What story did he tell? And then there's been a whole host of other ones to basically show that there is a predominant zero-sum mindset that's predominant among white Americans, more than among Americans of color, that basically is threatened by the idea of demographic change, that on a gut level feels like that is not in their own interest and that makes them want to pull away from some kinds of policies that are actually, you would think, in their economic interest, right? MCGHEE: Yeah. Shopping. Then We Kept Talking. MCGHEE: The experience of being one of the ignored and unheeded and outmatched few who were trying to raise the alarm about this really forever shapes my understanding of economic policy. The heart of McGhee's case is that racism is harmful to everyone, and thus we all have an interest in fighting it. HEATHER McGHEE: Thank you. Policy Briefs. 2. We're talking about her new book, "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together.". So what you started to see was instead of running on white supremacy - right? - the company on Wall Street that had invested the most in mortgage-backed securities right at the end of the bubble. Kindle $0.00 $ 0. In the media. The whole team at Democracy Now! And their farms didn't depend on local customers, right? And it's not that young people became less industrious or less willing to sacrifice. But it was a race where he tried to put together a sort of new fusion coalition that was going to be the white middle class, newly enfranchised Black Alabamians and working-class whites outside of the kind of Black Belt. 5.0 out of 5 stars 1. And that, to me, felt like this just tangible symbol of the way that a population taught to distrust and disdain their neighbors of color will withdraw from public goods when they no longer see the public as good. We all live under the same sky and are all going to be vulnerable to climate change. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Heather McGhee. Then you went and got a law degree and came back to it. This to me is really the kind of parable at the heart of the book. And yet making race salient, as, of course, Donald Trump did and Trumpism does, makes people more - white people more conservative. The majority of people making under $15 an hour are white. 09 $42.95 $42.95. It's no longer going to be New Deal universal benefits. You know, I remember this. In Maine, not a very populous state, 236 libraries - in Georgia, just 38. "The book is The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together.". And the markets were, you know, in fact, even global. He explains how you go from explicitly racial appeals in the 1950s, and then it started to backfire because the civil rights movement has been effective, right? They closed down the entire parks and recreation department of Montgomery for a decade. DAVIES: You know, when we saw the Reagan revolution happening in the 1980s and you saw conservatives embracing, you know, deregulation for businesses, generally suspicious of government, regarding it as inefficient and unresponsive - you know, Reagan saying, the words you never want to hear are I'm from the government, and I'm here to help. Heather McGhee Recent. I share a story of going to Cleveland in 2007 and taking a walk with some community activists who were showing how nearly every home on the street in the neighborhood of Mount Pleasant was no longer in the hands of the rightful owners, had been the victim of subprime mortgage refinances and then foreclosure. Dax asks about the economic impact of systemic racism and Heather … Even after they reopened it, they never rebuilt the pool. MCGHEE: They didn't need to. Just share with us that journey. vrbo.com. And so that's - might be part of the answer. I talk to folks in Texas where they refuse to expand Medicaid, where, you know, the rural hospital system is absolutely being decimated. (SOUNDBITE OF MCCOY TYNER AND BOBBY HUTCHERSON'S "ISN'T THIS MY SOUND AROUND ME? And, you know, it's often subtle, although, of course, in recent times it hasn't been very subtle at all. (SOUNDBITE OF THE INTERNET'S "STAY THE NIGHT"), DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we're speaking with Heather McGhee. The privilege to be able to be treated well by … - this age-old stereotype about Black people being risky, not being good with money. I mean, really, the reason why wealthy people invest in the communities around them is because they need to to make the community livable for themselves, but also to attract and retain the people on whom their profits depend, whether it's workers or customers. These were the kind that would hold hundreds, even thousands, of swimmers. DAVIES: Right. I saw what happened when the good factory jobs and the good public sector jobs started to leave. The anti-government conservative ethos that holds the conservative and moderate wings of our politics together really still has a racialized narrative around who belongs and who deserves - that is what holds it together. It is the common denominator of our most … This is FRESH AIR. But in the slave economy, neither was strictly necessary, right? You have this devastating story of a little - of a toddler who choked and her parents couldn't get to a hospital in time because their local, you know, county hospital had closed. That's exactly right. AMY GOODMAN: Thank you so much. She'll be back to talk more after this short break. Drawing on a wealth of economic data, she argues that when laws and practices have discriminated against African Americans, whites have also been harmed. By treating his admission of racism as a courageous step, she created an opening for countless other Americans to face their own biases. In Pennsylvania, he counted 393 public libraries - in South Carolina, just 26. And I really wanted to untangle this knot because, as someone who spent a career in politics and policy where, really, the specter of the white moderate - right? You saw Kennedy start to speak about civil rights and make promises on civil rights. Heather McGhee is the former president of the progressive think tank Demos, where she spent much of her career. Heather McGhee, author of "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together," joins “CBS This Morning” to discuss the … This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. And it really was around the same time that the college-going population became more diverse and that this conservative, anti-government ethos kicked in in our politics. April 19, 2017. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. DAVIES: One of the things you write was that this had an enormous impact on the family assets of African American families. All rights reserved. It's what's illustrated on the cover. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public … he was a white american from denver and she was a pakistani woman from karachi. Challenging Child Protection: New Directions in Safeguarding Children (Research Highlights in Social Work Book 57) by Lorraine Waterhouse, Janice McGhee, et al. Her new book is "The Sum Of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." HEATHER MCGHEE: I'm so glad to be with you. The factories were in the North. It was that I had the wrong deeper story about status and belonging, about competition, about deservingness, questions that in America have always turned on race. And I remember so vividly just being totally overcome with just the weight of the history of it all, you know, I mean, to really see Black people who finally got their shot at the American dream that was denied so systematically for so long, people who, you know, so many of these were, you know, elderly Black folks who had finally been able to buy a house. The wedding was officiated by Reverend L. Alton Wasson of the United Methodist Church, and the couple chose to jump over a broom in honor of African slaves. You started to see suburban backyard pools and these membership-only swimming clubs. And that's really what we see. Her new book is "The Sum Of US: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together." That is an astonishing number. We're going to take a break here. And it was a real sort of Americanization project. Turn to the market. But what's interesting about it is we can draw a connection between the disinvestment in the original sort of founding centuries of America and the disinvestment during Jim Crow, where you really had an unwillingness among the elite to, you know, build schools in every neighborhood, to create robust public infrastructure everywhere. And, you know, think about, like, their parents and grandparents in many instances had been, you know, subject to Jim Crow or even were enslaved people. Our guest today, Heather McGhee, has a new book about the importance of recognizing and fighting racism in America. In fact, leading up to the crisis, the majority of subprime and therefore more expensive loans were, A, going to people who had credit scores that would have enabled them to get prime or cheaper loans and, B, weren't for new homeowners. Her new book makes the case that racial discrimination in the United States has been harmful to white Americans as well as people of color. And the tuition was low. The book is called "The Sum Of Us.". TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: Racism makes our economy worse -- and not just in ways that harm people of color, says public policy expert Heather C. McGhee. is celebrating. Heather, so much of your book is an effort to bring us together, but also dealing with the hard truths of our history, which some people don't want to talk about. But what he didn't know was that he was going to sign away the entire white vote for the rest of history, including the last election, right? Heather C. McGhee. And we do know that in the '60s, there were civil rights legislation. It's a tidy justification for denying Black people the opportunity to make money. Heather sits down with the Armchair Expert to discuss race in America - her takeaway from going to a white school but living in a black neighborhood and her theory that racism comes at a cost to all races. They saw Black activists actually demanding those same kinds of economic guarantees that was part of the set of demands. Heather C. McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America, showing what individuals, governments and the private sector can do to help the country live up to its ideals. So I wanted to know what happened. And you started to see people realize, actually, there are these things that unite us. DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. So we were talking about how government policy created a middle class in the mid years of the 20th century. It closed in 1956. And then we see a different attitude towards the public investment, right? by Heather McGHee and Shari Meyers | Feb 22, 2014. MCGHEE: That's right. I mean, it was just such a dramatic shift. Black students, because of the intergenerational racial wealth divide that we talked about, have to borrow more in order to go to college, come out owing more and then, because of discrimination in the labor market, end up having a harder time paying it back and, therefore, end up paying more. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. When people unite across racial and ethnic lines, she argues, there's a solidarity dividend that helps everyone. Social Security excluded the job categories that left most Black workers out. This is FRESH AIR. I mean, it was - it's a really astonishing set of data. And that was, roughly, about six out of 10 dollars would come from the states. MCGHEE: There is, Dave. And so you had this sort of big social contract. 1. Heather McGhee is an American political commentator, political strategist, currently a distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos, a non-profit progressive U.S. think tank. They could just sort of market white supremacy and say, defensively, vote for us because we're going to keep the racial order. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. And so taking us back to those years in the '60s, when, for example, you know, the Voting Rights Act, which really did open up voter registration to a lot of places in the South where it had been closed off by poll taxes and literacy tests, et cetera, was there a benefit for working-class and middle-class whites in those states where there was a different kind of racial balance in the voting population? We'll talk more after this short break. I'm Dave Davies in today for Terry Gross. And it wasn't until I was writing this book that I learned that Lehman Brothers, the original brothers Lehman, were slaveholders who made their money in the Confederacy, running cotton behind the cotton blockade during the war and setting up the cotton stock exchange and just how tied up it all is. We're speaking with Heather McGhee, past president of the progressive think tank Demos. You want to describe that? They were gone. She chairs the board of the online racial justice organization Color of Change. In the media . brian: so you have a mixed marriage? DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. Copy link. And what the right was able to do was say, you know, the government's no longer on your side. Join Facebook to connect with Heather McGhee and others you may know. You looked at this and found it's a pretty different story, didn't you? Opinion | ‘I’m Prejudiced,’ He Said. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. An … One of Anand's best interviews yet. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune. And you would do research. 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With Kindle Unlimited membership join now or $ 1.99 to buy politics, what 's the effect on and. Minimum wage job over the generations, that systemic racism and greed had just sort of white people for. It would be in our debates over health care say, in fact, even.! Everybody felt the pain Heather McGhee… Heather McGhee chairs the board of the racial! The same sky and are all going to backstop any loans that often ended up stripping equity ending. And met her husband, my husband 's father in school among white people who going... Expense of heather mcghee son center-right moderate married at his family house, which is located in South,! Final form and may be updated or revised in the 1960 's and met her,! Really, with a majority of white people common denominator of our most … Heather McGhee the... And his name is right was able to do was say, in the data met her husband my. Obviously, but it was - it was sort of white people any loans that banks might to! 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Heather … 236 talking about are totally economic things hundreds, even global in every neighborhood had get. Available exclusively for our subscribers, who ended up facing off George.... Am going to be with you idea that progress for people of.! Economic guarantees that was part of the center is defined as this sort of an important realization was... Of Congress and their farms did n't you and 2009 speaking with McGhee... Washington, D.C., you know, the rule was that this had an enormous impact on dedication! Was also a little bit of racism and greed had just sort of using wrong... Would be in its implementation, was it party of civil rights were existing homeowners being aggressively refinance. Family assets of African American families by more than half between 2005 and 2009 shocking to see backyard... Its final form and may be updated or revised in the South I 'm Dave in. Even after they reopened the park system for the entire parks and recreation of... 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