Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. The Coronavirus may be unique in American history, but we'll begin today with the way that the debate over the Coronavirus relief bill still going on and on Congress is fitting a classic pattern. Republicans are saying it's not about race when to a large degree it's about race. Here's a clip that we used on Monday of House Republican whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana on ABC over the weekend in which he never mentions race, but if you listen to it, it's kind of coded to push the buttons of a lot of white people.

Steve Scalise: If you said, "Do you want us to borrow that money from your children?" Because that's what this is. I think their answer might be a lot differently, and especially if you told them a fact that there's over a trillion dollars of money unspent from previous relief bills that were bipartisan. The money's still sitting in a bank account, and we're going to pass 1.9 trillion of additional spending to bailout failed states, to raise the minimum wage.

Brian: The borrowing from our children, the attack on blue state spending, the resentment toward a higher minimum wage sounds race-neutral. It's not. Now, as it happens, there's a whole new book that puts this debate in historical context by one of the nation's leading policy wonks, when Heather McGhee has been on the show in the past, it's been as president of the think tank, Demos, maybe some of you remember those appearances or her from that role in general.

Now she chairs the racial justice group Color of Change. She has a new book called The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Maybe you saw her related New York Times op-ed last week, called The Way Out of America Zero-Sum Thinking on Race and Wealth. The central point, American conservatism plays on racial resentment to shrink government spending that would actually be good for all races, Affordable Care Act, anyone?

But they're for big government when the beneficiaries are mostly white, GI Bill, anyone? And here we are again with the Coronavirus relief bill. Again, Heather McGhee's book is called The Sum S-U-M of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather, always good to have you on the show. Welcome back to WNYC.

Heather McGhee: Brian, thanks for having me.

Brian: Let's not start with this decade's economic crisis, the pandemic stress on family finances. Let's start with last decade's, the financial crisis that cost so many people their homes and their jobs, and you write about a grand bargain that both the Tea Party and President Obama's inner circle were working on that would make cuts to government programs that were originally passed to build a white middle class. Could you start with that story?

Heather: Yes, this was when I was in Washington working for Demos, and the country was hurting so much. A financial crash caused, I write in my book, by racist discriminatory lending that went unchecked, was causing the government to have to spend more in order to restart the economy, and tax revenues were falling.

We were looking at deficits year-to-year and a national debt that appeared to be growing at the time, and there was this sudden under a Black president idea that we needed to radically change the size of government, and everyone was talking about 2040 and 2050, that's when we need to change the size of government cuts; Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, and put a cap on government spending.

Whereas for us is progressive economics folks, we were looking at the other fact on the ground, which was rising inequality, the fact that corporations weren't paying retirement benefits that people were drowning in debt. We said, "Wait a second," or I actually sat on a call with a bunch of white male economists, I said--

[crosstalk]

Brian: Progressive progressive economists who were your allies in this fight?

Heather: Absolutely. We were on the call to make a plan to try to point out the numbers to fight this idea of fiscal retrenchment. I said, "Well, when are we going to make the point that we're talking about 2040, 2040, these are demographic change tipping points." This is when the majority of the country becomes people of color, and that's exactly when these things white power structure in Washington, say Barack Obama are saying we should dramatically have a smaller government, and nobody was saying that during the New Deal middle of the century expansion when all of these programs created a white middle-class, but when the future middle-class will be more diverse, suddenly, we can't spend money.

That to me felt like this undercurrent of the whole fiscal conversation. Obviously, the Tea Party we now know what they became in terms of how central race and white grievance was, but back then it was hard to even talk about, in fact, on that call, my colleague, another organization said, "Well, yes, we know that but we don't want to lead with our chin, we're trying to be persuasive," basically, shut up about the race thing.

Brian: Yes. In retrospect, you conclude this grand bargain to the extent that the Obama administration actually made it with the republicans looks like it was a bad bargain economically for the American people to this day, and we're living with the economics of that to this day, white, Black, and everybody else.

Heather: Yes. We didn't end up passing the grand bargain, but we did have a sequester, which had automatic cuts on discretionary spending. We did not do what we were advocating, which was another stimulus. We still have a homeownership rate that is still softer than it was. That is back to what it was before the Fair Housing Act for Black families, we still have a generation of young people who graduated into the Great Recession, who still haven't recovered.

We keep not investing in our people, in a way that is night and day different from what we did when our people were 90% plus white, and that's really the story of The Sum Us answering the question, what happened to the American formula that built the great middle class.

We've used in the economics profession, so many excuses around automation and technological change, and even corporate power and money in politics, all of which I think played a role, but if you don't understand the way that the white majority turned it's back on government once government became an enforcer of civil rights and not the enforcer of segregation, then you really don't understand the picture of why we have so much inequality today, and why white people continue to vote for the party that wants more inequality, even as they suffer financially.

Brian: You write, for example, that there used to be widespread-- And yes, listeners, we will come back to the Coronavirus Relief Bill, but you write that there used to be widespread public support for things like a guaranteed job for anyone who wants one. Now that's the most controversial thing and the Green New Deal, and a decent standard of living for everyone with a job is another living wage loss anyone? But white support for that nosedived those things in the early 1960s. Why do you find that timing to be historically significant?

Heather: I've lived my whole career as an economic policy advocate, really in the shadow of what the median white voter will or won't accept. When I saw this data that showed in '56 and 1960, almost 70% of white people wanted a job guarantee and basically a minimum income guarantee. I was floored Brian, but it cratered in half and has stayed low ever since between '60 and '64. Now I looked, "Okay, is this a fluke in the data, what happened between '60 and '64?" The March on Washington, which was for jobs and freedom, which included these economic demands in their platform.

You had Kennedy going on a media blitz around civil rights, and the idea became clear that the Democrats once the party of a mostly white exclusive New Deal, now is going to become the party of civil rights and the real promise of America. We all know that after Kennedy's successor signed the voting and Civil Rights Act, no democrat running for president has won the majority of white voters since.

Brian: Now let me replay that Steve Scalise's clip from over the weekend that does not invoke race explicitly at all, but has a lot of classic racial coding in the context of the history you've been describing, and ask you to translate into plain English. Again, he's the House Republican whip, congressman from Louisiana, speaking Sunday on ABC This Week.

Steve Scalise: If you said, "Do you want us to borrow that money from your children?" Because that's what this is. I think their answer might be a lot differently, and especially if you told him a fact that there's over a trillion dollars of money unspent from previous relief bills that were bipartisan, the money's still sitting in a bank account, and we're going to pass 1.9 trillion of additional spending to bail out failed states, to raise the minimum wage?

Brian: Heather, do you hear some of those talking points as racial dog whistles even though he never invoked race?

Heather: That's right. This idea of your children or our children-- Over this week and even more explicit version of the zero-sum, my book titled, The Sum of Us is in reference to this zero-sum worldview that is now predominant among white Americans and really has been a divide and conquer tool throughout our history, which is this idea that progress or people of color has to come at the expense of white people. This is the conservative playbook to pit struggling white families against struggling families of color and say you have to choose your racial interest in order to survive.

Representative Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina in pushing back on the pandemic relief Bill said, "I see the Biden administration is opening up the border, but not opening up our schools. How is this putting our kids first?"

Brian: Right, and the borrowing from our children also as you mentioned, but also the attack on blue state spending.

Heather: Absolutely. Failed state basically saying that "Our fellow Americans." This is really the fundamental problem with I think our ability to marshal the common movement and cross-racial solidarity that we need to be a functioning country, which is that we have the right-wing pitting red and blue states, us versus them, white people and people of color. Ultimately, our fates are linked and an injury to one becomes an injury to all at some point, and my book is really full of examples of that.

This idea that we are to be concerned about his base, the Republican Party is overwhelmingly white, should be concerned about their children funding basically other people's children in this other side of the wall of human concern in these "failed states" which is--

Brian: Failed states, including primarily New York. I don't know what state you live in, Heather.

Heather: I live in New York.

Brian: You do. Maybe you have the same observation that I do, or maybe it's different, you tell me, but I think of the politics of New York in this light, people in largely white upstate are prone to thinking that state spending is taking their money to prop up undeserving people of color in New York City, but really it's the city despite or because of its progressive taxation, that generates most of the wealth that allows the legislature to spend more than many states on roads and schools and other things upstate. Does that ring true to you?

Heather: It does ring true to me. It is this late-stage benefit of a 50-year campaign to degrade government, once government betrayed the racial hierarchy that it had been the main enforcer of. The story at the heart of my book is the story of when towns across the country drained their public swimming pools, the swimming pools that we used to have nearly 2,000 of which that were really a very everyday example of the government [unintelligible 00:13:11] that helped build the middle class that helps create a high standard of living, that were segregated all over the country.

When Black families during the Civil Rights Movement agitated and sued and one to be able to swim as well, many towns and not just in the south, drained their public pools, rather than integrate them. I think of where we are today, 50 years into an inequality era that began really with the white backlash to the civil rights movement as drained pool politics. Our infrastructure gets a D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers, our infrastructure used to be the envy of the world.

You mentioned the GI Bill, Brian, it's so true. We used to pay-- The government used to pick up the tab to educate our citizens, and now we have this 1.5 trillion dollar debt for diploma system for young people who are now majority of people of color. The idea that we can't share across lines of race, and therefore we have to reject all of these vehicles for collective action has only enriched the very richest and the most profitable corporations.

Brian: Listeners, we can take phone calls for Heather McGhee, whose new book is The Sum S-U-M of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. We'll get to the prosper together part more as we go, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, and how it relates to the Coronavirus Relief Bill and other things in the fiscal emergency that the country is in right now. 646-435-7280, or you can Tweet a question or a comment @BrianLehrer, we'll watch our Twitter go by. Janet in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC with Heather McGhee. Hi, Janet.

Janet: Yes, good morning. I've realized and it's probably because my daughter Merola told me this. When it's a universal problem, the universal American problem, they want to solve it, but in order to scale white people and not spend money on the problem, they make it associated with Black and now brown people in order to scale white people. I really feel that the money is the American money. We all gave money to them, and Americans need help. Help us. That's how I feel it's our money. We gave it to them. Thank you.

Brian: We all. All the taxpayers gave it to the government.

Janet: Yes.

Brian: Janet, thank you very much. I'm going to go right on to another call. Janine in Springfield, Virginia, you're on WNYC. Hi, Janine.

Janine: Hi, Brian, how are you? I am over the moon because I was a neighbor of Heather McGhee's in the-- She moved in New York. I always used to say hello to her in the grocery store. I followed your work. As soon as I heard that you had a book out, that was called The Sum of Us, I read it, and I'm doing this thing called the BubbleBath Book Club with my friends from New York. I've chosen your book to be our next book.

Right now we're reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. I wanted my multiracial folks to come for the coalition, but the people who signed up for it are all white. I have a group of white folks in me discussing Caste which is totally fine. I think because this group is very interested in next step that your book is the perfect books for our next BubbleBath Book Club, which is reread difficult books in a bubble bath and comfort and then we come together and reread them and we discuss them.

Brian: Do you do use Zoom with your book club members from the comfort of your book? You don't have to tell me that. Heather, you want to talk to Janine?

Janine: All your people are in bathing suits.

[laughter]

Heather: It's so wonderful. Thank you for reading the book. Thank you for reading it together. I will say the reason why probably she mentioned reading it in a multiracial way, my big takeaway throughout the book is that its multiracial coalitions, multiracial organizing that can break through the zero-sum and the divide and conquer and unlock what I call solidarity dividends, these gains that we can only achieve when we link arms across race.

I do want people to read the book in multiracial groupings and book clubs and conversations in schools and work because I think there is something in it for all of us that can start to reveal a common story of what went wrong in America. So thank you. Thanks for saying, "Hi, neighbor." Thank you for reading the book.

Janine: Thank you. I did have a question, what would be the major point that you would want to bring out from this multiracial coalition? Because Black folks are tired and I'm finding that my Black friends are like, "We don't want to be dealing with this because people are dying with COVID." If I'm going to be supporting the white folks who do want to do the work, what would you say would be one of the main points? I know there's many of other points, but what would be through-line to really get with them? Thanks.

Heather: Well, this book is I wrote it to bring a spirit of joy to the conversation. We are all tired, particularly Black people and Black women. This year has been cascading tragedies and insults and grief, so much grief. I do believe that if we both tell the truth about the extent of racism in our society, and stay grounded in the feeling of what it means when you reject the racist lie, the racist lie of separateness, of division, of some people being worth more than others, what is the opposite of that feeling? The opposite of that feeling is connection, is celebration of our human capacity, of celebration of our human worth.

I hoped when I was writing the book to weave that into all of the stories so that we would feel while reading the Sum of Us the feeling of what it's like to live in that world, where we truly are all equal, where we really do connect with love and human kindness across lines of race. I think and the feedback I've gotten, it's only been out for a week, is that it feels different than a lot of the books whose aim is to shock and to press people into a sense of the depths of what's going on. It feels like now we need to be looking to and in fact feeling and living in the world we want to live in.

Brian: More of that multiracial spirit of joy from Heather McGee, in a minute. Stay with us.

[music]

Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Heather McGee author now of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. Heather McGee, as I said in the intro as some of you know has appeared many times on this show and other media over the years, in her role as an economic policy wonk and think tanks and now she's with Color of Change and has written this very well-reviewed new book. We're going to do a little pushback now Heather from some listeners. Okay?

Heather: Sure.

Brian: Here's a tweet that says, “That's it, I am sick of media looking at everything through a racial lens. Some of us were raised in parts of the country where race was not an issue because everyone was the same race, the relief issue is an economical issue mathematical.”

Heather: Yes. I tried and I think a lot of people try to make the case that this is about dollars and cents, that as we talked about in the beginning of the program that it would be economic suicide to hamstring the government from responding to people's needs that, of course, we need to invest in the American people. In fact, in particular, in times of stress, this is the way that the white kind of story, the zero-sum story that is really sold by elites in politics, through language like taxpayers and freeloaders and makers and takers and deriding government benefits as handouts. This is the way it impacts white Americans.

First, it does make them less likely to support government is doing its job to help people by about an average 20% to 30% less supportive of big economic policies that would address inequality and widespread insecurity, whether it's health care, minimum wage, et cetera. Then, though, it's not total, particularly in times like today. In fact, if you think about the $2,000 checks as part of the pandemic relief, that is actually supported by about 60% of white people which is great. It's about 20% less than the support among black people, but it's still a majority support.

However, the GOP that they vote into government is committed to draining the public pool, to not allowing government to help people have a high quality of life. Forced to choose the party of white supremacy or the party of civil rights, the racial allegiance trumps. So white Americans, even though they're more supportive than the republican politicians they put into power of policies to address economic inequality, what that racial allegiance does is cause them to support and keep in power a party that has continued to drain the pool for everyone.

Brian: Though, I presume that listeners like that tweeter who I just read from. They don't think it's racial resentment. I think it's a he, doesn't frame it in terms of racial resentment is trying to frame it in terms of racial neutrality, and that we are racializing it.

Heather: Right. No, that’s--

Brian: Some of this is not racism in the sense of carrying the Confederate flag into the US Capitol if you know what I mean.

Heather: Right, it's not but it is the nearly 200 House Republicans who spread the lie that egged those people on and then voted to decertify an election on a racist election fraud lie, where the gut-level logic is the majority of white people voted for Trump and so there must be something wrong with this vote tally. That's the thing. It's always a spectrum, but the core logic that would have the majority of white Americans voting for a party that they disagree with on the economic issues that should be most important.

Can I pay my light bill and feed my family should be more important than a representative, like representative Mace talking about what's happening at the border or what's happening in failed states. These blue states that are not my state. If economics is actually the unifying and most important thread, then how does the Republican Party with such bankrupt economic ideas, stay so popular with the majority of white voters? That’s the question.

Brian: We have some really interesting-looking callers coming in, let me get through a few more of these before we run out of time. I think this is going to be pushed back maybe have a slightly different sort from Erica in Teaneck, you're on WNYC with Heather McGee. Hi, Erica.

Erica: Hi, how are you guys?

Heather: Hi.

Erica: Yes. I actually-- I totally support the goals that you have articulated. I think that the situation-- I'm a history worker so to speak. I think the situation, the historical context you've given us a little bit more complicated at least than you seem to represent it. I think it's important to have those shades of gray or to address complications. One of the things is at least what I understood you to say is that there was not very much disagreement about the programs of the New Deal and everybody supported them and that is not true. There was an enormous amount of pushback.

People plotted the insurrection and wanted to have a military takeover, there was a huge amount of pushback. Also, I just wanted to make at least a question or an observation. I certainly do agree that there is a concurrence of infrastructure being gutted that has to do with race, but not always. I really failed to see, for instance, the crumbling of our national highways, I don't really quite see how that would-- Related to race. I'm just saying, I support your goal, but I think there needs to be a little bit more shading of this and an accuracy because it doesn't do us any good to ignore these complications and that’s my-

Brian: Thank you.

Erica: -question and so on. Bye-bye.

Brian: Thank you, Erica. Thank you so much, Heather.

Heather: Yes, there's definitely a lot of nuance. The book is 488 pages long, so there's plenty of nuance in the book that maybe didn't get through in this call. I will say that, of course, there's always been a push back against progressive policies and politicians. Most of that has been from people who are ideologically opposed. What I'm saying is that the sort of median white voter. The person who absolutely benefited from this unprecedented expansion into government help for ordinary Americans. Under the new deal segregated era was supportive and today that median white voter is much more conservative on the kinds of policies that would be universal across a more diverse public.

Absolutely, there was pushback. Honestly, I think many of those same forces are organized today, the sort of ideological successors of the enemies of the New Deal are still at it. Then, in terms of the relationship between government, race, and spending, there's a lot of research that we've done a project that we did called the Race-Class Narrative to really dig into how people see government spending in an extremely racialized way. There's a 60 percentage point difference between your support for increased government spending if you have high levels of racial resentment versus low levels of racial resentment.

Does that end up in the quality of the government investments like your roads and bridges and water systems? Yes, it does. We still have not had the kind of reinvestment in infrastructure and modern reliable world-class infrastructure that we did when there was more of a bipartisan support for government spending.

Brian: We've been having this conversation for a long time. I'm thinking about a book like What's The Matter With Kansas, which is old by now where the premise was white people in Kansas are getting snookered into voting against their own economic interests by use of social issues to cause resentment that book came out in 2004. Here we are having a version of the same conversation. Steve in Hoboken, you're on WNYC with Heather McGee. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hi, how do you do?

Brian: Good.

Steve: I'm a middleman minority and I just want to know how I can help and also, why should I help?

Brian: Was that phrase middleman minority, is that what you said?

Steve: I said middleman minority, yes, which is I'm a beneficiary of white privilege, but I am also sometimes seen as a person of color.

Brian: Asian American, you told our screener.

Steve: I'm a Western-facing Asian American, male.

Heather: All right, and your question is how can you help me? First of all, thank you for your nuanced awareness about your different group identities, I think it's really powerful and important.

Steve: As an Asian male, I'm no longer a beneficiary of affirmative action and it's harbored a lot of resentment in the Asian American community, and especially the COVID attacks against Asian Americans, it's harbored an incredible amount of animosity, and a lot of them are just going to lean into white culture, even more, there's a lot of resentment.

Heather: There is, and I think we are in many ways-- Well, thank you for your question. I think we are in many ways missing something when we talk about the phrase "people of color" and lump together everyone who is not white. There's a lot of history of different populations adopting the racial consciousness and the white hierarchy for those status benefits, and then under a different economic regime, the material benefits flowed.

I want to say, first of all, that the attacks, rhetorical from the highest office in the land for the last year and as well as the physical attacks against our Asian brothers and sisters and Asian American brothers and sisters are reprehensible and they are part and parcel of the "us versus them" white supremacist thinking that is costing our country in 500,000 lives, is costing our country and so much of a sense of togetherness and mutual aid that we should be able to access right now and yet, we're being pitted against one another.

I'm grieving for all of the lives lost. I'm grieving for the victims of hate crimes. I'm curious, this is just not the way we're supposed to be as human beings. This country could be the country that reveals our common humanity because of the proximity of so many people have such cultural difference and yet, we keep being told by our leaders to fear and disdain and distrust one another and it's costing us all so much.

Brian: Let's take one more call from a mostly white neighborhood, I'll call it. Mari in Switzerland, you're on WNYC with Heather McGee. Hi, Laurie.

Mari: Hi, I'm actually not in a mostly white neighborhood because Switzerland takes in refugees at a rate 50 times the US, and just down the street from me are refugees from Syria, and my next-door neighbor is from Ivory Coast.

Brian: Happy to stand corrected. Go ahead.

Mari: My question actually relates to that, which is that I grew up in Minnesota, and I now live in Switzerland. Both are places that are much more diverse than most Americans realize. Both are places that have a really robust social safety net and both are extraordinarily prosperous. Switzerland is richer than the US, Minnesota, I believe, has the highest per capita GDP, the third-highest in the US and they accomplish it by, as you say, getting a social safety net and turning zero-sum into a win-win. My question is, I feel like I beat this drum all the time and I would love tips from you in how I can talk about the evidence from the place I live that support your argument. Any tips I would appreciate. I love your book. I'm halfway through.

Heather: Oh, thank you.

Brian: Thank you for the long-distance call of the day, I'm sure on the show. Heather, we're going to run out of time so briefly to Mari if you can?

Heather: Yes. Just quickly, I coined this phrase in the book called The Solidarity Dividend, which is exactly that. Basically, how this formula of refilling the pool for everyone while recognizing that we're all not all standing at the same depths because of historical and current racism in our public policies, is the formula for more broadly shared prosperity. I think we have to call out the zero-sum. We can't just skate over the race part and try to give economic arguments because the racial frame is there in everything that the right-wing says.

I hope this book is a piece of the answer of how to reach across the divides, to talk about what we can win together, but there's a lot, there's centuries of racist programming for us to undo. I think the more we tell stories about how it could work differently, while also calling out what the other side is doing to try to divide us, I think the closer we'll get to where we need to be.

Brian: Let me ask you a last question. Do you think that Trumpism, regardless of everything else that it was, was also a step away from the limited government orthodoxy and that that will continue? I'm thinking of the Steve Bannon approach to politics, though certainly white nationalists also had some overlap with progressive economics, stop spending on foreign wars so we can spend on infrastructure and government benefits for working-class Americans.

The Trump and Bannon White House got away from the Reagan and Bush Republican orthodoxy of cut Social Security and Medicare and worry about the debt orthodoxy. Do you think that this new growing wing of the Republican Party has planted a seed that ironically has a multiracial coalition potential?

Heather: Their pitch was to go back to the segregated pool. They said-- You're right, it was too much, that we lost the pools, that we lost the glory days of the 1950s. We want to make America great again to the days before civil rights, but we absolutely don't want to share it with people of color so we want it as much as possible kick them out of the country, kick them out of the coalition, but we do think white people should have a higher standard of living than they've had. The Trump story blamed the presence of Black people at the edge of the pool for the draining of the pool, instead of the white elites and decision-makers who drained the pool. That's the difference.

Brian: Heather McGee's new book is called The Sum Of Us: What Racism Cost Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. If you want to hear more from her, she's going to have a virtual bookstore event with bookshop Santa Cruz tonight at seven o'clock eastern time, so seven o'clock our time, four o'clock if you're in Santa Cruz, but don't go there, it's a virtual book event at Bookshop Santa Cruz, but available at bookshopsantacruz.com. online at seven o'clock tonight. Heather, thank you so much.

Heather: Thank you, Brian. Thanks for the callers.

 

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