Racist policies hold back all Americans, bestselling author Heather McGhee says

By Simeon Gates | Originally published by Mississippi Today

Many Americans – particularly white Americans – have zero-sum ideas about race, or they believe that one group’s win must mean another group’s loss, author and public policy expert Heather McGhee says.

These ideas are “a framework that is relentlessly marketed to white people by people who have a political and economic profit to gain from that kind of thinking,” she told an audience Wednesday night in Jackson. 

“It was originally sort of developed in order to justify enslavement. It was sold to the masses of Europeans who were here who were never going to be part of the colonial plantation class, who were never going to be the very wealthy,” she explained.

“And they were sold a racial bargain as a way to stop what at that point had become a rising movement of white-Black cross-race servant uprisings,” she explained.

During Operation Shoestring’s “Conversation About Community” event at the Two Mississippi Museums, McGhee said racist policies harm all of society, not just people of color.

McGhee discussed ideas found in her book, “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” based on her 2020 TED talk. She was joined by Robert Luckett, director of Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center.

In researching for her book, she found that racist politics and policy-making have prevented advancements in many areas, from education to labor unions. 

One example she gave was the Oak Park swimming pool in Montgomery, Alabama. The Oak Park facility was one of thousands of public swimming pools constructed during the New Deal Era, but it shut down in the 1960s to avoid serving racially integrated crowds.

McGhee called it, “a perfect metaphor to describe what we had lost in our society” when the New Deal consensus on the government having an obligation to invest in public goods fell apart due to the backlash against racial integration. 

Despite challenges such as artificial intelligence and the movement opposing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, she remains optimistic about the power of people to create change. 

“We have to be willing to stand up together with a shared sense of purpose and say, ‘We have to rewrite these rules together,’” McGhee said.

After a question-and-answer segment, audience members were encouraged to buy copies of McGhee’s book and could line up to have them signed.

The groups will finish the book by Dec. 11, then reunite at the Two Mississippi Museums again on Jan. 19, for the National Day of Racial Healing. That day, there will be a conversation with Gail Christopher, the holiday’s founder and McGhee’s mother.

Community advocate Celess-Mari Johnson drove three hours up from the Gulf Coast to hear McGhee speak. She was joined by a few college friends, and they plan to form their own reading group.

She has already begun reading her copy of McGhee’s book. “I think the title says it all,” Johnson said.

“There’s a cost at all levels for everybody involved, and not just one population, not just one generation,” she added.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article