Good to see you here.
You know, I've been doing a podcast,
a very prestigious podcast for about four years now.
You're my-- you're my favorite guest.
You've been on three times.
You're my favorite guest.
You're so brilliant.
Thank you.
Now, you're an economist.
You-- and you--
the first time we met was during the banking crisis,
and we talked a lot about that, subprime loans, et cetera.
And housing has always been a big part in the gap
in terms of wealth between Blacks and whites.
Can you explain where that kind of started?
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I always say wealth is where history
shows up in your wallet.
So today, the average Black college graduate
has less wealth on average than the average white high
school dropout.
It makes no sense, right? AL: OK, say that again.
Yes.
So if you're the average white high school dropout,
you are wealthier than the average Black
college graduate.
So that's history showing up in your wallet, right?
We're talking about wealth not a paycheck.
We are talking about your home equity, your stocks,
your bonds, your inheritances.
And that all dates back to-- that massive racial wealth
divide that we have today dates back to when most middle
class Americans' wealth began, which was in the New Deal era.
Coming out of the Depression, the progressive FDR government
said, we want to commit to affordable housing
and mass homeownership.
And they created this massive system,
this system of public subsidy.
And they based it on the never-substantiated assumption
that Black people would be too much of a credit risk.
And so they commissioned maps of the entire country's
largest cities, and surveyed them down
to the block level for their racial and ethnic character,
and said, if there was a high Negro concentration,
we're going to circle that with a red line and say,
banks, do not lend here.
And that really only ended in the 1970s.
And it was quickly replaced by what people call
reverse redlining, which is when those contiguous
communities of lower-wealth Black communities
were targeted with those high-cost loans.
AL: That's what we were talking about in '08.
Exactly.
And that's how we met.
Yeah.
But yeah, redlining started during the progressive FDR--
That's right.
In the early '30s.
That's right.
And, you know, the way I see it,
and this is really the kind of core idea of The Sum of Us--
you know, you and I met not just because Black families
were being disproportionately targeted
early in the subprime crisis, before it
was a household word.
You and I met once everything had fallen apart, right,
once Lehman had gone bankrupt, once trillions of dollars
in household wealth, and $8-million jobs
had disappeared overnight.
And for me, it was such an object lesson
in the way in which racism can ultimately
have a cost for everyone.
We ignored the canaries in the coal mine,
what was going on with Black and Brown families
early in the crisis.
And banking committee members just weren't focused on it.
And then, obviously, we know how the story ended.
Well, The Sum Of Us is about how race intersects
with economic inequality.
And it became an instant New York Times bestseller.
And now you've done a book that's for schoolchildren,
for middle--
Toddlers.
[laughs]
No, not for toddlers, but for, like, middle schoolers?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, middle school and high school.
Yeah.
And how do you explain this to them?
How-- because these kids are able to understand
this, right?
I mean, I noticed-- this is the book.
And it's a little shorter than the other.
But it seems pretty sophisticated.
Yeah.
It's-- we really didn't dumb it down.
That was the lesson I got.
We did sort of casual focus groups of educators
and middle school students.
And they were like, don't dumb it down.
We actually have access to all the same information you do.
And we have the same kinds of questions, right?
The core question at the heart of The Sum of Us
is, why does it seem like we can't
have nice things in America?
Nice things like-- not like flying cars but nice things
like universal health care, and paid
family leave, and child care, and a great school
in every neighborhood.
And they have those questions too.
And so in The Sum of Us, I use a lot of data
and a lot of history.
But ultimately, it's a series of stories,
like the story of the drained public pool.
And that's--
Now, the cover of this is a boy jumping
into a pool, a white boy, it looks like,
and I think a Black child there.
Tell that story because that's the first story
you tell these kids, right?
Yeah, it is.
It's the story of what happened to many of the country's
nearly 2,000 lavishly funded, grand, resort-style public
swimming pools that were built in that same New Deal
era of public goods, around when the big housing
subsidies were happening.
And I like to get the kids to picture what it would look
like to have a community pool that was free
and could hold over a thousand swimmers at a time.
And most of them, they kind of gasp, and they're
excited about the idea.
And then I tell them that they were usually for whites only.
And they're sort of like, oh, you know.
And then I say, but then in the Civil Rights movement,
Black families began to say, you know what?
It's our tax dollars that have funded
those public pools all along.
We want our kids to swim.
And the court sided with them, and progress was made.
And then, many towns and cities, not just in the Jim
Crow South, decided to drain their public pools
rather than integrate them.
They literally drained out the water
and backed up truckloads of dirt.
And I really see in the conversations they have,
the questions they ask me, they get it.
This is so unbelievable.
And they did that all over the place.
All over the country, yeah-- in Ohio, in West Virginia,
all over the country. Yeah.
Yeah.
So and then they planted over it.
Yeah.
Just so Black and white people couldn't swim together.
That's exactly right.
It's this zero-sum story, this old story
that says that progress for people of color
has to come at the expense of white people,
that we can't all share in well-being,
that we're in this competition for dominance and status.
And you know what?
Young people get it.
It's this story that is, of course, unbelievable.
But they've lived in America long enough
to know that it's actually quite believable because they
understand that, over their lifetime,
public goods have really been atrophying, that they don't
have those big, beautiful swimming pools
anymore, that there isn't free college the way there was.
That was a kind of a public pool that
was funded by the government.
And they know that as the college-growing population got
more diverse, for them, right, they're already
in a generation where--
AL: So this zero-sum the idea is basically that wealthier
whites taught poorer whites that anything that helps
African Americans hurts them?
Yeah. Yeah.
AL: That's zero-sum? - That's right.
Exactly.
AL: And The Sum of Us is about we all
do better when we all do better, which is what
Paul Wellstone used to say.
Yes.
[applause]
The late great, the late great.
You know, it's-- the part of the book
that young people really resonate
with is the hopeful part.
They want to hear that we can fix this.
And I truly believe that everything about the world
that we see now, all the dysfunction,
it's because people made decisions
to make the world as it is.
And so people can make better decisions.
And the core message is that through collective action,
people coming together across lines of race,
finding solidarity, recognizing that we all do better when we
all do better, and that we all want
big, beautiful public pools, we can really win and take
on powerful interests.
But we can't if we're divided.
And they get that.
And it's been a really fun trip across the country-- schools,
libraries, middle schools.
You've been going all over the country,
finding communities where this is happening-- in Minnesota--
Yeah.
We have a town, Wilmer, in Minnesota.
It's in Kandiyohi County.
It's the biggest turkey-producing county
in Minnesota, which is the biggest turkey-producing town.
Of course, yeah.
The town-- I went to the graduation there.
About half the class German Scandinavian,
about a third of the class Hispanic-- there's a big
meatpacking plant there--
about 15% Somali.
This was the most beautiful thing
I'd ever gone to in the time that I was in the Senate.
This town just worked together.
Lewiston, Maine, is doing that.
All over the country, this works, when we all--
when we realize the sum of us, that that's
how we create wealth.
That's how we create prosperity.
That's how we create a good life for all Americans.
That's right.
You should really run for office, Al.
[laughs]
You heard her.
Heather McGhee, the young readers adaption--
adaptation, rather, of Heather's book
is available now.
And The Sum of Us podcast series
is available wherever you get your podcasts.