Gallery of Conscience - The Sum of Us

“The American landscape was once graced with resplendent public swimming pools, some big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time…. Officials envisioned the distinctly American phenomenon of the grand public resort pools as ‘social melting pots.’ Like free public grade schools, public pools were part of an ‘Americanizing’ project intended to overcome ethnic divisions and cohere a common identity—and it worked…. Of course, that vision of classlessness wasn’t expansive enough to include skin color that wasn’t, in fact, ‘all the same’" (23).

Swimming pool at Oak Park in Montgomery, Alabama

Public pools, like the one in Oak Park in Montgomery, Alabama, used to be commonplace throughout the United States. But when Black families began demanding access to the public benefits their taxes were funding, towns opted to drain their pools rather than integrate them. As these grand, resort-like pools began closing across the country, white policymakers demonstrated that they would rather lose benefits for everyone than afford them to Black people.

Throughout The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee showed how time and again, America opted to drain the (metaphorical) pool of public benefits for everyone instead of allowing Black people access. From housing to healthcare to education to incarceration, America suffers from a lack of public benefits despite our uniquely advanced economy, and white people refuse to support public policy that would benefit them because it would also benefit Black people. The zero-sum story that progress for Black Americans must come at the expense of white Americans keeps us all from enjoying the healthcare, education, and democracy that the nation's ideals suggest. And until we address the fact that racism can be found at the heart of each of these seemingly unconnected issues, we will continue living in the bottom of a drained pool.

“In the seventeenth century, influential Europeans were starting to create taxonomies of human beings based on skin color, religion, culture, and geography, aiming not just to differentiate but to rank humanity in terms of inherent worth. This hierarchy—backed by pseudo-scientists, explorers, and even clergy—gave Europeans moral permission to exploit and enslave. So, from the United States’ colonial beginnings, progress for those considered white did come directly at the expense of people considered nonwhite. The U.S. economy depended on systems of exploitation—on literally taking land and labor from racialized others to enrich white colonizers and slaveholders. This made it easy for the powerful to sell the idea that the inverse was also true: that liberation or justice for people of color would necessarily require taking something away from white people” (7).

Racism is baked into every facet of American society, from the colonial origins of the nation—racism was used to justify stolen people, labor, and land—to our history of discrimination, segregation, and racial violence, to the current systems of healthcare, incarceration, higher education, etc. that are disproportionately harmful to Black people. This is no accident: for generations, the wealthy ruling class has capitalized on racist stereotypes to divide and conquer the working classes, pitting against each other people who would all benefit from improved public benefits.

We are inundated with unquestioned and stereotypical messages that shape how we think and what we believe about ourselves and others. What makes this "brainwashing" even more insidious is the fact that it is woven into every structural thread of the fabric of our culture. The media... our language patterns, the lyrics to songs, our cultural practices and holidays, and the very assumptions on which our society is built all contribute to the reinforcement of the biased messages and stereotypes we receive.

Bobbie Harro - The Cycle of Socialization

One of the most powerful influencers of individual and group belief systems in America—religion—is also responsible for maintaining mindsets of white supremacy. When Christian settlers came to America, they could not justify their actions towards Indigenous people and Africans if they were considered to be people "made in the image of God." So instead, Christians decided that they were not humans made in the image of God, that white people were, and that the stealing of land, labor, and people was justified. "It's this history of the American church's complicity with white supremacy that explains why, today, white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to hold racially resentful and otherwise racist views than religiously unaffiliated white people" (248).

Since this original lie, American governments have repeatedly used race as a justification for discriminatory, oppressive action towards Black people at the benefit of white people. When racial resentment evolved from biological racism ("it's about who they are") to cultural disapproval ("it's about what most of them do"), the story shifted to be "colorblind." This story takes many forms: antigovernment ideologies (that are implicitly pro-white) paint white people as victims of a thieving government giving their money to "undeserving and lazy people of color in the ghettos" (32); politicians use terms like "forced busing" and "states' rights" and "cutting taxes" to disguise policies that cause disproportionate suffering to Black people; colleges require you to pay for school out of pocket, but family wealth is rooted in history, and Black families were historically denied the same wealth as white families; etc.

Even now, the zero-sum mindset of racism is present and dangerous. It has led white people to exclude Black people from social circles, schools, unions, neighborhoods, and mortgage markets, despite the fact that they are dragging themselves down too. The systemic oppression of minority groups are causing suffering for all of us but the wealthy one percent, and until we address the racism at the heart of these issues, we cannot progress.

The list of ways we have drained the pool is long, but one of the most important (and most controversial) examples is public college.

Costs of college have risen steadily since 1975

When the college-attending population was primarily white in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, state and federal government funds were widely available to pay for the expenses of higher education. As the demographics of the American public became more diverse, state governments began drastically reducing funding for public college. As tuition has steadily increased since the late 20th century, student debt has skyrocketed, leaving millions of students struggling to pay off student loans.

“Because wealth is largely shaped by how much money your parents and grandparents had, Black young adults’ efforts at higher education and higher earnings aren’t putting much of a dent in the racial wealth gap. This generation was born too late for the free ride, and student loan repayment is making it even harder for Black graduates’ savings and assets to catch up. In fact, white high school dropouts have higher average household wealth than Black people who’ve graduated from college.

As with so many economic ills, student debt is most acute among Black families, but it has now reached 63 percent of white public college graduates as well and is having ripple effects across our entire economy” (43).

When public college was a mark of pride for the American public, states "saw a return of three to four dollars back for every dollar [they] invested in public colleges" (42). But public policy changes forged from a zero-sum mindset of racism created a new "debt-for-diploma" system. Since federal and state funding for public college has decreased, younger generations are left with less wealth and fewer ways to increase it. They cannot buy a home (the "irreplaceable wealth-building asset"), they get married later, and they have less saved for retirement later in life. The economic returns we used to see from a well-educated public have vanished.

Perhaps the other most essential example of how America opted to drain the pool rather than integrate it is healthcare.

There’s this one example, from 1931, where a light-skinned black man gets into a car accident, and he’s taken to a white hospital. It’s Grady Memorial Hospital. This is in Atlanta. And doctors there, they mistake him for a white patient, so they start treating him. And it’s only when his family comes to the hospital that they realize he’s actually black. So what do they do? They pull him off the examining table and they send him to the black ward across the street, where he later dies.

Nikole Hannah-Jones - The 1619 Project Podcast

Stories like the one Hannah-Jones recalls were not rare occurrences post-emancipation; racism has had a strong grasp on American healthcare for decades. Black women are three times more likely to die of causes related to pregnancy than white women. Black people with H.I.V. get worse care than white people with the disease. Black patients with diabetes fared worse than white patients, even with the same doctor. Black Americans die at higher rates from cancers that would have been treatable had they been caught earlier. These statistics are a result of repeated systemic failures of our healthcare system to adequately care for Black people. And it's bringing all of us down.

“The story of America’s healthcare dysfunction comes back to the pool. Health insurers use that exact term when they refer to the number of people in the ‘risk pool’ of a plan…. Whether we’re talking about insurance or drug trials or vaccines or practice improvements, in health, the key is getting everybody in. Healthcare works best as a collective endeavor, and that’s at the heart of why America’s system performs so poorly. We’ve resisted universal solutions because when it comes to healthcare… racism has stopped us from ever filling the pool in the first place” (49).

In theory, as the number of participants in a health insurance plan increases, the cost of that plan decreases as there are more people to contribute to the plan. It follows that in order to provide healthcare to everyone without requiring people to pay huge premiums, we need to have everyone participating and contributing to a plan. Under Obamacare, states had the opportunity to expand Medicaid. The federal government would pay the full cost for a few years and reduce to ninety percent into the future. States that did expand Medicaid saw the uninsured population diminish and rural clinics thrive. Obviously, the incentives to expand Medicaid under Obamacare were plentiful.

Yet again, the zero-sum story of racism prevents everyone from enjoying public benefits. Researchers at the University of Chicago found that "as the percent of the black population increases, the likelihood of adoption [of Medicaid] decreases" (qtd. in McGhee 57). As the "public" becomes more diverse, made up in larger part by nonwhite groups, white policymakers choose to reduce and eliminate public benefits. The reasoning is rooted in racism: claims that Black people are undeserving, lazy, freeloading the benefits paid for by hard-earned white taxpayer dollars discouraged support for expansion of Medicaid, even among the groups that would benefit most from its adoption (out of fear of being subject to racist stereotypes). So despite the possible benefits from universal healthcare or the expansion of Medicaid, white racist attitudes towards Black people is causing everyone to suffer.

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Danger of a Single Story

The zero-sum story of racism was a central concern throughout The Sum of Us. It is a belief rooted in the history of American culture, religion, and public policy. It is ingrained in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans, both those who make public policy and those who are subject to it, such that they would rather drain the pool of public benefits than integrate it because they believe progress for people of color must mean the opposite for them. Time and time again, wealthy elites advertise the zero-sum story as the core narrative of American society, inculcating antigovernment, anti-immigration, and anti-welfare sentiment even in those who would gain the most from the public benefits they are taught to advocate against. And time and time again, all Americans are left to suffer because of a lack of commitment to improving the quality of life for everyone. McGhee uses the example of climate change, a topic with "life-or-death" consequences, to demonstrate the explicit dangers of the zero-sum story.

"Climate change opposition is sold by an organized, self-interested white elite to a broader base of white constituents already racially primed to distrust government action. The claims are racially innocent—we won't risk the economy for this dubious idea—but those using them are willing to take immense risks that might fall on precisely the historically exploited: people of color and the land, air, animals, and water. Like the zero-sum story, it's all an illusion—white men aren't truly safe from climate risk, and we can have a different but sustainable economy with a better quality of life for more people. But how powerful the zero-sum paradigm must be to knock out science and even a healthy sense of self-preservation. And how dangerous for us all" (205-206).

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie effectively articulated that the danger of one story being advertised, marketed, and enforced in every facet of society lies in its progression to becoming the only story in our society. And when the dominant narrative of our society is the zero-sum story, the consequences are dire. People are willing to go to extreme lengths to maintain their status in the racial hierarchy established by the wealthy ruling class and enforced by the zero-sum story despite the ways this harms and limits them.

McGhee begins her book with the question, "why can't we have nice things?" As long as we subscribe to the zero-sum story, all of the "nice things" we want—living wages, robust public health systems, adequately funded schools—are unattainable.

By now, it is overwhelmingly apparent that the zero-sum story of racism runs deep in our history, our institutions, and our belief systems. It is abundantly clear that there are far-reaching, calamitous consequences for all of us if it continues to be the dominant narrative. And it is obviously imperative that we must begin to make changes if we want to achieve a higher quality of life, if we want to progress as a nation, and if we want to survive as a species. So where do we go from here?

"For two generations now, well-meaning white people have subscribed to color blindness in an optimistic attempt to wish away the existence of structural racism. But when they do, they unwittingly align themselves with, and give mainstream cover to, a powerful movement to turn back the clock on integration and equality... 'reactionary color blindness' has become the weapon of choice for conservatives in the courts and in politics. Racial conservatives on the Supreme Court have used the logic to rule that it's racist for communities to voluntarily integrate schools, because to do so, the government would have to 'see' race to assign students. Well-funded political groups mount campaigns to forbid the government from collecting racial data because isn't that what a racist would do? Instead of being blind to race, color blindness makes people blind to racism, unwilling to acknowledge where its effects have shaped opportunity or to use race-conscious solutions to address it" (229-230).

Color blindness has been the frame of choice in numerous pedagogies throughout America. But while it may be "optimistic," color blindness, alongside "why can't we all just get along?", is a non-solution; a denial; an out. Instead of being blind to race, color blindness makes people blind to racism. Rather than treating everyone equally and justly, we perpetuate the system that oppresses people of color and claim we were unaware. As has been seen again and again with the zero-sum story, this kind of denial disproportionately harms Black people but causes suffering for white people as well. Simply avoiding the realities of racism leaves people unable to "listen deeply to unexpected ideas expressed by people from other cultures," unwilling to examine their own biases and blindspots, and unprepared for a diverse society. Color blindness is not the answer. So where do we go from here?

Empathy serves as a normative ideal for a rehumanized view of the other.... Importantly, this ideal of empathy is not achieved in an intense moment of sympathy, but in living together and genuinely attending to another's perspective over time. Such an understanding seems to be the basis of genuine social cooperation.

Jodi Halpern and Harvey M. Weinstein - Rehumanizing the Other: Empathy and Reconciliation

The answer lies in empathy, or what McGhee calls the Solidarity Dividend: when people come together across boundaries of race, class, and age to change the dominant narrative of society from a zero sum to a positive sum. She gives the example of a multiracial coalition starting in a town in Maine:

"Maine has experienced a Solidarity Dividend. Rejecting the scapegoating politics that enabled a right-wing government to deny healthcare and creating new political alliances between workers of all backgrounds resulted in sixty thousand Mainers winning access to healthcare. These same organizers and volunteers helped elect a wave of new politicians the following year, who passed reforms to address the opioid epidemic and guarantee a generous paid-time-off law for Maine workers. The next frontier of cross-racial coalition building, though, is for white people not just to stop voting against their own interests, but to vote for the interests of people of color, too, on issues of racial justice" (269).

Bobbie Harro came to the same conclusion.

When groups begin to empower themselves—by learning more about each other, by unlearning old myths and stereotypes, by challenging the status quo—we make the difficult decision to interrupt the cycle of socialization. We begin to question the givens, the assumptions of the society, the norms, the values, the rules, the roles, and even the structures. As we attempt this, it becomes obvious that we cannot do it alone. We must build coalitions with people who are like us and people who are different from us. We will not be the minority if we work in coalitions. We will gain the necessary vision and power to reconstruct new rules that truly are equal, roles that complement each other instead of competing, assumptions that value all groups instead of ascribing value to some and devaluing others, and structures that promote cooperation and shared power instead of power over each other.

Bobbie Harro - The Cycle of Socialization

Change needs to happen at every level of American society, but it starts in communities. It starts in multiracial cooperatives that traverse boundaries and identities. It starts with unlearning the zero-sum story that Black people cannot survive and thrive without costing white people and replacing it with a story of empathy, of human connection, of finding the Third, of coalitions, of justice. Only then can we truly live up to the ideals we aspire towards as a nation.

The Sum of Us

how racism drained the pool

how did we get here?

lowballing higher education

drowning in the (risk) pool

the danger of a single, zero-sum story

where do we go from here?