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- [00:00]
Announcer
This message comes from Sony Pictures Classics presenting the President's Cake. A young girl in Iraq has been selected to prepare a cake to celebrate the president's birthday. She sets out on a journey in search of the ingredients, now playing in select cities.
- [00:17]
Tonya Moseley
From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is FRESH AIR weekend. I'm Tonya Moseley. Today we talk with scholar Dorothy Roberts. Her father was a white anthropologist who studied interracial marriages, and her mother was a black woman from Jamaica. Roberts always assumed her parents relationship inspired her father's scholarly focus, but that changed after he died, and she found boxes of interviews he conducted with interracial couples dating back to the 1930s, decades before he met her mother.
- [00:50]
Dorothy Roberts
Now I knew it wasn't that his falling in love with my mother and marrying her motivated him to do this research. It might have been the opposite.
- [01:01]
Tonya Moseley
We also hear from historian Heather McGee. Her book the Sum of Us examines a question at the heart of American life. Why do so many Americans believe that progress for one group means loss for another? And David Biancooley talks about some TV shows he's been catching up on. That's coming up on FRESH AIR weekend.
- [01:25]
Announcer
This message comes from the International Rescue Committee. Co founded with help from Albert Einstein, the IRC has been providing humanitarian aid for more than 90 years. The IRC helps refugees whose lives are disrupted by conflict and disaster, supporting recovery efforts and responding within 72 hours of crisis. Donate today by visiting rescue.org rebuild this message comes from LinkedIn ads. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. That's why you need LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, company role, seniority and skills, all the professionals you need to reach in one place. Get a $250 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com nprpod that's LinkedIn.com nprpod Take terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
- [02:21]
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- [02:54]
Tonya Moseley
This is FRESH AIR WEEKEND. I'm Tonya Moseley. My first guest today is legal scholar and author Dorothy Roberts. For decades, Roberts has challenged the idea that institutions like medicine, the law and child welfare are neutral. Her landmark books Killing the Black Body and Torn Apart helped reshape how we understand the policing of reproduction, parenting and race in America. Her new book now turns that lens inward. It begins with 25 boxes of her late father's papers. Robert Roberts was a white anthropologist who spent his career at Roosevelt University in Chicago and over the course of 50 years conducted hundreds of interviews with interracial couples across the city, an extraordinary archive dating back to the 1930s. Her mother, Iris, a black Jamaican immigrant, was his wife. And what Roberts finds inside those boxes challenges the story she'd always believed about her own family. Roberts is a professor of law and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2024 MacArthur Fellow. The memoir is called the Mixed Marriage, A Memoir of Love, Race and Family. Dorothy Roberts, welcome to FRESH air.
- [04:13]
Dorothy Roberts
Thank you so much, Tonya. It's such a pleasure to be on this program.
- [04:18]
Tonya Moseley
A pleasure to have you. And let's start with these 25 boxes because you tell us right from the start of the book that they were sitting in your basement for almost a decade after your parents died. And the date on the first transcript is February 1937. And this date stopped you in your tracks. You actually described feeling frozen, kind of like you were gonna faint as you clutched those papers to your chest. What was it about that date in particular that undid you?
- [04:51]
Dorothy Roberts
Well, I always assumed that my father was writing his book on interracial marriage, conducting the interviews that were the basis of this book he was working on in the 1960s while I was growing up. I have very vivid memories of him conducting the interviews and being up in his study on the third floor writing the book. It really dominated my childhood. And so I assumed because of that that he got interested in interracial marriage and wanted to learn the stories of black white couples because he met and fell in love with my mother, which happened in the 1950s. And so now discovering this transcript of an interview from 1937, it just completely upended my understanding of my father's research and its relationship to my family. You know, I'm thinking, well, first of all, how in the world did my father even get interested in this topic when he was only 21 years old, having grown up in a segregated white neighborhood in Chicago? Being so young, it was a mystery to me. But then, in addition to that, it really flipped the relationship I thought he had with my mother and his research, because now I Knew it wasn't that his falling in love with my mother and marrying her motivated him to do this research. It might have been the opposite that he was first interested in, in interracial marriage, and then he married my mother.
- [06:35]
Tonya Moseley
That made you sit with some really uncomfortable and complicated feelings and grapple with some things about whether your father was really attracted to your mother for who she was or if it was because he was looking for a black woman to date and then ultimately marry. And you. You finally came to some conclusions, which makes the book just so striking. But your father had tried for decades to turn all of this research into a book. He had a deal with Simon and Schuster and another publication. So you went into this thinking, as you're opening those pages and reading and discovering that maybe you might finish the work that he had done. But when did you realize that the book you needed to write wasn't exactly his work?
- [07:22]
Dorothy Roberts
Yes, you're right. I first thought, I'll finish the book that my father never published, because I found nearly 500 interviews in these boxes, and they were absolutely fascinating, including interviews with couples who were married in the late 1800s, you know, all the way to couples who were married in the 1960s. And all the stories were so intriguing. I learned so much about the racial caste system in Chicago. The color line, the black belt. All of this could make a fascinating book, I thought, and that was my first plan. But as I immersed myself in the interviews, I began to learn more about my father, because the very questions he asked, his notes in the transcripts, finding out that my mother was involved, you know, all of this created curiosity I had about my family, about their marriage. And then I began to think about how it related to me and my identity as a black girl with a white father. And the more and more I delved into the interviews and thought about the meaning for me and my family and my identity, I was just compelled to write a book about that. And so it turned from a kind of sociological or anthropological study of black white couples in Chicago over several centuries into an exploration of my own family and my own identity.
- [09:04]
Tonya Moseley
Yeah, I want to. Before we get to all of those points, I really want to understand a little bit more about who your father was, because here he is training as an anthropologist in the 1930s. But at 16, your father would spend several months in a village in northeast India where he watched caste dictate who could marry whom. And do you think. Do you suspect that is where he was able to see more clearly the systems in place in the United States? And sort of draw that line.
- [09:39]
Dorothy Roberts
Yes. I think there had to be a connection. He traveled around the world literally with his grandmother on this trip to and from India, and he writes in his diary about making friends with tribal boys in India. He writes about wearing the clothing that they gave him, all of this without any sense of judgment whatsoever. And and then when he gets to college, I find some of his papers where he talks about his white privilege. He's challenging the professors who believe that white superiority, basically they believe in inherited traits that determine how capable you are. My father writes, I don't believe that that's not true. Everyone is just as capable. It's just that I have the benefit of people not discriminating against me because of my Nordic heritage. And when he was 17, so he was already for some reason open to the idea that there was a racial caste system in Chicago like the one in the south, he writes, and that it could be dismantled. He also had the mission of ending racial caste. He thought it could be done through interracial marriage. But that was his ultimate mission.
- [11:06]
Tonya Moseley
If you're just joining us, my guest is Dorothy Roberts. She's a legal scholar, MacArthur fellow, and the author of several books on race in America. Her new memoir, the Mixed Marriage Project, tells the story of her parents, interracial marriage and the nearly 500 transcripts her white father left behind from decades of interviewing interracial couples in Chicago. We'll hear more of our conversation after a short break. I'm Tonya Moseley, and I'm and this is FRESH AIR weekend.
- [11:36]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
This message comes from MIDI Health co founders Joanna Strober and Dr. Kathleen Jordan discuss why they started a virtual care platform to empower and educate women in perimenopause and menopause.
- [11:48]
Joanna Strober
Historically, perimenopause and menopause have been very stigmatizing. So people haven't wanted to admit that they are in perimenopause and menopause as though it was like embarrassing, which is insane. It's just something happening to your body. So one of the things that we're trying to do is destigmatize these topics. Perimenopause and menopause are just women's health. So we try to educate women all the time. Maybe it's your hormones and we would like to help you.
- [12:14]
Dorothy Roberts
Yeah. And I find women actually want to talk about it.
- [12:18]
David Biancooli
It's one of the things they always.
- [12:19]
Dorothy Roberts
Comment at MIDI is that they finally feel heard. One of the ways that women find MIDI is actually from other women. And I think it's meaningful.
- [12:28]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
Midi Health Committed to helping women in midlife with perimenopause and menopause care Accessible via telehealth visits@join MIDI.com this message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the Internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to Shopify.com NPR to take your business to the next level today.
- [13:09]
Tonya Moseley
How did this make you grapple with your own thoughts about interracial relationships? Of course, you grew up with your parents and lots of couples around you who were interracial, and so there is an acceptance there. But I mean, inherently, as a Black woman in America, how did these transcripts kind of make you grapple with your own feelings about it?
- [13:32]
Dorothy Roberts
Oh, I grappled with my own feelings with every single interview I read in so many multiple levels. There was this visceral feeling I felt whenever a black man, a black husband, would talk about his preference for being with white women. You know, these ideas that interracial intimacy has an extra excitement to it, it has an extra titillation to it. That kind of idea came up in many of the interviews, and I just have a very visceral revulsion. That kind of idea, sort of a fetishization of interracial intimacy and also of biracial children. The idea that whitening children makes them more attractive or makes them more intelligent or more appealing, more lovable. And whenever that came up, sometimes I had to just throw the interview down because I couldn't stand that kind of thinking.
- [14:53]
Tonya Moseley
Do you think that some of your that visceral reaction and feeling to the Black men in the transcripts talking about they felt kind of like titillated by it, by the idea of dating outside of their race, it feeling like a rejection of self for you?
- [15:13]
Dorothy Roberts
Yes. It's when the Black men would describe their feelings for White women in a way that they couldn't possibly have toward Black women because Black women are black. You know, for example, Mr. Sussex, whom I suspect was my piano teacher, he said that when he found out he could date, when white women, they became more attractive to him than Black women, he stopped dating Black women when he found out he could date white women. It wasn't that Finding out he could date white women expanded the range of women he could date. It was that it was a rejection of black women. Now, there's also this complexity to it that because black men were punished, lynched, killed for even showing some attention to white women based on the accusation that they had sex with a white woman, I can see how Mr. Sussex is now saying, all right, my ability to date white women is. Is in defiance of that history. So it seems as if it's something that is challenging white supremacy, whereas the history for black women is sexual exploitation, rape by white enslavers. And so for many people, when black women love white men or white men love black women, and this came out in the interviews, it seems as if it's just a continuation of white supremacist patriarchal power of white men. And I don't think that that's necessarily the case. You know, I can see in my own family, my father revered, respected my mother. He loved her. He was committed to her. And throughout reading these interviews, what I always wanted to do and what I felt most strongly about was challenging. All the ways that black women have been demeaned, have been vilified. Our sexuality, our childbearing, our mothering. You know, that's what my whole career has been about. And I really did have a very strong reaction against every time the. That kind of thinking came up in the interviews.
- [17:59]
Tonya Moseley
There's a moment in the book I'd love for you to read. You're going through the boxes in your office, and you find a folder. And the folder had a number on it. 224. And can I have you read from there?
- [18:15]
Dorothy Roberts
Inside are four documents. A college paper I submitted for a sociology class, two versions of an essay I wrote, one in longhand, the other typed. And a typed letter my father wrote to me. I feel dizzy as the realization sets in. I am research participant number 224. Daddy had created a file on me and placed it among the folders containing notes and transcripts from his interviews with other children of interracial couples. By now, I know that his fascination with interracial families began long before he started one of his own. I have long understood that my mother, my sisters, and I were inextricably tied to his scholarly obsession, woven into his lifelong pursuit of interracial intimacy. But discovering that he considered me an actual subject of study, that was a whole new level of entanglement. I begin to wonder, was I born entirely from his love for my mother, or was I in some way an extension of his mission? To document and popularize mixed marriages. It unsettles me to think that my sisters and I may have been unwitting guinea pigs in a social experiment designed to prove the viability to, and perhaps even the superiority of interracial unions.
- [19:46]
Tonya Moseley
Thank you for reading that. And I want to ask you, what did that discovery first off do to you and what answers did you come to after sitting with that discovery?
- [19:58]
Dorothy Roberts
At first I was really shocked to find that I was a participant, a research subject in his study now of the children of interracial couples. And, and I did wonder initially, was I part of an experiment of his trying to prove his theory that biracial children were well adjusted and weren't tragic mulattoes, that we could do well in school and do well in society. But, you know, I was so close to my father. I knew how much he loved me. I was so entangled in his work because he brought it into our family's life and he discussed it with me so much. And so I knew that his including me in the project was not because he thought of me just as a research subject, but because he thought of me as part of his entire life's work. And I began to realize that that actually made him even closer to me. It meant that I was even closer to him. I was involved in every aspect of his life. You know, there are lots of children who feel separated from their parents and separated from their parents work and even feel that their parents work is more important to them, to their par than they are. I never felt that way about my father. I always felt that I was essential to him.
- [21:42]
Tonya Moseley
Your father's thesis was that if interracial unions were allowed to flourish, they would prompt demands for social equality. That basically interracial marriage could help dismantle this caste system that he believed America was under. Do you think that there was something he could not see precisely because of where he stood and something that you could see precisely because of where you stand?
- [22:11]
Dorothy Roberts
Ah, certainly we had debates throughout, even my childhood about whether or not interracial marriage could dismantle racism. And I really.
- [22:23]
Tonya Moseley
Do you remember when was the first time you all had that?
- [22:28]
Dorothy Roberts
Well, it began not so much with a debate, but with his trying to persuade me of his views. And that began very early. I mean, as early as I can remember. My father was trying to persuade me that the answer to America's race problem was interracial marriage. And he told me that over and over and over again, along with, I have to say, his book main message was that all human Beings are equal. There's only one human race. And the only reason why black and white people are not moving together for greater racial justice is because of invented divisions between us. So that was his main message, and that I agree with to this day. But the idea of the power of interracial love by itself was something I began to question. I don't remember exactly when, but I know for a fact that when I read Black Power by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton when I was in seventh grade, that I began to have a very different perspective than my father. And I do believe that beginning at that young age, I recognized the power of structural racism and could not accept his view that interracial love by itself would be strong enough to transcend it or overcome it or dismantle it. And so from that time on, we began to have debates about it. But, you know, my father always respected my opinion. That's something I also learned in the file that I found about me, that he kept his file, even though the file contained wording that adamantly disagreed with him, but he still kept it, and he still loved me, and he still respected my opinion.
- [24:40]
Heather McGee
Mm.
- [24:42]
Tonya Moseley
Dorothy Roberts, thank you so much for this scholarship, for this book, and for this conversation.
- [24:48]
Dorothy Roberts
Thank you, Tanya. It's been really a delight and an honor to be able to speak with you. I really truly appreciate it.
- [24:56]
Tonya Moseley
Dorothy Roberts new book is called the Mixed Marriage, A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family. It's only been a month or so into the new year, and already our TV critic David Biancooli feels way behind. So he's going to attempt the TV viewing equivalent of speed dating and cover as much ground as quickly as possible. Here are his reviews.
- [25:20]
David Biancooli
The Pit on HBO Max doesn't need much explanation. It just won an Emmy as Outstanding Drama Series for its first season. And Noah Wylie just won Best Actor in his starring role of Dr. Robbie. New episodes roll out Thursdays through April. I'm enjoying the second season just as much for the small moments as well as the big, intense ones. In one recent episode, a couple is being treated after being in a road accident, and the husband regains consciousness to learn from Dr. Robbie that his wife is in critical condition.
- [25:55]
Heather McGee
Please don't.
- [25:57]
David Biancooli
Oh, my God.
- [25:58]
Heather McGee
Please don't let her die. Please.
- [26:01]
David Biancooli
I can assure you that she is in excellent hands.
- [26:06]
Heather McGee
Is this how it works?
- [26:08]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
How what works?
- [26:10]
Heather McGee
You think things are important, that everything's so important, and then you end up here and see.
- [26:22]
David Biancooli
Yeah, that is how it works.
- [26:24]
Health, mental as well as physical, also is at the heart of shrinking which recently began its third season on Apple tv. One therapist, played by Harrison Ford, has developed Parkinson's and reluctantly visits a specialist. In the waiting room is another patient who strikes up a conversation. The patient is played in what turns out to be a very moving guest spot by Michael J. Fox.
- [26:49]
What are you in for? Parkinson's?
- [26:53]
Announcer
You?
- [26:53]
David Biancooli
Just a haircut. I deserve more of a laugh than that. Sorry, just going through it today. You look good. Your voice is firm. Makes you sound wise. Yeah, I am quite wise. How's your balance? Not bad. Stupid exercises help me. I fall three times a day. I'm thinking I'd take it up.
- [27:15]
Stunt Break Another show rolling out weekly episodes at least through the end of February is the six episode Game of Thrones prequel shown Sundays on HBO and HBO Max. It's called A Night of the Seven Kingdoms and is set about a hundred years before Game of Thrones. I've seen the whole season and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Peter Claffey plays a wannabe knight, a towering hulk of a man named Ser Duncan. The tall Dexter saw Ansel place his tiny bald headed squire, a kid nicknamed Egg, and the two of them are a very funny, charming odd couple indeed.
- [27:53]
Heather McGee
Do you think I'll ever make a night one day?
- [27:56]
David Biancooli
Sure, why not? You're a likely lad.
- [27:58]
Dorothy Roberts
I'm a bit puny.
- [28:00]
Heather McGee
You'll grow, even for my age.
- [28:03]
Dorothy Roberts
Everyone's always told me so.
- [28:08]
David Biancooli
Everyone's always told me I was stupid and.
- [28:16]
Hmm.
- [28:18]
Hmm what?
- [28:19]
What?
- [28:21]
Heather McGee
What did he do when people said you were stupid?
- [28:23]
Dorothy Roberts
Sir?
- [28:25]
David Biancooli
What business is that of yours? My problems are my own.
- [28:29]
Other recent TV shows are out there in their entirety already, but deserve mention. All eight episodes of Down Cemetery Road, an enjoyable and impressive mystery series starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson, are available on Apple tv. And a second season is in the works. Which is great news because Emma Thompson is playing one of the quirkiest, funniest TV detectives since Peter Falk starred as Columbo and Wonder Man. The newest Disney plus entry in the Marvel universe recently dropped all eight episodes at once. It stars Yahya Abdul Mateen II as Simon Williams, an actor who has some superhuman abilities he's trying to hide while auditioning for the movie role of a superhero. Helping him is Sir Ben Kingsley as Trevor, a veteran washed up actor who was introduced in an Iron man movie as an actor impersonating a villain. Kingsley is so much fun in this expanded look at Trevor. He won me over immediately. Here he is taking Simon on a tour of his souvenir filled apartment Littered with old VHS tapes, scripts and. And even a prop skull from his stage days. Simon reacts admiringly to some of the memorabilia.
- [29:44]
Heather McGee
Coronation Street.
- [29:46]
David Biancooli
You play Ron Jenkins, Right?
- [29:48]
Dorothy Roberts
Well done.
- [29:49]
David Biancooli
A pint of bitter, please, and one for my friend. Every Brit did their stint. The producers were thrilled to get me after my run as Lear. Oh, careful with that. There's a tradition in the theater of handing down your prompt to the next generation. This particular skull said, quite the journey. It was used by David Garrick when he played Hamlet. He gave it to Keane, who passed it to Irvin, who passed it to Burton, who left it in a bar. And I nicked it.
- [30:20]
And I'll end with a shout out to Sunday Best, the Netflix documentary about Ed Sullivan that I think everyone should enjoy and be surprised by. I always knew that Sullivan, with his popular CBS variety show, was a longtime champion of minority artists. But until this documentary, I never fully understood why. I'll close with this story and performance by Harry Belafonte, who in 1950 was in danger of being blacklisted for his support of civil rights and certain communist causes.
- [30:52]
He wanted to talk to me personally, so he invited me to come to his hotel. He said, I'm told that I can't have you on my show because you are very favorable towards the communist ideology and that you're out there making mischief that's not to the best interests of our country. And I said, well, Mr. Sullivan, everything that you have suggested I'm guilty of having done is true. But tell me something. When the Irish did battle with the British, the rebel mood was considered quite heroic by all the Irish citizens in the world. Explain to me what the difference is when those of us of color also strike out against the same oppression. The Irish rebels who do that are heroic. Black rebels who do that are not patriotic. We thought this was not about loyalty to the nation. It's about loyalty to the human condition. And our humanity was being terribly brutalized. I left the meeting with nothing really resolved, and I couldn't have been back in the office more than an hour or two. Then I got a call from my agent, and he said, I don't know what you said to Ed Sullivan, but you're on the show.
- [32:28]
Heather McGee
Now.
- [32:28]
Tonya Moseley
Ladies and gentlemen, here's the moment we've.
- [32:29]
David Biancooli
All been waiting for. Here is one of the great artists of our country and one of the.
- [32:34]
Greatest artists of the world.
- [32:36]
Tonya Moseley
Here is Harry Belafont.
- [32:55]
David Biancooli
Good morning, Captain. Good morning, Sun. Good morning, Captain. Good morning, Sun.
- [33:16]
Heather McGee
Don't you need another mule skinner out.
- [33:23]
David Biancooli
On your new mule.
- [33:27]
Tonya Moseley
David biancooli is Fresh Air's TV critic. Coming up, we'll talk with historian Heather McGee about how racism in America hurts everyone, not just the people it targets. This is FRESH AIR weekend.
- [33:41]
Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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- [34:07]
Joanna Strober
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Sponsor/Advertiser Voice
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Announcer
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- [34:48]
Tonya Moseley
This is FRESH AIR WEEKEND. I'm Tonya Moseley, and my next guest is author and scholar Heather McGee. Her book the Sum of what Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together came out in 2021, but it reads like it was written for this exact moment. The thesis is deceptively simple. Racism doesn't just hurt the people it targets, it hollows out the lives of everyone, including white Americans. McGee traces the history of this country, showing how it is often chosen to destroy public goods rather than share them. Just recently, President Trump told the New York Times that civil rights protections resulted in white people being very badly treated, that he calls it reverse discrimination. The administration is dismantling diversity programs across government and urging white men to file federal discrimination complaints. It has also removed the MLK Holiday and Juneteenth from this year's fee free days at national parks, a move many see as a direct assault on Dr. King's legacy. In her book, McGee writes about research that shows many white Americans have come to believe anti white bias is now more prevalent than anti black bias, despite evidence to the contrary. She set out to understand where this belief comes from, who profits from it and what it costs all of us. She calls her book both a diagnosis and a way out. Heather McGhee is the former president of Demos, a progressive think tank focused on democracy, the economy and racial justice. She's drafted legislation and testified before Congress on policy initiatives including debt free college and voting rights protections. She's a contributor to NBC's Meet the Press and delivered her 2019 TED talk called Racism Has a Cost for Everyone. Her podcast the Sum of Us extended the arguments in her book. And Heather McGhee, welcome back to FRESH.
- [36:46]
Heather McGee
AIR, Tanya, thank you so much for having me.
- [36:50]
Tonya Moseley
Heather, I want to start by playing something for you. It's Andrea Lucas. She's the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and that's the agency created in 1965 to enforce the Civil Rights Act. And in this clip, she is making a call out to white men. Let's listen.
- [37:10]
Dorothy Roberts
Are you a white male who's experienced.
- [37:11]
Tonya Moseley
Discrimination at work based on your race or sex? You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the EEOC as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim. The EEOC is the federal agency charged with enforcing federal anti discrimination law against businesses and other private sector employers. The EOC is committed to identifying, attacking and eliminating all forms of race and sex discrimination, including against white male applicants and employees. That was Andrea Lucas. She's the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and she is calling for white men to also file if they feel discriminated against. I just want to slow down on this call out because you've looked at this data closely and I want you to talk about the facts and what they actually show and who has benefited from the Civil Rights act and actually who's been left behind since 1964.
- [38:15]
Heather McGee
I want to say first of all, that in a really masterful way, everything that the Trump administration is doing is both about what it's doing, asking for people to complain to the government about perceived bias and about driving an underlying core narrative. And that core narrative is an us versus them zero sum story. It's a story that says that there can be no mutual progress, that if people of color or women get ahead, if there are more immigrants, then that must come at the expense of white people, of men, of native born citizens. Right? It's this core zero sum lie. I call it a lie because the facts make it very clear. In fact, civil rights have been a benefit to most sectors of the society, that anti discrimination laws have had beneficiaries from people with disabilities, first generation college students, white women have been the disproportionate beneficiaries of affirmative action and that even white men have, because of longstanding, deliberate and explicit bias towards them, have actually benefited from companies and institutions that have been more successful because of their diversity. And so we really have to both take the face value of what's happening and also understand that for this new EEOC chair to say, white men, you are being hurt by this new, as in the last 60 years, regime of civil and equal rights is really about both soliciting plaintiffs, but more importantly, it's about selling a story. Selling a story to white people that says you should fear the progress and even the presence of, of people of color.
- [40:20]
Tonya Moseley
This idea of the zero sum lie, you actually talked to scholars at Harvard who has studied it, and they found that the thing is, a significant percentage of white Americans believe there is a bias against them and that it is now more prevalent than anti black bias. And I guess that might not be surprising to some, but researchers told you that they were shocked because it's so contrary to the facts. What did you find when you went looking for the source of that belief?
- [40:49]
Heather McGee
You know, it's funny now because I wrote the Sum of Us in the era of 2017-2021, and I had to do a lot of legwork to find where this zero sum narrative was coming from, who was selling this idea for their own profit, and of course, ultimately what it was costing people to buy this idea that there's no mutual progress, that they should fear their neighbor and their neighbor's success. Of course, now in the year 2026, we hear that zero sum story everywhere. Us versus them, as the fascism scholar Jason Stanley says is the core story of fascism.
- [41:33]
Tonya Moseley
There's a rewriting that is happening all across the federal government, including renaming landmarks, turning denali Back to McKinley, removing a pict of Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service page, changing enslaved African Americans to enslaved workers. There is a pattern here.
- [41:55]
Heather McGee
Oh, I mean, the list goes on and on. I mean, reading books about, you know, racial history from military libraries. A lot of the military heroes who are women and people of color have been stripped from the Defense Department's, you know, sort of celebrations. I mean, we know what's happening. It's really quite transparent. I do believe it will be temporary. We've seen the polling data that shows time after time that Americans don't want history to be erased. They don't want books to be banned. Americans of all stripes and all political persuasions don't support the whitewashing of history. So I do believe this is all quite foolish, quite childish, frankly, and quite temporary.
- [42:48]
Tonya Moseley
Heather for white Americans who hear your argument, you know, and they think because they may believe in the zero sum lie that this sounds like I'm being asked to give up something. What do you say to them and for black Americans too, and others who are skeptical that solidarity will ever be reciprocated, what do you say to them?
- [43:10]
Heather McGee
You know, racial and economic inequality costs our country so much. The economists at Citigroup found that the black white economic divide had cost the US GDP $16 trillion over the course of 20 years. And it makes sense, right? If you think about it, if you've got so many of your players sidelined due to debt discrimination disadvantage, they can't be on the field scoring points for your team. And of course, the zero sum lie tells folks we're not all on the same team, but that's just not true. We are in an interconnected economy. Today, the average black college graduate has less household wealth than the average white high school dropout. I'm going to say that again. If you are a white high school dropout, you are likely to have more household wealth, savings, assets, stocks and bonds inheritances than a black college graduate. And that's not because of something the black college graduate did wrong. That is because of the direct history of redlining discrimination that has made that black college graduate sort of inherit debt and wealth poverty instead of inherit wealth. And so think about our society and what it would be if that black college graduate, instead of spending the first decade of her career trying to get out from a mountain of debt, was actually able to go right into the marketplace and pioneer an invention that would solve a big problem in our society, would be able to go into public service at a hospital as a physician and be the person who operated on you or your family member, right? Even the very, in some quarters controversial idea of reparations, which feels like exactly a zero sum to some people, I don't see it as zero sum. I don't see it as a taking from one group and giving to another. I don't see it as an admission of guilt by white Americans. I see it as seed capital for the nation that we're becoming. And I think that when we look at what black Americans have contributed to our society without that cushion of wealth, we have to see that we could all benefit. I also think it's important for our democracy for us to live in a society where if government harms you, they make it right. If seven people on a city council vote to take your family's land and 50 years later, 100 years later, those seven people are no longer alive. That doesn't mean that your descendants will still suffer the consequences of that for all time. And there'll be no apology and no repair. Thankfully, we are in an era, despite this administration, when we're starting to see progress.
- [46:07]
Tonya Moseley
We're starting to see progress. But then let's talk about the attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. ProPublica even published this blistering investigation about it over the summer of who's being fired with these DEI purges. And nearly 80% are non white. Most of them are black women. Women who spent decades in public service, who took an oath, who built careers, now all gone. When you began to see this pattern, what did you feel? And I want to ask that in particularly because you are still so optimistic and feeling that we are still moving in a direction toward progress, when right now it feels pretty dire for a significant percentage of the population.
- [46:54]
Heather McGee
I want to be very clear that this administration has been brutal in its attacks on the public good and specifically its attacks on people of color in public service and disproportionately black women. And you're exactly right. At the same time, this is so obviously folks who are holding on white knuckled to a tiny idea of we the people, and. And they're denying the beauty of what we are becoming as we become a country with no dominant racial majority, as we become a country that has owned up to and understood our true history. People don't unsee what they saw in the summer of the uprisings in the wake of George Floyd's murder. People don't unsee what they saw when ICE killed Renee Goode. This is a country that is, in fact, just as it has always been, warring between a faction that wants to keep wealth and power concentrated in its hands and a diverse, striving, agitating, often activist, multiracial population that is trying to figure out who they are to one another. But I think that the reason why the attacks have been so brutal and overreaching is because we are so close to a place where there is an enduring multiracial governing majority that wants this country to live up to the values that we were taught it was founded on and is ready to do the work to actually make it so.
- [48:46]
Tonya Moseley
You know, I hate this question I'm about to ask you, but I also really love it. I mentioned how Dr. King said real change requires an honest diagnosis. If you could sit with him today, what would you tell him about where we are?
- [49:10]
Heather McGee
I'm sorry, Tanya, you saying that was just very moving because I pictured myself getting a chance to be with him. And that's, that's a powerful thing. Dr. King, in his very short time on this planet, gave us so much and was such a prophet. I don't think he would be surprised about where we are because he was a student of history and he knew that the arc of the moral universe was long and that it bends towards justice. But he also knew that it snaps back sometimes. And he also knew that the very narrow, self interested elite was always going to try to sabotage progress. I think he would be proud of who black people are today and what we've accomplished, what we've contributed to the world. I think he would be disgusted by the enduring inequalities in our society that have grown so much since his time. But so much of what he spoke about was so prescient. He began in the later part of his activism to really focus on the ills of capitalism and the ills of militarism, racial and economic inequality. And of course, those ills are very much at the heart of what is plaguing us in our society today. From the takeover of Venezuela with a motivation of controlling oil resources and no care for the people who live there and have been in desperation for so long, to the militarization of our communities, to the dehumanization of immigrants and people of color in the rhetoric that this regime has espoused. He wouldn't be surprised by it. He would be inspired by the activism that is happening today. But I do think that for somebody who saw so much progress in such a short time, he would be impatient for us. He would say that, as he did say in 1967, the beloved community is a realistic vision of an achievable society, one in which problems and conflicts exist but are resolved peacefully and without bitterness. I think he would say, why haven't we gotten there? Why are so many people still willing to believe the zero sum lie? And I think he would have a lot to say to the current White House.
- [52:01]
Tonya Moseley
Heather McGee, I really appreciate this conversation and you. Thank you so much.
- [52:06]
Heather McGee
Thank you, Tanya. Thank you for having me. I'm so grateful.
- [52:09]
Tonya Moseley
Heather McGee is the author of the Sum of Us. FRESH AIR Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. FRESH air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham with Terry Gross. I'm Tanya Bosley.
- [52:33]
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