How We Can Prosper Together: Dismantling the Zero Sum Myth

We are inviting you on a journey with us. Everyone will begin this journey from very different starting points based on your upbringing, your geography, your educational experiences, and your lived experience. Our differences are what make a conversation rich. If we all agree, there is no dialogue. So we invite you to become uncomfortable, unsettled. We invite you to unlearn, to re-learn, to listen, to share.

We start this month with a dialogue between an historian and storyteller, and an economist. Together they weave together power and policy, individual stories and our collective history to demonstrate the COST of racism: human, cultural, educational, and monetary.

The author of How to Be AntiRacist, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, is also the founder of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. His podcast, Be AntiRacist begins with an interview with Heather McGhee.

 

“You Ready? Let’s Roll!”

What follows below is taken directly from Dr. Kendi’s episode page and can be accessed here, or by clicking the links above.

Check out this image, compiled by Andrew M. Ibrahim, MD, MSc

Heather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy, and author of the best-selling book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. She is the former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos and now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.

Dr. Kendi sat down with the self-described “policy wonk” to discuss how a racist society hurts everyone. Together they explore how, by investing in each other, we can all achieve better jobs, better health, better democracy, better schools, better neighborhoods for our kids—and so much more.

QUESTIONS TO INSPIRE DIALOGUE

  • McGhee introduces the Zero-Sum paradigm as a way of thinking that’s historically held America back. She argues that the commonly-held belief that racism is “good for White people” is a lie, and that this lie has perpetuated inequity that disadvantages people of all colors. How has the Zero-Sum myth shown up in your life? Is there progress that you’ve thought this country could make, but feared it would come at a cost to you?

  • Heather McGhee tells the story of the Oak Park pool in Alabama to illustrate the ways in which systemic inequity prevents overall progress. Can you think of improvements that could be made to your community that are held back by systemic oppression? 

  • Heather McGhee talks about the unfair banking practices that led to the American financial crisis in 2008, revealing that subprime mortgages were offered to disenfranchised as far back as the 1990s and early 2000s. How aware were you of these practices before they were brought to a head during the 2008 financial crisis?

  • Heather McGhee uses school segregation to further illustrate the myth of the Zero-Sum, citing the documented psychological harms and educational limitations that White children suffer in segregated schools. How did the schools that you attended growing up look? Were they attended by a majority of one kind of student? If so, how do you think your educational experience would have been improved by a more diverse student body?

  • In discussing the Solidarity Dividend, Dr. Kendi and Heather McGhee outline the ways in which a multiracial, multicultural, antiracist coalition can be built across class lines to effect the kind of change this country needs the most. What are some of the obstacles to building such a coalition, that you’ve observed in life?

  • McGhee tells the story of a White, female, fast-food worker in Kansas, who believed the Zero-Sum lie, until finding commonality with a Latina woman at an organizing meeting. Has there been a moment in your life when meeting someone outside of your community has revealed a greater commonality amongst all people than you were led to believe growing up? What was that moment? And how did it change your way of thinking and moving through the world?

GUEST LINKS

FURTHER READING + RESOURCES

ORGANIZATIONS TO SUPPORT

  • Color of Change – the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.

  • NAACP – a civil rights organization in the United States, formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans.

  • Race Forward – brings systemic analysis and an innovative approach to complex race issues to help people take effective action toward racial equity.

  • Center for Racial Justice in Education – trains and empowers educators to dismantle patterns of racism and injustice in our schools and communities.