Heather McGhee The old zero-sum paradigm is not just counterproductive; it’s a lie. The logical extension of the zero-sum story is that a future without racism is something white people should fear, because there will be nothing good for them in it. They…
Heather McGhee Everyone would have been safer Black writers before me, from James Baldwin to Toni Morrison, have made the point that racism is a poison first consumed by its concocters. What’s clearer now in our time…
Heather McGhee Racism got in the way of all of us having nice things It was a dramatic finding, but it still wasn’t clear to me why white people would view the presence of more people of color as a threat to their status,…
Heather McGhee Demographic change So what is the stubborn belief that needs to shift now for us to make progress against inequality? I found my first clues in a series of psychology studies. Psychologists…
Heather McGhee Today our schools are nearly as segregated as they were before Brown v. Board of Education In my gut, I’ve always known that laws are merely expressions of a society’s dominant beliefs. It’s the beliefs that must shift in order for outcomes to change. When policies…
Heather McGhee Why would white voters have rallied to the flag of a man whose agenda promised to wreak economic, social, and environmental havoc on them along with everyone else? On the day Donald Trump was to take the oath of office in 2017, I’d been the president of Demos for three years. I was gearing up to fight against…
