The Suburban Women Problem - Season 2, Episode 5
Jasmine Clark: Hi everyone. Thanks for listening. I'm Jasmine Clark.
Amanda Weinstein: I’m Amanda Weinstein.
Rachel Vindman: I’m Rachel Vindman.
Jasmine: And you're listening to The Suburban Women Problem. This week, I got a chance to talk with Heather McGhee about redlining and how racism has affected home ownership and basically every aspect of the suburbs. I even got to educate my colleagues about on the House floor as well. So that was exciting. It was exciting for me. I don't know how excited they felt about it.
And speaking of being a State Rep, today we'll also be chatting with another state representative, Casey Weinstein, who happens to be Amanda's husband!
Amanda: Oh my gosh. He's so excited. He has been lobbying me to be on the pod for so long. Usually I lobby him for policies I want, but he has been lobbying hard and he's very excited.
Rachel: Cause we're cool.
Jasmine: And even though this won't air until Wednesday, technically it's Valentine's Day. So what a great Valentine's day gift to allow your husband to share with us on the pod today. But before we go into that, let's just talk a little bit about what's going on in the news. I think there's some stuff about inflation and everything I’m reading I feel like it's just like scaring everyone to death. So I don't know, Amanda, you're an economist! Help us out. What's going on with inflation?
Rachel: Can I just, I don't understand inflation at all. I tried to read something about it the other day. And I consider myself to be pretty well read and you know, fairly intelligent, but it's very confusing to me about inflation and I think it's probably confusing to our listeners. And whenever we have a place, something that's confusing, we know that is a place where you can really drive a wedge and basically say whatever you want and people will parrot it and repeat it. So that's exactly why I'm taking notes, I will study for the quiz. I'm going to take notes, just explain, you know, inflation in three minutes or less!
Amanda: Well, I feel like inflation right now is such a wedge. It's like, we are complaining that this is all Biden's fault, right? We have really high gas prices or the cost of tires are so expensive and this is all Biden's fault, which is not true, shocker. Right. So we have, from the very beginning, economists have said the economy is going to be bumpy and it's not going to be good as long as we have a pandemic. Well guess what? When not enough people get vaccinated, we're still going to have issues with a pandemic, which means supply chain issues, which means shortages. And those shortages mean it's going to drive up higher prices when we are all bidding up the prices, trying to get this set of tires or whatever it is.
So I recently did a story for local news about why do tires cost so much right now? And it's because one, we have supply chain shortages. We have issues along basically every supply chain right now, because we haven't addressed the pandemic. We don't have enough people vaccinated, but we're also starting to get back to normal life. We're starting to drive more. We're starting to go to work more. We're starting to socialize more. And the more driving we do means we're going to drive up the price of gas. It means we're going to drive up the price of tires.
Jasmine: So I have a question about this, and I'm glad that we have you on the pod because I see all these different memes and stuff and I rarely share memes unless I can truly source it and know that the information is correct.
Rachel: What a novel approach.
Jasmine: I know! I don't understand this concept of a company making like record profits, but then also saying I have to drive up prices. I feel like they're saying inflation is the reason why they have to inflate. And I don't, I just don't understand.
Amanda: Yeah. Economist love is competition. Right? We like options. We like to have different companies competing with each other, but when we don't have that, when we only have one or two gas companies, that means they can charge higher prices because we don't have a lot of great options. What do we do instead? Right? So if you're a real family and you need new tires and they're double the cost, that is a huge punch to your budget. Right. So what do you do about that? Right. And right now, There isn't much we can do about it when we don't have enough people vaccinated. Right. So we need to get the pandemic in check, economists have been saying this for the last two years. Like we have to get the pandemic in check if we want to get prices in check. If we want to go back to an economy that feels more normal. And that is number one. Anything else is just going to be a band-aid on a bullet wound because the huge issue here is still the pandemic.
Jasmine: Well, thank you so much for that. I think I'm getting it now. So now I know not to share those memes because they're not necessarily telling the whole picture. So Rachel, you're basically like our resident expert on all things Ukraine and Russia. So can you give us—
Rachel: I wish my husband could hear you say this right now. He would be laughing so hard.
Well I think it's, you know, yes, interesting. If there is a war in Ukraine that will also very much affect prices. Our biggest trading partner is Europe and they are really going to feel the squeeze if that happens. So all the more reason to avoid this at any cost.
And it looks like, again, we're recording this on Monday, but it looks like perhaps we might be making some difference in our threats and our, you know, I mean, it's not, it's not an empty threat. So I think maybe now Putin believes us. Like any bully, when you stand up and show strength. And I think Putin is very insulated and that's something that a lot of leaders face, is no one really telling them the truth.
But when you let people act without there being a cost, and I'm just going to bring it back to parenting, cause that's really what 90% of my life is day to day. You have to deal with it at the time. We haven't done a good job of doing that with President Putin of having real consequences, immediate consequences that really affect him and affect his people. So, you know, it's, it's, it could go either way, but I think this week is a big week and we'll see what happens.
But I do know when you stand up to bullies, they will eventually I think, when, when they believe you, that's the point where you really see action. But until you make a believer out of them— and that's just, you know, finding their currency. What is it that they actually understand? And that's kind of true for anyone. You have to find everyone's currency. And speaking to which I, I just did an interview with CNN and, you know, we're talking about Book Ban Busters and you know, just the culture wars in general. And I think the right has done such a good job of finding the currency for suburban women and suburban parents, and it is their children. And it is scaring them.
And so in between that and this, I was thinking about that. It’s just finding someone's currency and we really have to counter that by knowing the currency as well. I don't think we have to buy into the scare tactics necessarily. And I think we shouldn't take the bait a lot of times, don't take the bait. But it's good to educate yourself and be able to educate others.
Jasmine: So speaking of that, I just want to point out scare tactics and Hudson Ohio made a little bit of news. There is a guy on the city council, I don't know if city council—
Amanda: It was the mayor.
Jasmine: Oh, wow. Oh, that's even worse. So the mayor wants to scare everyone into believing that somehow there is a link between ice fishing and prostitution. And it's a really slippery slope. That's more like a flat lake shanty's somewhere in the middle. I, I feel like we could not do this episode without at least acknowledging that sometimes the scare tactics are so ridiculous that it's easy to laugh at. But then at the same time, like these are the people that are getting elected. Like he is in a position of power!
Amanda: I know. So last week someone sent my husband and I this video of the mayor saying that “ice fishing is going to”— and he like pauses, we're like, “what, what's it going to lead to?”— “prostitution!”
And we just broke out laughing. Are you kidding me? So I tweeted it out thinking like, you know, I think a couple other people think this is kind of funny. And it turns out a lot of other people that it was funny. So it got picked up by like every news story. And like there's been musicals made of it. I have been sent so many memes. I never thought I could laugh so hard. I was like, I don't think I could laugh anymore. And then someone would send me something and I’m like, I got more laughs in me because that was really funny.
But you're right. It's ridiculous. And so I tweeted out, cause I wanted just to show like, this is ridiculous, these fear tactics, they are leaning in so hard that it's completely ridiculous. Talking about ice fishing leading to prostitution.
Rachel: I think you might be jumping to conclusions a little too much.
Jasmine: Like trampoline jumping, like geez. This dude and his trampoline logic.
Amanda: I know he's doing a little too much jumping. And so, I love, One, getting a laugh, but Two, showing that these fear tactics are actually ridiculous. I am not afraid of books. I am not afraid of schools. I'm also not afraid of ice fishing.
Jasmine: I’m a little afraid of ice fishing. It seems really cold.
Amanda: Haha. So we've had a lot of people ask me, like, how do we get a Mayor Schubert? And really, it comes back to a little bit what we're talking today in that we had a new development near our downtown, which is super cute, very walkable, lots of restaurants and shops, and everybody loves our downtown. And we have this plot of land that needed to be developed. And part of this development was more shops, some office space, but also… denser housing. Apartments.
Rachel: Gasp!
Amanda: I know, I didn't know. I didn't know that A word and the D density word were like really bad words, but now I know it's a bad word. So excuse the language on this episode, I said “density!” The city got enough complaints that it was section eight housing and people were saying this was a ploy for the city to like do section eight housing everywhere. And so he played on these fears. So we now have a mayor who got elected for playing on fears.
Rachel: And what if that happened? What if there was section 8 housing throughout your town? What if, like, I see this, this is where I went with CRT in Virginia. And when I would start talking to some people, cause it'd be like, “Okay. Yeah. I want you to say you don't want poor people living next to you. And when you say you don't want poor people living next to you, I also want you to admit that that means you don't want people who don't look like you and are a different color.” Right? And that's the truth. And if you believe that then flipping own it. Own it. Be able to say, if that's the way you're going to vote, then you should be able and you should be willing to say it out loud. Say it to my face, say it to everyone else.
Jasmine: Oh, I love that. That's why sometimes I wish I was on some of these spicy committees like the education committee and stuff, because every now and then I'm like, I wish I had the opportunity to question this, you know, sponsor of this bill and ask those exact questions. I'm like, “so you don't want us to teach this, but why?”
But I do think it brings us to our topic for today, which is redlining. And so, as I said earlier, I got to talk to my colleagues about exactly what redlining is. And I realized a lot of people did not even know this happened. After the Great Depression, FDR instituted the New Deal and the truth is, the New Deal was these solutions that were meant to restore prosperity in America—
Amanda: The American Dream!
Jasmine: Yeah. The American Dream. And it was a great deal, but it wasn't a great deal for all Americans. So let's be clear on that. And so part of this dream is the dream of homeownership, but they would color-code neighborhoods and all Black neighborhoods were color-coded red, and basically red means stop. We will not insure mortgages in this area.
Amanda: What we don't think about is like, well, that was a long time ago, right? You're talking about 1930s. It's now 2022. Right? So what does that mean for us? And when you didn't have that federally insured mortgage, it basically meant you couldn't get that house. You could not be part of that American dream and the effects of it are still within families today, because now you have a lot of Black families who could not afford a home and they could not build that wealth the way that, for example, my grandparents did.
They were, so my grandma was a nurse, my grandpa was a, worked in a bakery. Not middle-class, but they were able to get a home because of these policies. Which then meant my dad could go to college. So now you have my dad, so they could own a home, which allowed all of their kids to go to college, which then I am now, you know, the daughter of a college educated man. And then I went to college and got a PhD. So you had that wealth building that goes and goes and goes. Whereas on the flip side was then grandparents at the same time who were Black couldn't own that.
Jasmine: Right. And actually, if you were to take a map from 1935 of, you know, these redlined districts, and then you were to overlap with a lower to moderate income neighborhoods, even today, it's almost like a lot of those neighborhoods, I think the number I saw was 75%, you could still, it was a, it's almost like you can draw that red-lining all over again. And that's right now, in 2022.
Amanda: And then also we still get policies, even thinking about how we draw maps, like gerrymandering. So I think now's the time I'm going to get Casey. Casey, we need you! Come talk about maps!
Jasmine: I love it.
Amanda: Casey Weinstein, my Valentine. Welcome to the pod.
Casey Weinstein: Great to be here. I'm starstruck, longtime listener.
Jasmine: So, Casey, since you are a follower of the pod, you know how this goes, I'm really looking forward to hearing from you. But before we talk about like maps and all this stuff, we've talked to Amanda a lot about what happened at y’all house, as far as those protestors go. And so since you're here, I would love to actually get your perspective as well, since I guess, technically they were kind of targeting you as a state Representative. So why do you think they were really there?
Casey: Well, first of all, I, I distinctly remember walking up the stairs after Amanda came down to say this was going on at our house or something was going on at our house and thinking there is no way in hell that they are actually coming to little old me. Like, how did I get on these guys' radar? I like to tell my friends, I do my best, but I have one 99th of 1/3 power in the state of Ohio.
Amanda: In the minority party.
Casey: In the super minority actually. So, I mean, I do my best, but I mean, in terms of the best bang for your buck on a Sunday afternoon for a protest, I may not be the best target.
What really it brought home for me was the blurring of the lines between national and local politics. I've had this conversation a few times with people about how there used to be this, this bifurcation between national politics and local and how you could have, you know, support for a local candidate while, you know, maybe you're a Republican, you vote at the top of the ticket, you would support your Democratic state representative, or even your city council member, down the ticket. And that, that line is getting destroyed ultimately. So, I mean, it's like a free for all. I'm a state representative. And yet I have this group with national grievances coming to my home. Right. So that's what really it was a really visceral awakening for me.
And, you know, just as a parent too, I've had moments where I feel responsible for bringing it to my home and, you know, my daughters feeling insecure or feeling scared and worried. And that really has dwelled with me. I've dwelled on that, I guess. And that's disheartening. And for the first time ever through this process and everything that entailed, I, there had moments where I did not want to be in office and that was kind of sad.
Amanda: Which is really the point. That was why they came. That was exactly what they wanted to happen. And that's why they did it.
Rachel: Yeah. That's exactly why they did it. I mean, and literally, while we're recording this podcast, someone on Twitter after my appearance on CNN today said that I'm a paid prostitute. There's a lot of people, it seems like a fixation on prostitution, but yeah, no, it's so weird. I do, you know, the idea is to silence you. I mean, that's what all this bullying is. It goes back to the bullying. But I trust me, I know, I mean, there are days when I'm like, I just want to move away and not be part of this at all, but I can, I can really relate. I also think it's really important and I very much appreciate your voice.
Jasmine: Yes. I go through those emotions as well.
Rachel: And you know, it was like when the Republicans in Georgia, I mean, the looks on their faces when they were like, "oh my God, we're being threatened! And we're Republicans!” I mean, they couldn't stand it. I'm really sorry that happened to them. I really, really, it shouldn't happen to anyone, but dear God.
So, with the redistricting in Ohio and the gerrymandering that you're facing, can you explain to us Casey? On a really simple level, what the gerrymandering is, what they seek to do and why it's so important that we fight back against it.
Casey: It’s a great question. And it's maybe the most important question in politics because every other issue really stems from who you have in office to represent you. And this is about who we have in office. And this is about, you know, truly rigging the game so that in Ohio Democrats are locked into a permanent, not just minority, but super minority.
If you take the aggregate vote in Ohio over the last decade for the House of Representatives, Ohio House of Representatives, it would be approximately 54 Republican to 46 Democrats, not nearly as you know, the sea of red that we look like in the legislature. The districts were drawn as a 67 Republican, 32 Democrat. So, what you have is a 13 seat gap.
Practically what that means is, in Akron, Ohio—which is the closest major metro, we're right between Cleveland and Akron, but I'll use Akron as an example because we're in that county— there will be in these new maps, one African-American in our entire county most likely representing this, this county of five seats. When it should arguably, by the data and by fairness, be at least three. So that's how you dilute one Metro area, mid-size Metro area in the state of Ohio. And of course we have Cleveland and Cincinnati and Columbus and Dayton and Toledo and lots of other cities where that happens. So when you extrapolate that you end up with a dozen fewer representatives of color representing major metropolitan areas in the state House. And that's the difference between legislation being passed.
Jasmine: Good legislation too. I think you make a very good point and it's not sexy to talk about redistricting, gerrymandering is not a word that comes up a lot over the dinner table, but it's so important because the things that do come up over the dinner table are directly affected by how we draw these maps.
And so, you know, if you're frustrated with the way things are going, then you want to be able to have the ability to elect people that will put into place policies that are good for you and good for your community and good for your neighborhood. Good for your state. But instead they strategically and surgically cut up states to maintain a majority. So = we still have to deal with these craptastic policies that they put forth, because they basically are not just drawing themselves into power, they’re drawing their crappy policy into place as well when they do this. And I that's the part, I don't think people realize how important this is, but it's like be a really, really important.
Casey: Well, it's such a great point, Jasmine, because people will come to me and say, how do we get gun reform done in Ohio? How do we reform our public schools? How do we get renewable energy done in Ohio? And I'm like, really in a lot of ways, we need more people who think alike. We need more Democrats. Because we've tried for years and years and years to convince my friends across the aisle to move on these issues, and they won’t. We need more Democrats. And right now the map is rigged against us.
And we even passed a constitutional amendment in Ohio to mandate fair districts, but the Republicans have ignored it twice. And now there've been two constitutional rulings by the Supreme Court saying that they are unfair and they have to go back to the drawing board. And it's unclear if they're going to listen to the Ohio Supreme court this time around.
Amanda: And I love Jasmine that you said that they are surgical. So I think one thing that was interesting, especially, you know, not being the politician, but being the person who lives with the politician, that it's interesting to see the different versions of maps they've come up with. And for your district, our house is basically always right in the corner, no matter what district, because they're trying to get us to be in a better district than you currently are because you flipped a district. So I think it's interesting to talk about some of the places where they surgically found the houses of some of the representatives and put them into the district they wanted them in.
Casey: Yeah, there's a little island or there's a little peninsula or something. And it, there's also a bit of a misnomer there in terms of how hard it is to do. It's not hard at all. With the computer programs they have, you can design a very rigged map in a very minimal amount of time and you can make it do almost whatever you want it to do. So, you know, the question is, will we have fairness and representation in our state.
Amanda: Well, thank you, Casey. I appreciate you coming up here. Thank you. Maybe, maybe we'll do lunch after this.
Casey: No, I have lunch with the mayor. One of my mayors. I'm sorry.
Amanda: I just got rejected on Valentine's Day!
Casey: I know, on Valentine's Day lunch I have a lunch with one of my mayors about our capital budget.
Rachel: Uhhh, is there going to be ice fishing?
Casey: Jokes for days, Vindman!
Rachel: I’m just asking questions. I'm just asking questions, guys.
Casey: It’s not, just to be clear, it's not our mayor in Hudson. It's a, it's another city's mayor from my district. Thank you so much for having me on.
Rachel: Thanks for joining us, Casey.
Casey: Yeah. Keep up the great work. I hope to meet you both.
Amanda: Alright, love you. Bye.
Jasmine: Aww, super cute. Now we're going to take a quick break, and when we come back, we'll have my conversation with Heather McGhee. I really enjoyed this conversation. I think our conversation today, she kind of puts it all together. And so I can't wait for you all to hear it. So be sure to stick around.
BREAK
Jasmine: Our guest today is so great that she's the first guest that we've had on the podcast for a second time. She's an economist, an advocate, and a writer. Her book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together is now available in paperback. Heather, thank you so much for coming back to The Suburban Women Problem.
Heather McGhee: I’m so glad to be here. Jasmine, I do just need to correct the record on something. I'm not actually an economist. I'm an economic policy analyst. It's not as nice as economist, but I don't want anybody coming after me with their PhDs.
Jasmine: You know, as a PhD, I would not come after people, but I know some people that would. So I feel you on that all day.
So one thing that you and Amanda talked about the last time you were on here and something that actually really stuck with me I really like, you know, listening to the story and just the visual of it like was embedded in my mind after that, after that episode, was about “drained pool politics.” So can you remind our listeners or maybe people who are new and haven't had a chance to listen to all the episodes in season one, can you just remind us of what “drained pool politics” are and why they're important?
Heather: So, I spent nearly two decades working at and then leading an economic think tank that was focused on trying to solve problems in the American economy. Basically answer the question, “why is it that we can't seem to have nice things?” And by nice things, I mean like a well-funded public school in every neighborhood and affordable, you know, healthcare that's guaranteed. Childcare and eldercare, all the things that, you know, just a family needs. Why is it so hard for the average family to grab a hold of those nice things, you know? And so I set out on this journey to write The Sum Of Us to really try to answer the question better than I've been able to answer it in, in the halls of power and, and working in the think tank.
And one of the first places I went was Montgomery, Alabama. And Montgomery, Alabama has a central park called Oak Park. And there I walked the grounds of what used to be a thousand plus person publicly funded and built swimming pool that was part of the building boom of public swimming pools and good public amenities, public goods like libraries and roads and bridges, parks, and pools in the 1930s and 40s as part of this ethos of public goods, right.
This sort of idea that Americans held true really coming out of the depression that it's government's right and responsibility to ensure a decent standard of living for her people. And and so those public pools were part of that. And when I talk about drained pool politics is because of what happened when those public pools which were largely—and I'm always clear to say, not just in the Jim Crow South— were largely segregated or for whites only, either with a sign on the fence or just by custom and enforced through intimidation and violence.
And when those pools were integrated or desegregated by the courts after Black families were able to successfully argue and say, you know, “those are our tax dollars that have been funding those public goods all along, you know, as well. And our kids to swim too.” In the case of the swimming pools, towns and cities across the country decided to drain their public pools rather than integrate them.
And so in Montgomery, effective January 1st, 1959, they actually closed the pool. Filled it in with dirt. They closed the entire park, they sold off the animals in the zoo, they closed the entire parks and recreation department of the city and kept it closed for a decade until 1970, all to stop little Black kids and little white kids from swimming together in the deep end of the pool.
And I just, for me, you know, as a mom, as someone who understands the difference in quality of life of having nice wonderful schools, well funded libraries, right, you know, transit that's reliable and can get you and your kids where you need to go. All of that is really means something. And we know how unequal those things are, right? How rich neighborhoods have better ones and working in middle-class neighborhoods have worse ones. And that, just that idea that the difference between a well-funded public good and one that's really starved for resources so often has to do with race. And that when our country was 90% white, public goods were really well-funded—lavish thousand plus person resort style swimming pools—and when our country became more diverse, that's when we've had these really nasty fights about just spending our collective resources on our people.
Jasmine: I completely understand that. Especially as a legislator who has to look at how we spend our, our tax dollars in the state of Georgia, a lot of times that is the argument that we're constantly having to have. You know, tax dollars are basically an investment by the people who live in that place. You know, asking for there to be things for them is just asking for a return on that investment.
But today I want to actually talk a little bit about something different— or maybe it's not different, maybe it's one in the same—and that's housing discrimination. And specifically in the suburbs. And so I want to start with redlining. So can you kind of explain redlining to our listeners and just explain how it has shaped the suburbs that we have today?
Heather: I’m really glad you asked me that because this is one of the stories I tell over and over again in the book The Sum Of Us, because it really does reveal in a way that I certainly wasn't aware of growing up, living in cities and in suburbs when I was younger, just how much explicitly racist laws have shaped where we live today.
Redlining is a practice promulgated by the government and banks in the wake of a Great Depression. When, as one of those well-funded public goods, the new deal government spent a whole lot of resources trying to make homeownership something that working class families could do across the country. They really wanted to sort of backstop and subsidize the mortgage lenders in order to make homeownership a reality.
It was really this sort of beginning of the invention by the government of the American Dream of homeownership. And they did this massive investment in housing, but they based it on a series of maps that they drew of most of the cities in the country and they shaded different neighborhoods with different colors and graded them different letters like A, B, C, D, based on basically how white the neighborhood was. And that map told banks where they could and could not lend, and if they lent in a D grade area, they wouldn't get any of the federal guarantee or backstop or subsidy. So basically made no financial sense. So they just didn't do it. And this is beginning in the 1930s and it really didn't end until the Community Reinvestment Act of the 1970s.
And I want to just read a typical thing that was written on redlining cause sometimes people, you know, they just don't realize how explicit it was. It said, "The neighborhood is graded D because of its concentration of Negroes, but the section may improve to a third class area as this element is forced out.”
Jasmine: Oh my gosh.
Heather: Right. Okay. So that story of, of areas that were sort of rewarded with free government money in so many different ways and low and no interest loans from banks versus those that were shut out of any capital development is the story of how you create so many of the segregated places today in the suburbs.
Jasmine: Wow. That's you know, just to hear it read out loud, it's one of those things that brings to mind one of the reasons why they're trying to ban quote, you know, critical race theory and ban certain books. This is, this is it. You know, they don't want people to know. They don't want people to have access to real, tangible, factual information that you cannot deny is racist.
Heather: That’s exactly right. It's not a theory. It's facts they don't want us to know. That they don’t want our children to know.
Jasmine: Exactly. Wow. So. You know, you talked about this being basically around the time of the New Deal around the 1930s, and it didn't really go away until the 1970s, but how would you say housing discrimination has continued to affect racial inequality today?
Heather: Well, I have a whole chapter in my book about the financial crisis and the subprime mortgage crisis that really predated and caused the financial crash of 2008. And I think it's a really important story for basically everyone who owns a home who lives in the suburbs to know because it's not 1934, right? It's not ancient history. It's not black and white newsreel. It's time in which we all lived. And we saw the dominant media narrative that said this was about, you know, homeowners speculating. This was about people getting mortgages that they couldn't afford, that they shouldn't have ever qualified for. Like that's the dominant narrative. And so it created the resentment, the sense that we lost 8 million jobs and trillions in household wealth of the economy was in a freefall, all because of, you know, your neighbor being irresponsible.
And there was a racialized piece of it, too, right? It was a sense of like, you know, Black and brown folks were getting these mortgages that they shouldn't have been able to afford. And that's not at all true. So you get to really, I really understood in real time how it works that a dominant narrative that sort of villainizes people of color and blames them for what's wrong in our society, how that happens in real time and how people who are very well-meaning often end up parroting that and sort of cherry picking facts.
So the story that I tell of the financial crisis is one in which actually what happened with subprime was that after generations of redlining and not allowing access to access to mainstream plain vanilla bank loans that you could pay off reasonably over 30 years, just over in a course of just two decades, it went from redlining Black neighborhoods to reverse redlining them. And in fact, flooding them with aggressive marketing, but not about vanilla loans that would secure home ownership. With these new exotic types of types of loans that had balloon payments and prepayment penalties and high interest rates that were unrelated to your credit score.
And it was that it was the aggressive marketing that made it so that two home buyers, two homeowners, with the exact same credit score, income, et cetera, if you were Black you were three times more likely to be offered a toxic subprime loan than if you were white. It was just about who was marketed and then blatant discrimination inside these banks that the federal government would later sort of fine all the big banks for just rampant discrimination.
And so this story for me is one of like a canary in the coal mine that was ignored. Where Black and brown neighborhoods were the first ones to receive the, these really terrible loans in a very discriminatory fashion. And then it ended up obviously spiraling out of control as the market grew and grew and grew. But what has been remained in the wake of the financial crisis is that Black families who were the sort of last to the home ownership party have not recovered. That there is a gap in ownership that is wide, a Black white gap, that is wide today as it was before the Fair Housing Act. Literally erased two generations of, of homeownership gains. It's it's devastating. And so that is a story of the American suburb as well.
Jasmine: So it's been about a year since the last time you were on the podcast. And since then we've started seeing it all on book bans spreading across the country. Do you think things have gotten worse in the past year? Or has anything gotten any better?
Heather: The paperback version of the Sum Of Us is out now. It came out on Tuesday February 8th and so much happened since the book came out last February, including these escalating attacks on children's freedom to learn. And so I included a new chapter and afterword in the paperback version, as well as a discussion guide, because I really, I just felt like this was such an amazingly powerful example of this zero sum worldview. This way in which the billionaire right wing is funneling money towards these astroturf organizations and trying to scare white parents away from an integrated public good. It's like drained pool politics all over again.
And it's zero sum racial politics because it's saying, my little white child can't read about Black history. Cause that's an, it'll take something away from my white child. And I include the story of Rachel Vindman who I talked with on this podcast and how she so beautifully explained that it was actually a real loss to her. That she, as a white woman, felt like she'd been robbed of her own history because she grew up in Oklahoma and never learned about the Tulsa Race Massacre until recently.
I mean, what do suburban parents really need right now? How about a cap on how much they pay for childcare at 7% of their income? How about more home care workers and elder care workers for their aging parents? How about universal pre-K and paid family leave? Right? That's what suburban parents really need. They don't need chaos at their kids' school board meeting and they don't need cranks calling up the library and saying, “I want to see all the books that you have that mention the word racism.” That's just not what families need and yet that's the right wing distraction.
And what are they distracting from the fact that they are opposed to the Build Back Better agenda, which would guarantee those things for me and for my children and for the caregivers in my life. I mean, it's just, it would be transformational and yet instead we're banning books, it just it's so, so frustrating.
And yet it has so revealed what the right wing really wants to do with power. What they really think about us as parents, what they really think about our children, what their values are. And there is a movement of people of parents who are saying, “No. That's enough.” Right? These book bands are wildly unpopular, even though they're passing in a dozen states, these white discomfort laws, right. They're passing, but that's just because, you know, the structures have kept up or Republican minority rule that is trying to force it to agenda on us. So I'm really excited about efforts like the Book Ban Busters with Red Wine & Blue and all of these other places across the country where people are standing up and saying, “Now it's time to protect our children's freedom to learn. It's time not to fear our own history and it's time to move forward together.”
Jasmine: I love that. Especially as a parent I love the pushback and I, I am actually pretty excited and also just reassured, I guess is the word I'm looking for, that despite what the politicians at the top are doing, they're not actually talking to people who these things are affecting and those people are saying “no.” And I hope that we can kind of reverse some of these bad policies once we get those people out of office for not doing their job, which is listening to the people they're supposed to represent.
So now what I want to do is I want to go ahead and jump into our rapid fire questions. You’ve been here before so, you know how this goes. So I will go ahead and get started. Are you ready?
Heather: I’m ready.
Jasmine: All right. First question. What's been your favorite binge watch from the past year?
Heather: I got into foreign language like streaming. And so I loved this show called Valeria, which is, it's like four women friends in Spain. And it's a great sort of sexy, fun romp. Valeria. It's on Netflix.
Jasmine: That sounds, that sounds awesome. I think I saw that on my Netflix actually. I also watch random like things in different languages and so my Netflix looks very different than my friends, like the suggestions.
So if you had to be stranded on a desert island with any person in the world, who would it be?
Heather: My husband.
Jasmine: Aw, everyone says that. So I'm not married so I always have like these wild answers and people are like, “yeah, I'm just going to say my husband just in case he's listening.”
All right. What's something that always makes you laugh?
Heather: I have a three-year-old who's makes me laugh, I mean, on a daily basis. He’s got impeccable comic timing. It's natural. Right. You know, he's three, it's not like he's picking it up from watching the old, like, you know, Eddie Murphy videos or anything. Like it's just a natural and he's so goofy. He's at that great age where he's putting together strange things and thoughts and feeling very committed to the truth of the way he has figured out the world, you know? And it's just, it's really great.
Jasmine: I love it. I love it. All right. So if you could learn one new skill overnight, what would it be?
Heather: I would say driving stick because I really, I hate that I don't know that. It's like really counter to my personality, that I don't know how to do that. At the same time, I think I could just actually do that. And so I'm going to do singing. Like I have a decent voice, but I would like to have trained since I was three how to just have an amazing voice and I'm not going to do that. And so overnight I would, I would like to have the skill of singing and perfect pitch.
Jasmine: I think same, except maybe also for me piano. So I could be like Alicia Keys. But yeah, I can like play a little bit, but like, I can't like Play play.
So if you had a time machine and you could go back and change one thing, but one thing only what would you change?
Heather: I would change our elected officials paying more intention and taking earlier action on climate change. I mean, right. That's the only thing that matters.
Jasmine: Oh my gosh. Yes. Yes. Oh my goodness. Yes. I still, every day I think of like Don’t Look Up and I'm like, it is scary to me like how accurate that movie is just cause I'm like, yeah, there's a thing that is happening and everyone's pretending like the thing is not happening. So I'm right there with you.
All right. So that is actually the end of our rapid-fire questions, and before we go, where can people go to find out more about you and in your book?
Heather: Awesome. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. You can go to HeatherMcGhee.com, McGhee has an H in it, M C G H E E or thesumofusbook.com. It's a play on the idea of the zero sum. I'm on Twitter, I'm on Instagram, at hmghee. And I hope to see you all there.
Jasmine: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I'm so glad I got a chance to talk with you today. So now I don't have to be envious of Amanda for getting to talk to you last time, because it was a little bit of envy there. And you know, just thank you so much for coming back to The Suburban Women Problem.
Heather: Thank you so much. Keep up the great work.
BREAK
Amanda: Welcome back everyone. Jasmine, I loved your interview with Heather. I love hearing what Heather has to say. She always has these really insightful just little tidbits of information about our society and how we got to now. And I love that Heather also read off kind of, some of you can actually read the redlining and I encourage all of our listeners, you can go out and find the actual map for your city and you can actually read what they said about the people in this area. It's really eye-opening. I mean, just reading it is astounding.
Jasmine: Yes. Eye opening. It is, it's like so blatant, but it's like, that was acceptable. Like the fact that that was—
Amanda: Oh!! Casey just gave me breaking news! Our mayor just resigned!
Jasmine: Ice fishing guy??
Amanda: Yes! Oh my gosh. Breaking news on the pod during the recording. Sorry, I cut you off.
Rachel: Now he's free to pursue prostitution as a private citizen. So he made his mark. Even if he, even if he resigned, he made his mark on the world of ice fishing.
Amanda: Having a good laugh can also be a political strategy.
Jasmine: Oh yes. So with that, shall we do a Toast To Joy? Do it? I mean, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the immense joy that all of Twitter and everyone has brought me and sending me me memes and all of the funny jokes and creating musicals. So everyone's humor, oh man. Keep them coming. I will still laugh, I think for a long time. So my Toast to Joy is for humor and for finding the humor that can kind of bring us together. And I will tell you, I saw people and jokes from people on both sides of the aisle about this.
Jasmine: Cause it was that ridiculous.
Amanda: Cause it was that ridiculous. And I love it. So my Toast to Joy is to finding humor and funny memes.
Jasmine: I love it. I'm trying to think, my Toast to Joy is tough this week, like I just did not have a great week. So I'm like, you know, every morning when it's time for us to record, I'm like, “all right, what's my Toast to Joy?” So, you know, my fallback is always sports, but I'm not going to toast to the game itself, but I am going to toast to the Superbowl halftime show.
Amanda: Yes!
Jasmine: Because, oh my gosh, it was, so it was just so good. It's just like my childhood, almost like, like, or my like young adulthood, onstage. And it just brought back like a little bit of nostalgia. I don't know it was, it was awesome. So I really enjoyed the show. It was amazing.
Amanda: Oh my God. Our kids came running in and we were like respect. Time to dance.
Rachel: I really liked Mary J Blige too.
Amanda: Mary!
Rachel: I did have someone ask if they had ice shanties and I was like, I don't think they made that happen, but that would have been really great. And I did love the west coast rap.
Amanda: Yeah. So good.
Rachel: So my Toast To Joy this week is… sorry to be a little cryptic, but we set probably an artificial date of December 31st that we would make some decisions about our future, where we're going to go, are we going to move, what are we going to do? And that day came and went with no decisions being made. And I am a bit of a Type A planner, and so that was really hard for me. There were some tense moments around the Vindman household.
But this past week, we really got some clarity in, in the best way. So we have some choices to make, but, you know, it's just nice to see after two years of a lot of uncertainty of some possibilities and you know, there's going to be some change and some things to look forward to. So that, that is my Toast To Joy. And hopefully soon, we'll be able to announce some things publicly, but it's just, you know, it's, it's been scary. And I talked about that a lot, but again, you just gotta hang in there. Hold on and wait for better days to come.
So with that, thank you so much, everyone for joining us today. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please take a moment to leave us a rating and review, and we will see you next week on another episode of The Suburban Women Problem.