The Sum of Us

have to make that time. And so for me, dear friends here on woke F, I am going to be taking a much needed vacation so that I can rest and recharge as we head into what I believe is going to be one of the craziest falls we've ever seen in politics. So I am going to be headed out on vacation through Labor Day. And do not worry.

Do not stress, because I have left you with eight amazing episodes that we have recorded back in twenty twenty one with some of the most thoughtful, engaging and insightful commentary that looks at our politics, our spiritual nature, our emotional well being, and a look inside frankly with some of the guests that we are bringing to all of you.

These conversations have been heard by our amazing Patreon supporters who get video episodes every single day because of their belief and financial support of woke F throughout the years, and so I'm really excited to bring all of you across all the platforms that you listen to woke F daily on these episodes and these interviews that I think

will be enticing to all of you. They hit on all of the major topics that we consistently discuss here on woke F, from racism to gender inequality, to police misconduct to wealth inequality, which my God and the need and the need and the need upmost for spiritual connection and wellness practices that allow us to successfully maneuver all of the things that have been thrown at us over

the past couple of years. And so, friends, while I will be out from the show, I will not be out of sight for the next several days, and so you can continue to follow me on Instagram and on Twitter at D two cents, D E two c E n TF. Of course, I will be dropping in with my two cents and you can check me out on TikTok, where I'm sure certain that I will drop a few videos in the next couple of days, and there you

can find me at Danielle Moody Underscore. You know, friends, I really hope that you take these last days of summer as an opportunity to really enjoy, to really ground in your friends, in your family, in the environment, in the sunshine right because I believe that what is coming and what we talk about on woke f all the time and what if, frankly is here is really daunting.

And if we don't make time and make space and continue to tell ourselves that, oh, I'll take a vacation another week or another month and keep kicking the can down the road of our wellness, we won't have the strength that is necessary to deal with the weight of what is being thrown at us by the opposition, those that oppose democracy, equity, justice, humanity, right, our environments, well being.

And so I encourage all of you that if you do have the opportunity as we wind down the summer, that you wind down in a way that makes you feel recharged, hopeful about the work that is ahead. Because there is work ahead, and there will always be work ahead. I don't think that there will ever be a time that we put our protest signs down, that we take off our marching shoes, that we stop doing the things that make us a democracy, stop doing the things that

make us responsible citizens. But in order for us to continue to break through all the obstacles that Republicans and dissenters and white supremis put in our way, we need we need to take a break, and that is absolutely okay.

And in order for me to be able to do that, I just want to shout out and be ingratitude to the team at DCP, to Andrew, who you all know, because you get wonderful audio quality and fantastic descriptions for giving me the opportunity and the space because I have such a great team to be able to take a break. So I hope that you all enjoy these next fantastic episodes that we have. Do drop your thoughts in the

comments section, do hit me up in the socials. Just don't draw my attention to anything that is terrible because I'm taking a break from the news. But dear friends, I really do hope that you enjoy these next eight episodes and I will see you with brand new episodes after Labor Day. Indisputable with Doctor Rasha Ricci is one of the latest shows on the TYT network and also

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your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday. I am so excited to be joined on Woka app daily by my friend new author, but new author, Heaven McGee and chairwoman of Color of Change, which you guys are very familiar with.

The online civil rights organization that has been doing the work has exposed so much about our broken criminal justice system, how GOP funds behind closed doors, our oppression and suppression, and so how there I can't express to you that when I received your book in the mail, the sum of Us, what racism costs everyone, and how we can prosper together, I screamed. I literally gave out an audible scream.

And I want to tell the listeners why. Because I was working with Heather four years no three years ago, three or four years ago, when I was still doing PR and communications at a firm. Heather was a client, had a major viral moment and she's like, I got to write a book, and now the book is in my hand, and I cannot believe it. How are you feeling? How are you doing? And then I want to dive into the book. Well, thank you for asking that I am doing fine personally. I'm feeling good. I am healthy.

My immediate circle is healthy. You know that's really ultimately all that matters in this day and age. But I am, you know, just getting my ducks in a row to try to tell as many people as possible that racism is costing everybody and it's time to stop. Yeah, you know, I people people know, and I think I might have

said this to my producer, you know. I was like, Heather, is like, would be if I only had a good angel, you would be that you would be that good angel because people know the hot shit that I say about white people, about white supremacy. And I'm like, so, Heather, it would be like the good angel, Heather, it's the person you want to talk to about how racism calls you me. I'm like, bitch, stop being racist. So talking to talk to talk to us about how how you

grounded this book, because this has been a journey. You have experienced a lot, and so I want folks to understand how you grounded this journey and came to this recognition that racism isn't its harming the people who are on the spear side of racism, meaning black people, marginalized communities, queer people, but it is also holding It is also hurting the person that is actually holding this sphere. So

talk to us about that. So I came at this from an economic standpoint in the sense that I spent nearly twenty years trying to advance public policy solutions to

inequality in our economy. Right, just the fact that you know, there's too much month at the end of the paycheck, and there has been for most families in this country for the past forty to fifty years, and that we have I've grown up in the inequality era where everything the cost of the basic are too the basic things are too high, good secure jobs with benefits are too hard to find. Where we're just not investing at all in our you know, the things that we need to

hold in common, our roads, our bridges, our schools. We're not handling big things like the fact that we need universal childcare, universal healthcare. We're not dealing with a public health system to prevent pandemics. We're basically, we can't seem to just get it together in what's about the greatest country on earth, to just have nice things for our people. And that's the way I opened the book. I say, have you ever wondered why we can't seem to have

nice things? And so I spent twenty years trying to bring math and statistics and research and litigation into that pursuit of nice things for more people, particularly for black people, mind people who are particularly ill served by bad economic

policy decisions, but they also impact everybody who's struggling. And I kept coming up against this sort of secret that nobody was really talking about, which is that racism is always strengthening the hand that beats us every time we try to wage a fight, even for policies that would impact everyone on and help everyone, like universal healthcare, like debt free college, like a fifteen dollars minimum wage, all

of these things that are purely economic things. They have disparities, but it's white voters who keep supporting a party that is opposed to all of these things that white people need. And so it occurred to me that I was sort of coming at this fight with the wrong tool, because this really wasn't about dollars and cents and cold, rational economic self interest. This was really about deeper questions of

status and belonging. This is really about a sense of threat that the white majority has about our presence and our power, and that ultimately they're seeing the world through a zero sum prism that white people, the majority of white people, see raise as a zero sum game where for us comes at their expense. We don't that way, The facts don't bear it out. But that's a story that they've been sold generation after generation. It's what they believe, and it is literally, you know, in the instance of

the pandemic killing us. And so I went on this journey. I left my amazing job running a think tank and went on a three year journey across the country, when from California and Mississippi to Maine and back again, talking to people, learning as much as I could, and that led me to this book, The Some of Us. You know.

It's it's so interesting because one of the things that I have been thinking about and talking to various folks about it is the idea that white people understand our society from a scarcity model, right like there they do not exist in abundance, where we believe that there is

more than enough. We are the richest country. And yet if Jane down the street has healthcare and Jerome needs healthcare, It's like, well, then Jane's like, well we need to just throw out the entire healthcare system because Jerome can't

have healthcare. That seems crazy right like in and and the question that I have been asking folks is, Heather, how do you how do you shift that that that is something that is fundamental in their thinking, their belief their their ideology, their system is the idea that there is not enough and that if other people have something that I had, then that means that they are taking it away. How do you adjust that framing, especially now in this very hyper racialized place that we are in,

um and hyperpartisan place that we are in. How do we how do we move that needle? Well, everything we believe comes from a story we've been told. And they didn't get that idea about the zero sum, you know, out of thin air. It is a story that is aggressively marketed and sold to white people's a story that was created with the foundation of this country to justify an economic model based on stolen land and stolen people and stolen labor. And you know, very much at that time,

there was something true about the zero sum right. The white slaveholding elite that was the most profited from settler colonialism and slavery was saying, you know you, I will profit at your expense and I will leave you nothing you have. You people of color, can gain nothing from your labor. I will take it all, right, And so

they needed to sell to a white majority. You know, the idea that liberation for people of color was going to take money out of their pockets, right, And I think today the economic bargain of that is no longer true. That we're all actually worse off because of these policies, that white people are still supporting this sort of national stinginess that we have. And so what I've decided that we need to tell a new story. I need to

tell a new story of mutual benefit. The parable at the heart of my book, and it's represented on the cover, is the story of what happened to towns across America, not just in the American South, when in the first part of the twentieth century, governments, federal governments and local governments would spend millions of tax dollars making these grand resort style public swimming pools in the hearts of their towns.

And it was sort of this like very small scale but real kind of symbol of like a government commitment to just a good quality of life. Right like in the summer, you and your family can just swim, you know, you can drop your kids off at the pool and it's you know, they didn't have air conditioning, right, It was actually sort of important. It was kind of a literal melting pot for people to get to know each other and get married and form relationships and all of that.

And for many of these pools it was segregated. It was whites only, right. They belief inferiority, Black danger. All of that was you know, so strong that we couldn't swim in the pool too. And when the civil rights movement came along and m courts started to say that it was unconstitutional to collect black people's tax dollars tax dollars and not let them swim in these public pools, so many towns across the country drained their public pools

rather than folks swim. And it feels to me like that it's just a perfect metaphor for where we are as a country now. We are all sitting in the drained pool, you know, with nothing, with nothing left for ourselves. And it's interesting, Danielle, because you know, the Trumpism, all of that actually recognizes a piece of that right, like it speaks to everybody. Right. The white people knew they lost a pool, right, like they weren't missing the point.

But when Trump's talks about make America great again, he is saying, there was a time when you had it on easy street. Roman did give you free stuff, and there was a fence around it. It was and I have, you know, a section of the book where I just start listing all the free stuff that white people got for free from the government, from the Homestead Act on through right. It really is important for us to recognize

that white people are not stupid. They know that there was a time when the government was on their side and the life was easier and that low and behold. Around the same time that black and brown people started asking for rights, it all went away. But that's not because black people and brown people started asking for their rights. We didn't take the poll. It's not like we like picked up the pool. Neighborhood were like, you can't come right.

It was that powerful elites closed the pool for everyone, and then gin end up resentment by the white majority that had lost the pool, right or lost their union job, lost because we shipped them overseas, not because you know, a black person on the line took the job, right, or you know, we started to stop investing. Right, the tax our tax revenue as a country per capita peaked in nineteen sixty five. Right, we just stopped investing in

things like free college. Right, we all know, right, college, state schools, universities used to be virtually free. Yeah, impel grant and it would pay for your living costs. And you had tuition free college and debt free college in the nineteen forties, fifty sixties, seventies. And then once the student population began to be more diverse, suddenly the white power structure was like, you know, well we don't need

to invest in this, we need to build prisons instead. Right, So white people were still trying to go to college. Suddenly are paying you tens of thousands of dollars in tuition every year, just like we are. And what I found in the book was that when there were places where people were able to come together in collective action

across lines of race, we could. I started to see what I began to call these solidarity dividends, which are these gains that we can get if we come together across race to do things for our mutual benefit, and that we can have those, whether it's cleaner air, or higher wages, or better funded schools, or an actual universal healthcare system or universal childcare. But we have to we and by we, I mean Americans and specifically white Americans, need to let go of this zero sum approach to

the world. You know, I think that I've always looked at the fact that racism and racial discrimination is white people cutting off their nose to spite their face. Right, like the country could be rich, air could be deeper if, in fact, we recognize that all people's participation at the fullest extent that they can participate, matters, and it makes us all whole right and better. And there is but there is this this feeling that in order and it

is it is it is our capitalistic structure. It is the idea that in the belief that there must be a bottom right, there must be a suffering class right for us to stand on in order to build up what it is that what we perceive as our own

personal kingdoms. There must be a struggle class. And so how how do you how do we right have conversations that are not getting letting white people off the hook for their racism, but that is telling them that they are a part of a farce, They are a part, they are actors in a lie, right um, and that they have been duped. I mean, listen, everybody wants to

be the hero in their own story, you know. And and part of the issue here is that in order to justify the current racial order, no, in order to justify racial injustice, in order to justify white privilege, there's a whole set of facts you need to pretend not to know. You need to dismiss, you need to reject. There's a whole sort of other world you need to live in in order to justify the current racial order.

And I talked to some people who are psychologists, who like you know, work in these issues, and they're like, that's actually like an exhausting mental hijinks to do, right yep, I said, I said yesterday, I said, white supremacy is exhausting. I am I am tired, do you know what I'm saying? Like, I am tired, I am both. I am both underwhelmed

and overwhelmed. And I like to remind people to always say the lie of white supremacy right, because you know, I mean, white supremacy suggest that people are actually supreme when they are white, that they are actually superior. Of course, we know that that's a lie, but we want to make sure as we start to use that phrase more often that we're making sure that right, we're not talking about us a social order that puts white people at at the top of it, you know, by violence and impression.

You know, we're that's that's not necessarily all that's communicated when we keep saying white supremacy. I think we keep saying white supremacy. It's like, yeah, white people are supreme, White people are supretty people's right, right, right, That's a that's a bit of a tangent. But I do think you're you're exactly right. And for example, I went to Mississippi, to Canta, Mississippi and talk to a bunch of workers at a Nissan Auto factory that had just the plant.

The eligible workers that the plant had just voted no to join in the UAW the United Auto Workers to becoming a unionized car manufacturer. And I grew up in the Midwest where like the UAW jobs, the manufacturing jobs were like the best jobs, sought after jobs. Yeah, so it's like, why would you give that up if you could? Right, Like,

you know, it was all in place. And so I talked to workers, white black pro union against the union, and what they said was that ultimately, particularly in the South, union had become sort of a dog whistle for black people, for lazy black people who needed the union to kind of compensate for some flaw in their character. Right, this white guy named Joey said, you know, the white mentality is if blacks are for it, I'm against it. I

ain't voting yes because the blacks are voting yes. Right, And of course that meant that nobody had job security, you know, good healthcare, benefits of retirement, pension, right, wage increases, you know, safety improvements, all the things that they knew that everybody wanted. But at the same time, I remember, after the first day that I was down there talking people, so many of the workers were talking about the way it was actually better to be white. At the plan.

You had what they called the cushier jobs, right, the jobs where you could go straight from the plant to the happy hour and not had to take a shower, right, because you didn't actually work that hard and get up work up a sweat, right. I thought that was like a beautiful reminder of the difference, you know, And you know it was that the white folks would have those kinds of jobs and the black people were stuck, you know,

on the assembly line moving parts. And you know, I went home to my hotel at the end of that first day and I was like, well, maybe I was wrong, Maybe it's not in the white self interests to have solidarity with black people if you're getting these little perks, right. But then I had to remind myself that nobody had a good pension, right, and nobody had job security, right that, Like, that's the thing when we talk about white privilege and

white advantage. It's not that it doesn't exist, of course it does, but there's some other level that we could all be at in a system where there wasn't this

like yawn and chasm at the bottom. Right. And I also think the other thing about white privilege is that most of the things we're talking about, like the privilege of thinking that your vote is going to count the privilege of, you know, not being afraid of the police, right, the privilege of being able to have your name on a resume and have it, you know, not be discriminated against.

All of that our privileges we want everybody to have. Yeah, right, It's not like it's not like we racial justice advocates are like, we don't want white people to have freedom from the police. It's like we want us all to be free. And so we're not actually, you know, in that zero sum ourselves. We don't want to communicate a deep story about a zero sum ourselves when we're talking

about the advantages of racism to whiteness. Basically, we want to make sure when we're out here, we're not selling racism to whiteness quiet as it's kept right, keeping you out of jail, it's keeping food on your table. Oh good, you know Jesus. So, yeah, we don't want to do that. No, no, no,

we don't. Um. You know, one of the things with a couple of minutes that we have left that I want to shift gears to talk about is what were your feelings on one six right, Like, I'm going through this with everybody that comes on to the show, because I think that it has. It has colored the books and the way people are are framing the books that they that they wrote before this, that are that have come out um the way that it has colored their perception of our democracy and what is broken and what

needs to be fixed. But for you, we're while watching it happened and unfold live and what were you thinking in that moment? And and now the weeks the week following, so I had been so immersed in the research for this book and in my journey to write this book and the conversations that it wasn't surprising to me. And I think that's the lesson. It is only a surprise. It can only catch us flat footed and unaware and with our guard down and in the you know, the

instance of the actual Capitol police m outnumbered. Right if we do not know the history, and I'm not talking about ancient history, I'm talking about fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, right when my great grandmother who I just saw, you know, was alive. Right, I really think

it's important. So emotionally in the moment, I both felt like this is dangerous and scary, and it wasn't until I really thought about what would have happened had they actually been able to get their hands on some of our leaders right where I really felt fear and anguish,

But I was not surprised. I wasn't surprised because I know that in Colfax, Louisiana, a white mob during reconstruction surrounded the courthouse where the election results were to be certified because a pro a pro reconstruction governor had been had been elected, and black people defended the courthouse, and the white mob killed a hundred black people and then burned the courthouse to the ground, burned the edifice of their own government to the ground, rather than submit to

a multiracial democracy. And you knew that history and didn't deny that history like Republicans try to do all the time, then you would have seen this coming. That would you would have seen that when the person with the biggest megaphone in the entire world said this election was a fraud, it was stolen for you, and I need you to stand back and stand by that, he was inciting people to do just that, and they did. There were pipe bombs, right,

they would have blown up folks. They would have brought Mike Pence out and strung him up ye, And so that's what I felt. I felt like, this is you know that the past is not even the past, right.

But I also felt like, I'm not going to let this steal what just happened the day before either, which was also history rhyming and in fact singing when you had the heir to doctor Martin Luther King's you know seat, be part of the anti racist majority movement in Georgia that basically saved this country right by putting the Democrats in charge of the Senate in the middle of this pandemic, you know, it changed history. And and I do think

that there that is you know, that's America. Right. She breaks your heart, she puts it back together again, she breaks her heart, she puts it back together again. Right. There are so many of us who have this commitment to this vision of a real new world, right, of a new world where we are all truly, truly equal

and truly free. And we're actually the fact that there are so many of us who are from you know, every single walk of life on the planet is a beautiful thing, and we wouldn't trade it for anything, you know, because it helps reveal our common humanity. And you know that was Amanda Gorman, our national youth poet laureate. You know whats so beautifully right? She too is America and so I you know, you hold this tension and that's

why ultimately this some of us is hopeful. All the country, I talk to people white, black, brown, everything in between who both had lost so much because of this uniquely American mix of racism and greed, had lost so much, their homes, their dreams, have shot at a better job. And then there were so many people who had overcome and had locked arms and linked arms with people who were different than them and had taken on big, entrenched

powers and had won. And you know that's our story too. Yeah, yeah, and you know you're you're absolutely right. There there are days and and the folks that listen to Wika f know that there are there are many days where I am done with America, where I am where I have exhausted my ability to be hopeful, Yeah, my ability to to for America to show me that it is better than what it shows itself to be. But then, yes,

there are those moments. There are the Reverend Warnocks, there are the triumph of Georgians to to save our democracy. There are the Amanda Gorman's. There are the Stacey Abrams and the little you know, like there are um the people that remind me like, no, this is why you continue the work. This is this is why you do it because of what makes America unique is the possibility of it is the possibility of the thing. Um, and that is why people come. That's right. And don't let

them expel you from this country. Right, Your people, you know, have built this country and we too are America, right, So don't you know, I mean that's the thing that I am. You know, I just think it's very important. Right. Their vision is that America is for whites only, right, like you know, and and that is and that has never been true. It has always been a lie. It has always been a lie and a fool's lie. And just imagine America without black people, come on, you know, idea.

I would love it. I would love I would love for them to last a day. I'd love to see it without indigenous people, I mean right, like, I mean literally,

they would not they would not have last. They'd all have gone the way of Jamestown, you know, yeah, Roanok, sorry a Roanoke, the lost colony, you know, I mean, I just I think that we have to reclaim the idea of this country as ours and as something that we are willing to share, and we want to invest in, and we want to invest in our people without prejudice broadly, and and I offer this book as an invitation to anyone who wants to join us on that. But we're

gonna get there. You know, we're gonna get there. You can either ride with us or you can be left behind. But that's where we're going. You know, it's a beautiful place where we're going. Heather McGee, I could talk to you all day and the next time I want to do it over cocktails. Friends. The book is the some of us, what racism costs everyone, and how we can prosper together. Pick it up, buy it, Buy it for

all of your people. Heather is one of the most thoughtful UM experts and just thought leaders that I have the pleasure of knowing. And I'm just I'm so proud of you. Congratulation, congratulation. I'm so proud of you. I love your voice, keep it up, keep me on your shoulder sometimes, but I love your I Okay, keep the good Heather. On this side, they're real me on this side as always, dear friends. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke

as fuck. See after Labor Day. Get a behind the scenes look at Comedy Central's The Daily Show on Beyond the Scenes, an original podcast from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Every week, host Roy Wood Junior goes deeper with the notable guests and experts from the Emmy Award winning series. Together, they use comedy to tackle current topics from gentrification to gun laws, and take a closer look

at how and why these topics matter. Listen to Beyond the Scenes from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. New episodes every Tuesday.