How Racism Costs Everyone

Chris Brown is in the news again. And that means that people are publicly relearning and relitigating his history of violence toward women. Many of us are wanting to be protective of black men and boys to the point that we're unwilling to hold them accountable for the things that they do to women and girls. Listen to NPR's Code Switch podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tanya Mosley, and my guest on this Martin Luther King Jr.

holiday is author and scholar Heather McGee. Her book, The Sum of Us, 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.

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