The Role of Race in Public Policy

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White and black Americans under a competition with each other that if black Americans are going to be doing better than within the past. That means you white Americans will do really badly, so you got to keep them down. So shouldn't we nevertheless abstain from many of these kinds of policies which are framed in this way? How do you speak to white voters about the need for racially conscious policies without further alienating them again like the experiment of democracy in a multiracial context?

Heather McGhee is an author and policy advocate with a focus on reducing inequality. She is Board Chair for the organization Color Of Change and a former CEO of the think tank Demos. McGhee is the author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together .

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Heather McGhee discuss why progress for one ethnic group need not come at the expense of another; how racial animus has been used in the past to divide Americans who share fundamental interests; and whether the recent focus on "race-sensitive" public threatens to reignite zero-sum competition between different racial groups.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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