The Importance of Public Goods

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Public swimming pools used to be part of every flourishing town and county in the country. They were usually explicitly segregated but also in the north and midwest and west. Montgomery Alabama drained their public swimming pools rather than integrate them. It signifies what a white population that has been taught to disdain and distrust of their fellow Americans will do out of zero-sum mentality.

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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