I'm Jonathan K. Part and this is K-Pop.

Why can't we have nice things?

That's the central question posed by Heather Medi in her book, The Some of Us, What Racism

Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

One of those nice things was big municipal swimming pools, water wonderlands that were

segregated until black-skinned admittance.

When the civil rights movement empowered black families to say, hey, those are our tax

dollars too.

We want our kids to swim to white, controlled governments face the choice.

And many of them opted to drain their public swimming pools rather than integrate them.

Crazy, right?

But it's a metaphor for so much of our public policy since the 1960s.

Through research, interviews with organizers and scholars, and by mining her own significant

experience on the front lines of fighting against economic inequality, McGee sets out

to answer that central opening question in her book, find out what she learned and why

she believes we're beginning to change for the better right now.

Heather McGee, welcome to the podcast.

I'm so glad to be with you.

So your book is called The Some Of Us, What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper

Together.

I'm going to admit, right now, I'm not done with the book, but I'm deep in the book.

And it is terrific in helping folks understand, basically, as the question starts out in

...