The matter of racial discrimination is always at the forefront. Though we have equal rights and opportunities in place in theory, in practice we can’t seem to witness any. Keeping this in mind, public policy expert Heather C. McGhee says she enthuses about tax policy and economic infrastructure.
In 2016, speaking about it on a public television live call-in show, she was called by a white man who said he held some biases. While he shared them with her, he also wanted to change his thought perception greatly. To this, McGhee had said: “thank you”. The exchange surfaced all over the internet.
While holding a TED talk, McGhee expressed her gratitude towards him for “admitting his prejudice, for wanting to change, and for knowing somehow that would make him a better American”.
“Racism is bad for white people, too,” she says. In her speech, McGhee explains further how expensive the price of racism can be, and how taxpayers’ money can go to waste, be under-utilised or misused, just because some people judge others by their complexion.
“You know, it costs us so much to remain divided. This zero-sum thinking that what’s good for one group has to come at the expense of another, it’s what has got us into this mess. I believe that it is time to reject that old paradigm and realise that our fates are linked. An injury to one, is an injury to all… We can keep pretending that we are all not in the same team, we can keep sabotaging our success, or we can let the proximity of so much difference reveal our common humanity. And we can finally invest in our greatest asset: all of our people,” McGhee says in conclusion.