Heather McGee

Today, the average black college graduate has less household wealth than the average white high school dropout.

I'm going to say that again.

If you are a white high school dropout, you are likely to have more household wealth, savings, assets, stocks and bonds, inheritances than a black college graduate.

And that's not because of something the black college graduate did wrong.

That is because of the direct history of redlining and discrimination that has made that black college graduate sort of inherit debt and wealth poverty instead of inherit wealth.

And so think about our society and what it would be if that black college graduate, instead of spending the first decade of her career trying to get out from a mountain of debt,

was actually able to go right into the marketplace and pioneer an invention that would solve a big problem in our society, would be able to go into public service at a hospital as a physician and be the person who operated on you or your family member.

Even the very, in some quarters, controversial idea of reparations, which feels like exactly a zero-sum to some people,

I don't see it as zero-sum.

I don't see it as a taking from one group and giving to another.

I don't see it as an admission of guilt by white Americans.

I see it as seed capital for the nation that we're becoming.

And I think that when we look at what black Americans have contributed to our society without that cushion of wealth, we have to see that we could all benefit.

I also think it's important for our democracy, for us to live in a society where

If government harms you, they make it right.

If seven people on a city council vote to take your family's land, and 50 years later, 100 years later, those seven people are no longer alive, that doesn't mean that your descendants will still suffer the consequences of that for all time, and there'll be no apology and no repair.

Thankfully, we are in an era, despite this administration, when we're starting to see progress.

I want to be very clear that this administration has been brutal in its attacks on the public good, and specifically its attacks on people of color and public service and disproportionately black women.

And you're exactly right.

At the same time, this is so obviously...