From a man who said he was present just prejudiced and asked what he could do to change his views. Host heather, what is demos . Heather demos is a Public Policy organization dedicated to the idea that each of us should have an equal say in our democracy. What weve been thinking about is the root of our name. Demos is the root word of the people, which is the root word of democracy, and right now it feels like figuring out who belongs in our nations demos. Host i woke up on december 10, 2016, picked up the New York Times, and saw the headline, im prejudiced, he said. Then we kept talking. I want to show you the video and then ask you to explain the whole thing. Good morning. I was hoping your guest could help me change my mind about some things. I am a white male, and i am prejudiced. The reason it is is something not that i was taught but something i learned. When i open up the papers, i get discouraged with what young black males are doing to each other and the crime rates. I understand they live in an environment with a lot of drugs. You have to get money for drugs. Its a deep issue that goes beyond that. I have these different fears. I dont want my fears to come true. I try to avoid that. I come off as being prejudiced. I dont like being forced to like people. I like being led to like people through example. What can i do to change, to be a better american . Heather thank you so much for being honest and opening up this conversation, because it is one of the most important ones we need to have in this country. Host you said more, but i will let you tell us what happened after that. Heather that was a remarkable moment. I didnt realize until i stepped off the set. There were more calls after that. We just had to keep rolling. How powerful it was. There was something in his voice that touched me. You can hear it. It is so authentic as he searches for the words to Say Something to a National Audience that most of us wont admit in our homes, i am prejudiced. The way he ended his question saying, what can i do to change and be a better american, reached right in and grabbed my heart. I had to just pause, and it felt like the set fell away and i was trying to communicate with his this person who reached a hand out to me. Yes, he said some things that, as the sister of a black man, daughter of a black man, were painful to hear, and i knew there were many more layers of stereotypes underneath what he said, but at the same time, i know we are all swimming in a sea of racist stereotypes. The media overrepresents black crime, and its become the aim of a lot of politicians actually to make people distrust one another and particularly distrust people of color. Could i blame him for absorbing that, particularly when he was asking for a way to change . I had to thank him. Host what happened next . Heather i work in law and Public Policy. Before that call, i had been talking about Student Loans and trade policy. Yes, i have been talking about Race Relations, but as an instrument to talk about Public Policy. I could tell that gary really wanted simple answers to his questions about how he could integrate his life. Off the top of my head, i said, get to know black families, and if you are a religious person, join in interracial church. Join in with people of different races with a higher common purpose. I did tell him to turn off the nightly news because we know there is a warped vision of who commits crimes in this country. That comes in many media markets. I asked him to read about black history. I got a sense of who he was talking about was black people, i could have talked about stereotypes against immigrants, muslims, but with his question, he was asking me, the black woman on his television, to tell him how to overcome prejudice against black people. Host then what . Heather then i kept going with the program. I walked off the set, and i had a text message from my colleague gwen, and she had watched it. She was there with another one of my colleagues. Shes a young white woman from the south. Hes a young africanamerican man from the south, as well. They looked at each other with tears in their eyes and said, Something Special just happened. A few days later, they put it on facebook. It was on the weekend. It was on saturday. By monday, it had about one million views. That had never happened to demos before. A bunch of different other sites and video aggregators picked it up and put different headings on it, and it became a racist is cspan caller asks of this black woman a question and heres her response, and it went viral. You had comedians and public figures talking about it. Demos is an organization that works in Public Policy. The people who follow us online nks and nerds, people who care about the specific issues we work on, like debtfree college or democracy reform. This was getting out there. My sisterinlaws hairdresser said, i saw that. It was starting to really break out of the bubble. I think part of the reason for that committee have to remember, this is august. We had a racially charged summer with Donald Trumps campaign with black lives matter and the Police Shootings and the tragic events all in baton rouge and dallas. It was a time when people felt like all they were seeing on tv about race was bad news, and here was first, a white man admitting that he was prejudice, which, for people of color, we all just said, finally. You had donald trump saying that mexican immigrants are racist and saying, i dont have a prejudiced bone in my body. Here was this everyday guy saying, yeah, i have these prejudices. Host we found this video on your website. Tell us how this happened. I went down to North Carolina, and i met with gary. We furthered that conversation about race and asked each other hard questions. It was amazing. When you get to know people, dont let it go by. You have ignorant people responding positively to my insecurities. They must have the same thing. If you dont practice in taking that first step, its the hardest thing. Host how did you find gary . Heather gary found me. As i now know, gary, a few days later, was watching tv. He was watching cnn. I went on cnn and had an interview about the fact that this clip had gone viral. So he heard my voice again. He had never seen or heard me before the cspan show. He heard my voice and ran into the living room and saw me talking about the clip, and at the bottom, it had my twitter handle. Gary went on his computer and got on twitter for his first time in his life. His first tweet said, how does this thing work . And he found me. He entered in my twitter handle and said, im gary from North Carolina. I immediately i wanted to know. The way those shows work, i gave my answer, and then we went onto another call. I didnt know how it landed with him. I didnt know if he brushed it off. I didnt know anything about who he was. Theres no way to know. He found me and said, im gary from North Carolina. I sent him a direct private message and said, gary, i would love to talk to you about what you thought about my answer to your question. I gave him my phone number. A few days later, i got a phone call, and he was sitting at a burger joint having a lunch break, and he decided to call me. He was very nervous. I was very nervous. But he said, what you said changed my life. To which i was shocked. I thought, sure, when asked a pretty hard question off the top of my head, i gave decent answers, but i didnt think it was going to be something he would take so seriously. He explained to me that he is now on a path. He wanted to get right about this before he died. He said he was inspired by the fact that newspapers across the country, it went viral on social media, and it was picked up in the normal press. He was inspired by that. He said, there are probably a lot of other people like me out there who have these fears and prejudices, and are worried about what will happen to them if they admit it. But also know that they cant actually change unless they admit it. Host when did you go down there and why . Heather we had a couple phone conversations. The first one was so good, he thanked me, i thanked him for his courage. He said some version of what we said in the video. He said, i dont know what you want to do with this, but it seems like a big thing, and if you are willing to keep talking about this, he said, im willing to talk with you about it. He said, use me to keep this conversation going, because the country needs it. I kind of took that to heart. I didnt know exactly what would come of it. Then i got married, actually. [laughter] then my life i went away from my work for a while. I talked to gary once more before i was getting ready for my wedding. He told me the books he was reading. I gave him some ideas. He told me a funny story about having gone to the bookstore to get some africanamerican studies books. He sent me a video of himself and the heading for the africanamerican studies section of the bookstore to tell me he was in the bookstore, and then i got the invitation to go speak at Wake Forest University with melissa harrisperry. My new husband and i said, lets call gary and see if we can drive by and meet with him. We did that. Gary and i were very nervous to meet each other. We had no idea what would happen. My husband is a documentary filmmaker, so i said, gary, i think we should record us meeting. He said, absolutely. That footage was filmed by my husband. It was a really beautiful conversation in person. It exceeded my expectations. Host what is that . Heather he lives outside of asheville, North Carolina. He wanted us to meet in asheville. It was a park outside of a hotel, one of the highest points. It was a beautiful fall day, changing leaves. It was about a week before the election, and we didnt talk about the election much. We didnt talk about politics. He told me about his life. We got to know each other, where hes from, the experiences he has had. Host how old is the man . Heather i think he is mid 50s. Host where is he from . Heather he was born in connecticut, new haven connecticut, but he was in the navy and had a heart condition and went to asheville. He went to the v. A. For surgery in his early 20s. He had in his life in connecticut, this is one of those beautiful things that happens in american peoples stories where the same things he was afraid of in terms of the media stereotypes of africanamericans had been part of his experience in connecticut with gangs, drug addiction, and when he got his heart surgery, he stayed in nashville and fell in love with the slow pace of life. He has been living there since then. He has been a hvac electrician operator. Now i think hes mostly retired. Host is he married . Heather no. Host no children. How often in your life have you heard you cant quantify how often have you heard the kind of things he was saying about what he as a white man thought about black people . Heather it is a pretty innumerable count. In terms of someone saying that to me personally, probably not so many times. In my career, i started out as an Economic Policy person and would go across the country in my role at demos and in other jobs talking with people about the economy. Often times in church basements, union halls, talking about, what has happened in our economy so that working people are finding it so hard to get ahead. I could tell that story without talking about race at all. I could talk about globalization and technological change, Corporate Power and trade rules and tax rules and workers rights. But i felt if i didnt mention race, i was not telling the whole story. Some piece of the puzzle was missing. About how was it that my grandfathers generation, you could have a workingclass job, didnt have to go to college, and you had a great job with benefits, retirement security, and Public Schools were wellfunded and you could go to college debtfree. Something changed in the late 1970s. Yes, there are lots of reasons for that change, but something also shifted in our politics where the very idea of a government that invests in its people and supports workingclass folks and supports investments in mobility has become tarred, racialized. The conservative argument against government carried on these stereotypes. Undeserving people of color that would benefit from government. It felt to me like i was getting drawn into more and more conversations about race even when i was supposed to be talking to a white laidoff steelworker about the economy. I learned a way to talk about race with white people that allowed them to see their self interest in it. Ir story and appeared story in it. Host tell us where you were born. Heather i was born in chicago. I was born and raised in the south side of chicago. Host your parents did what . Heather my mother at the time i was born, she was an Holistic Health practitioner and ended up moving into more social policy. I kind of come by it rightly. My father was an artist and photographer. Host were they together . Heather they were together. They got divorced when i was young. I lived between both of them, had a Great Community i grew up in, the chicago that i grew up the Michelle Obama southside that people know it as now. My grandparents on both sides had come up from the south and worked in the Public Sector as a cop and social worker. It was a great way to grow up. Host how many white people were in your high school . Heather that is a great question. I grew up in mostly allblack schools until i went away to boarding school. This was a decision my mom made when i was in seventh grade, pretty early. I went from growing up in chicago to virtually allwhite, rural, new england school. Host what school . Heather its called the mint. Very small school. It was in western massachusetts and i was one of two black children in the entire school. That was a pretty phenomenal adjustment. I was young. I was 11. Young for even seventh grade. In some ways, being that young helped. It helped me be a child and have a sense of adventure about this incredible cultural shift i just experienced. In my high school i went to, it was a diverse but very elite prep school. Most of the kids of color were ones who came in on scholarships. Host where was that . Heather Milton Academy just outside of boston. Host how were you treated when you were 11 years old by the white girls . Heather it was hard. We were kids. In some ways, we were just young enough to have a little bit of that childhood innocence. Some of the harsher status concerns that come in high school, we were before that, but there were a lot of moments where they just didnt understand some of the basic things about being black and young. I went from living with my family to living with all white people, white dorm parents. Little things about the way i had grown up compared to how they grew up came up, but i developed wonderful friends. I flourished in the school. It was also going from a big Public School to a tiny school where you sat around in a kind of library room with five teachers and a book. Im sorry, five students, a book, and a teacher. In many ways, i was very fortunate. Host were your parents wealthy . Heather no, but they were able to use financial aid. It was a big leap that my parents made to say i wasnt getting the challenge i needed in Public School. Host one of the things people noticed when you answered gary in the call in show, there was not an ounce of anger in your voice. When did you learn how to do that . And where you ever angry about race . Heather i mean, im angry about race a free day. Host but i mean in the way you treat other but when people are not nice to you how do you get this even temperament . Heather i went to the obama school of Race Relations. [laughter] im kidding. Host what does that mean . Heather theres the joke about the obama anger translator. He has to do it all the time. The amount of disrespect that is thrown at him, the amount of vitriol, he has had to rise above it. That is the way he has managed to be president of the United States. Host how do you do it . Heather there has to be, to be a person of color in a whitedominant society, you learn how to at least, i learned how to have empathy first. Garys question was extraordinary. Its different when someone is racist to me in the line at a store. He was saying, i am prejudiced, and i need to change. It comes back to this idea of, is racism and prejudice something that is an individual evil, or is it something that is baked into the fabric of this country and that is communicated in subtle messages every single day in our media . If we believe, as most Racial Justice advocates do, that its the latter, that its not the story of evil sinners and good people, but rather a system that was set up to communicate a belief in a hierarchy of human values, then is it any surprise that people would absorb that belief . Im not saying that takes the blame away from everyone, but it means when someone identifies and is willing to admit they absorbed a bunch of pretty racist stereotypes about our fellow americans, should we answer that call . I think we have to. I think we all have to. I think one of the big mistakes with the way this culture has shifted over the course of my lifetime, once the Civil Rights Movement faded, is we stopped talking about race and admitting that in fact prejudice is far, far more common than we want to acknowledge. Host how many times have you been with gary . Heather i talk with gary on the phone about a dozen times. Ive met with him in person now three times. Host what is the future of the garyheather relationship . Heather i dont know. He is on this incredible journey that i am from time to time sign posting for him. He created this system on his own where he forced himself to interact with people of color he normally would not have. He started it in the waiting room at the v. A. , where a black man sat next to him, and he created a system for himself where he thought, my assumption about this person on a scale of 110 is that im not going to like them. We would have a bad interaction. Im afraid of him. Im anxious. He would put that person low on the scale. He would rate them a 3. Then he forced himself to say, orly bad traffic on i91 whatever, some kind of opening salvo to get to talk. And after the interaction, he would rate how he felt about him afterwards. There was always a 5, 6, 7point spread. That was his system. That is definitely not something i wouldve come up with and told him to do, but in some ways, it is disarmingly simple. The basic there of it is, if youve got to the point where not only do you consume a lot of stereotypes on television but in your life, you are finding that its affecting who you feel comfortable sitting next to or talking to, sending your children to school with, paying taxes to support their education, living near, weve got work to do. Host i want to talk about class, because this may be an example. When you look at your background, what happened after high school . Where did you go . Heather i went to yale. Host what did you study . Heather american studies. Then i went to law school at uc berkeley. Host how did all of that happen . Thats an expensive ride. Heather just debt. [laughter] good old american system of Student Loans and debt. Host why were you interested in going to yale and getting a law degree . What was moving you . Heather ive always wanted that community i talked about on the south side of chicago where i grow up grew up. There was a sense growing up that you pay for living on the earth. Everyone had to do something, whether it was work in the Public Sector, work in a nonprofit. That was how i grew up. I never questioned the idea that in some ways making this country better was going to be the work of my life. Host where did you start after law school . Where did you go then . Heather i started working at demos just after college. It was an entrylevel position in the Economic Opportunity program. I was 22 years old. The organization had only been around a year and a half or two years. I got a job. I had some jobs during college working, doing research for a small Public Policy organization that worked on issues of low income families and children. I was able to get this job working on the issue of debt. At that time, we were working on how the issue of Credit Card Debt and Mortgage Loans and payday loans have become this plastic safety net for working class americans. This was way before this became a dominant understanding of the economy. I worked on that issue at demos for a couple of years and then decided to go to law school. Host the reason i bring up class, how much education did gary have . Heather i dont think he finished college, if he went. Host and he was in the navy. He mustve had reactions with people that dont look like him. Heather i did talk about that a little bit with him. That surprised me. We think of the military as the most integrated institution in our society, but i think that was a long time ago for him. Since then, he has in many ways just lived the life of a workingclass guy in the south. North carolina has a very diverse Political Landscape and everything. It became clear in conversations that among his friends, racist jokes and forwards and stuff like that were just part of the way they communicated and entertained themselves. Host tell us about demos, the organization. How many people work there . How much money do you spend a year . Heather demos is 16 years old now. We have about 60 staff. We have grown from a handful of people working on democracy issues and Economic Issues to now at 60 folks. We are a 10 million per your per year organization. I became president three years ago. I took over from miles rappaport , who went on to become the National President of common advocacyional organization. When i took over for miles, he is a mid60s, white guy. In many ways because i had grown up the organization. I came back in 2009. There was not a ton that i wanted to do to change it. But i did want to raise the understanding of all of our staff, from the person in accounts payable to the economists in Political Science and the lawyers of how race affects us all. The biggest thing i did to transform the organization was to embark on a threeyear Racial Equity organization transformational process. The organization is predominantly white. It was much more so when i took over. That conversation about race with white people was something we took on head on at the organization. Host what is the most offensive thing a white person can say to you . Heather can say to me . Host or has . You say to yourself, there it goes, that is it it is a signal. Heather i think probably the most pernicious lie about people of color i say it is the most pernicious because it is actually pervasive and it is core to undermining the sense of social solidarity and a shared contract that is essential for our country. The most pernicious lie, is the lie that people of color, black people, immigrants are, in some ways do not want the same things that everybody else wants. That we are lazy, not intelligent. That any kind of not deserving of any kind of the same kind of support that made the white middleclass flourish in the middle of the century. It is that idea that for example, we see it in Health Care Debate today. There is so much of this prejudiced undertone in the conversation about taking away from medicare, which is seen by many folks, particularly white folks, as something that older white people have earned, and , to give freee things to undeserving people who just do not deserve it, basically. The communities of color that i grew up among, that i know, are so seldom in the popular imagination among white people. Particularly those who watch a lot of conservative media. Where there is a very clear racial narrative. The stories that are cherry picked part about in some ways it is Donald Trumps vision of black america. You have nothing to lose, people shooting people every day, families are broken, all of the immigrants who come to the country are rapists and criminals. That idea tears at the fabric of the country. How are you supposed to hear that message about communities that you do not live near, because we are still very segregated, then say, yes i think those kids should have health care subsidies. I think we should raise all of our taxes so that college is debtfree for those Community College students. It is a very slippery slope from a stereotype that is at an individual basis to tearing apart the sense of who we all are as americans. It comes back and affects white people too. Host going back to the video from our call in show, it was 8 million at one point. You know what the number is now . Heather it was 8 million before the New York Times oped. I am sure it is much more now. Host what has happened to you as a result of this . Heather it was a rough fall. I was in North Carolina meeting with gary the week before the election. In many ways, for me personally, and for many other people who dedicated their lives to social justice, Racial Justice and economic justice, the election of a billionaire who spouted a lot of disdain, distrust, and disgust for many members of the American Community was a pretty rough, and continues to be a pretty rough proposition. My relationship with gary who should be a trump voter by demographics. He is not a democrat, as he told me when we first met. But he did not vote for trump. He has become someone who recognizes his own stereotypes. Almost gets a little bit of joy in catching them as he thinks them and kind of shifting his consciousness to a more generous idea of who americans are. That has given me hope. Host i guarantee you people are watching this right now, it will affect them. You know why, and you will know immediately. Who is the chairman of your board . Heather i thought you were going to say you are prejudiced. I was so excited we would do something here. [laughter] heather i do want to say, we are all prejudiced. We all have stereotypes and hold beliefs. For some people it may be about muslims. For some people it may be about immigrants, women, or obese people. Host you know why i asked this question . Heather yes, sorry host i dont mean to make a big deal. When you tell us who the chairman, people listening will go, one way or the other. Heather amelia, who is the daughter and collaborator on a number of books with Elizabeth Warren, the senator from massachusetts. Host it is her daughter. Heather yes, it is her daughter. I am sorry, did i not say that . Not only is it her daughter, but they have worked together on a number of books, including the two income trap. That is how i got to know Elizabeth Warren when she was a professor. This argument we were making about Credit Card Debt and how the rules had changed and was drowning working families. It was one that she and amelia were making in the early 2000. That is why we got to know each other. I have always been a fan of senator warren. Senator warren and i have had a number of conversations about race. About how you talk about the economic populism she delivers so compellingly, and also told that missing piece of the story of how race has been used as a weapon in the class war to drive people who have common class interests apart. Host if President Donald Trump called you and said i would like to meet with you, would you . Heather that is so interesting. When i was in North Carolina and i met with melissa harrisperry, we had an interview. She said if Hillary Clinton called, would you work for the white house . I said no, i love him doing that demos. Then she said if donald trump called and said i want you to lead my racial reconciliation, would you do it . I dont know. In your hypotheticals, i dont know why he is calling me. Host this is what i want you to get to he is calling you because he want you to come to the oval office, by yourself, he will have nobody there and you get to sit with him, no drama or cameras and he will say, now tell me why it is black folks dislike me. And what can i do about it . Heather i would have a lot to say to donald trump about the story he holds in his mind about people of color in this country, and how dangerous it is for our demos, for our sense of being a whole people in our country. I have a lot to say to donald trump, and i would be happy to say it. Host you look him in the eye, you will tell him things. First of all, lets assume hes going to say, im not prejudice. I cant say this out loud, but this was all part of the act for getting elected. [laughter] heather i would tell him that he has created lasting damage. Because his incredible megaphone that he has used to reify some of the worst stereotypes about immigrants, muslims, women, about people with disabilities, africanamericans. Host how deep is it . Heather it is so damaging, and heres why. He was able to connect one of the most significant crisis of our time. The decline in living standards, particularly among people without a college degree. The gulf in wealth inequality in this country. The fact that you cannot work your way out of poverty today. He was able to connect that to scapegoating people of color. That particularly for those of us who have dedicated our whole lives to trying to call the countrys attention and call the elites attention to what has happened to the working and middle class in this country, making the solution to that, a, voting for someone who says i alone can fix it, as opposed to saying it is about collective action. We actually made the middle class in this country and transformed dangerous factory jobs into good jobs through collective action and collective bargaining, which he is opposed to. And b, the fact that he made, tied the concern about the decline of good jobs in america to violent encouraging scapegoating. Antidemocratic litmus tests for coming into the country based is devastating and it will last longer than the donald trump presidency. Brian one of the questions ive heard a lot, why are most black antia black person who is a conservative . Anticlarence thomas, ben carson they do not speak for me, it is a big negative on them. Heather in some ways i feel like it is similar to white folks who are against Elizabeth Warren. It is about the politics. I wish the conservative ideology was not so easy to create a division among racial lines. Racism has been so central to the policy solutions, and the stories about the country, that so many conservatives have told it is really hard. When you get an africanamerican, or a latina, or any person of color who gets into political life and wants to gut the enforcement of civil rights, wants to abolish the minimum wage, wants to bust unions, which are even more of a ticket to the middle class for working black folks and latinos because the job discrimination is so strong outside of the union. It is not about race, it is about the policies and the ideas of what they have done and will do to the communities. Brian bill oreilly talked about race on his show december 20, 2016. It was about white privilege. I want you to hear it and react to it. [begin video clip] bill very few commentators will tell you that the heart of liberalism in America Today is based on race. It permeates almost every issue. That white men have set up a system of oppression. That system must be destroyed. Bernie sanders said that. Hillary clinton did. The liberal media tries to sell that all day long. Socalled white privilege, bad, diversity, good. Clip]ideo brian yes . [chuckling] sure. Privilege based on race is bad and diversity is good. I think that racial and Ethnic Diversity is the source of american exceptionalism. The fact that we are a country that we were not descended sort of from one ethnic group as European Countries were. Our immigration laws have created a place where there is someone here in the United States with ties to every Single Community in the globe, it is the thing that makes us exceptional and extraordinary. Yes, diversity is good. And yes, privilege that is based on skin color is not democratic, it is not egalitarian. Yes, it has been paid into the intos, it has been baked fabric of our country. Brian are most White Supremacists here is another way of asking it what do black people say about white people when we are not around . Heather that is a good question. So i am trying to think of an actual example. Brian there has to be things you say . Heather sure. I mean listen, our country we have this very strange, kind of double consciousness in this country where we admit and on Martin Luther king day our country was legally racially segregated up until recently, but the footage is black and white. And yet we really do not want to actually admit that, that has some effect on all of our systems. It really is about the beliefs. Right . There is this idea that white people who were racist before the Civil Rights Movement, maybe they were just bad people. We know that is not actually true. Right . We know the vast majority of White Americans tolerated a system of apartheid in our country and does that mean that they were evil and would literally, like, kill a black person before they would sit next to them . Obviously not. If that is the truth, how can we help, but understand that the just sort of tacit beliefs and they have different justifications now. It may not be biology, it may be that black culture is inferior. Of course there are some good black people. I really want to make sure that we dont fall into that trap. It was very easy to do so when you had an africanamerican family in the white house. It is not all black people, it is just the culture of so many, and too many black people. Brian i want to go back to more video this is from april 30, 2016 with the president and Larry Wilmore. And the president sitting around the dais. I will ask you more when you hear what he says. [begin video clip] to live in your time mr. President , when a black man can lead the entire free world. [applause] words alone do me no justice. So mr. President , i will keep it 100, yo barry you did it my nigger. You did it. Thank you very much, good night. [applause] clip]ideo brian i will just add to this, i recently saw the movie fences. The nword is used a tremendous amount along the black folks in the movie. What should white people react to this use . When black folks use it, bad, when white folks use it, really bad. I mean, good when black folks use it among themselves. Heather one of the difficulties of understanding Race Relations is the need to understand there is a difference between equality and equity. Different communities are situated differently. So the idea that saying and there is a power differential among the communities in this country. So, i personally do not use that word. My family grew up and we did not use that word. But at the same time, i know that a lot of people have defended it because it is reclaiming a word that, when used by white people is used with hate, derision, disrespect. And when used by people of color, the intent, as you can tell by Larry Wilmore saying it to the president , was not hate, derision and disrespect. What is the meaning behind the word . What is the intent of the word . It is obviously very different. So, that kind of thinking the understanding that if you are going to be in a society that has a lot of different communities, and frankly that has communities that have different power differentials. Where there are Group Dynamics, right . You and i may not have a massive power differential, except for the fact that you are asking the questions and i am answering them. As a young africanamerican woman, as an older white man, older, i did not say old. [laughter] there are power differentials there. Right . Brian youre the one with a law degree from uc berkeley. Heather i am so glad you said that. There will always be exceptions. Right . But, you look at the median wealth of a white man. White households have 10 times the typical wealth of an africanamerican household. That is still the case when it comes to white and black families of equal education, because of the history of racial segregation, predatory lending, and wealth stripping. The thing that is challenging, but not so challenging, and gary has been able to really kind of understand it and make it a part of the way he now sees the world. There are Group Dynamics. You and i are incredibly idiosyncratic, individual people with our little, you know, foibles and stories. As groups in this country, if you lay all white men, africanamerican women, latina women, etc. Out, and look at the way that they have access to power, who is represented in the senate and congress, 90 of the elected officials in the country are still white. Two thirds are white men. If you look at the difference of wealth and income, the ability to walk into a room to get a job and a callback. If you have an africanamerican sounding name but no criminal record, you are less likely to get a call back for a job and if you are a white person who has a criminal record. Does that mean that i cannot get a job, or that any white person will always be able to get a job . No, but it does mean these Group Dynamics still exist and we have to acknowledge them. Brian are your parents alive . Heather yes, thank goodness. Brian what do they think of your success . Heather they are proud of me. My mother really has dedicated her life and career to racial healing. She is particularly proud of me. Brian still live in chicago . Heather she lives in Prince Georges County outside maryland. My grandfather is not still alive and he was a Chicago Police officer. Was very close to Harold Washington yes, first black mayor of chicago. I wish he were still alive. And i think he would have a lot to say. Brian where is your dad . Heather my dad is in sacramento. Brian so, where did you meet your husband . Heather i met my husband in high school. [laughter] brian and his name is . Heather shepherd. He is a perfectly american story. His mother was a Foreign Exchange student from pakistan in the 1960s and met her husband, my husbands father in school. They had this incredibly sort of unlikely love story. He was a White American from denver and she was a pakistani woman from karachi. He grew up in this interfaith, intercultural family. And now were doing the same. Brian so you have a mixed marriage . Heather yes. Brian any of your own black folks resent that . I hear people talking about that. They dont want whites to marry blacks. What is it like from the black community . Heather i think there is resistance there are prejudices in every community. I would just say that prejudice in the White Community is backed up often by the force of law and the economy. Right, so that is why it matters more to the fate of black children that white people are prejudiced than if a black woman is prejudiced against white people. But i will say that i fortunately my marriage has been embraced very much by our communities. Brian those who may have tuned in late, gary is who . Heather gary is, as he said he was a white man and i am prejudiced. That is how he opened up his call on cspan. Brian has he changed since that call with you . Heather tremendously. He has done first of all, on a personal level, this is someone who spent most of his time watching tv and did not have many interactions with people. He has really pushed himself to interact with people of different races. He has, you know, been flo to d. C. And new york to meet with me. He has been interviewed for the new yorker magazine and on cnn last week. But more importantly, he is taking it on himself to learn about the truth about race and racism in the country. Host here is a little bit from that cnn. Actually, the fellow that is interviewing you i believe is on your board. Heather van jones, yes. Brian lets watch. Just 30 seconds. Clip] video van how are they reacting . I think they are curious. I think they are wondering what i have gotten myself into. I have a few friends that i can count on my hand. I dont make a big thing about it or it i told them i was doing this thing and had this new friend here who kind of mentors me. It was a long time ago, i had a different kind of conversation with them. [end video clip] brian is there more to do on the part of demos with the story . Are you going to take it anywhere else . Heather i think so. For about a year now i have been wanting to write a book. I started working on the book proposal before the facebook call with gary. The idea of the book is to really catalog the different ways that racism is actually bad for white people. Brian will you write it for whites or blacks . Heather for white people and people of color who are trying to find common cause. Gary was in a lot of pain. The degree of anxiety and fear that he had, coupled with the sense of moral guilt. One of the things that really shook him this year was the murder in charleston, dylann roofs murder of innocent people in mother emmanuel church. That really shook him. He lives in the south and had never really noticed the confederate flags everywhere, but then he started to notice it. He thought about his own prejudiced views and racist jokes he told. He said, if i dont do something about this, i will have a stroke. It really caused him pain. I do not think that any of us, as americans get away scott free with racism still being the cancer that it is in our society. Brian heather mcghee, president of the demos organization. If people want to contact you and get on your website, what is the address . Heather www. Demos. Org. Brian unfortunately we are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. For free transcripts or to to qanda. Org. Programs are also available as cspan podcasts. Sunday night on q a. So here is the yellow pad where alderman writes down. Within a monkeywrench, the Lyndon Johnston piece initiative. Rumored. Always nixon d knighted at the time to Lyndon Johnston, nixon d knighted at first to lyndon johnson. Aboutcer on a book Richard Nixon into his tenure and downfall as president. The way the team was assembled was clumsy. They were cynical, burnt out fbi agents who work supervised by president nixons staff who just wanted to be as they said the cap that brought the dead mouse to the president s door