But in this country it feels like who belongs in our demos and the people of our nations his nations highest calling. 10, 20ke up on december 16, picked up the New York Times, saw the headline i am prejudiced, and then we kept talking, and i want to show you the video because it started at cspan sometime before that, and i will ask you to explain the whole thing. [video clip] may be one of you guests can help me change my mind. I am a white male, and i am prejudiced, and it is something i wasnt taught, but it is something i learned. When i open up the papers, i get very discouraged about what young black males are doing to each other and the crime rates. I understand it is an environment of drugs and you have to get money to get drugs, fears, and iese dont want my fears to come true, you know . So i tried to avoid that, and i come off as being prejudiced. But i just have fears. I dont want to be forced to like people. I want to like people through example. What can i do to change and to be a better american . Heather mcghee . Heather thank you so much for being honest and for opening up this conversation because it is one of the most important ones we have to have in this country. You said more, but i will let you tell us what happened after that. Heather that was a remarkable moment. To stepi took a moment off the set. Was. Owerful it there was something in his voice that touched me and i could hear it. It was so authentic as he searched for the words to say that most of us would not admit in our homes, i am prejudiced, and the way he ended his question, what can i do to change and be a better american . Just reached right in and grabbed my heart. I had to just kind of had to pause. I was trying to communicate with this person, who really reached a hand out to me. As ahe said things that sister and daughter of a black hear, ands painful to i knew there were many more stereotypes of black men that he said, but at the same time, i know that we are all swimming in , sea of racist stereotypes that the media over represents black crime, it has become the aim of a lot of politicians actually do make people distrust one another, and particularly, distrust people of color, so could i blame him for feeling that way, especially when he was asking for ways to change . Heather what happened next . Heather i work in law and Public Policy. Key for that call, i was talking about Student Loans and trade policy, and yes, talking a little bit about Race Relations, garry from tell that North Carolina, really wanted really simple answers to his questions about how he could integrate his life. Off the top of my head, i said, gets to know black families, and if you are a religious person, join an interracial church, and join in with people of different races with a higher common purpose. To turn off the nightly news because it is a warped vision of who commits crimes in this country that comes in many media markets. And i asked him to read about black history. I got a sense that who he was talking about was black people. And of course we talk about stereotypes against immigrants, but it felt like with this question, it felt like he was asking me, a black woman, of how to overcome his prejudice against black people. And then what . Heather i just kept going with the great program. I had a text message from my colleague, gwen, and she had watched it. And she was there with another one of my colleagues, a young , and woman from the south they looked at each other with tears in her eyes and said Something Special just happened. A few days later, they put it on ofebook, just the clip garrys question and my full answer, and by monday, it had about one million views. And that never had happened to demos before. And aggregators picked it up and put different headers on it, and askscame a racist caller this black woman a question and here was the response, and it really went viral. You had comedians in public figures talking about it. Is an organization that works on Public Policy. Arele who follow us online people who care about the specific issues we work for like raising the minimum wage or democracy reform, but this was getting out there. My sisterinlaws hairdresser says, i saw this, you know . It was starting to really break out of the bubble. I think part of the reason for that you have to remember this was august, we had this raciallycharged summer with Donald Trumps campaign with black lives matter and the police shootings, and the tragic events all in baton rouge and dallas, and it was really a time when people felt all they were seeing on tv about race was bad news. And here was, first, a white man admitting that he was prejudiced, which for people of finally,ind of say and we have donald trump same he doesnt a number prejudiced bone in his body, and he was this guy willing to have the courage to say i have these prejudices. We found this on your website. Tell me how this happened. [video clip] i went down to North Carolina and i met with gary, and we furthered that conversation about race, and asked each other hard questions, and it was amazing. Talking again and thatet to know people [indiscernible] she had there were 8 Million People who responded positively to my questions. Step,taking that first but that is the hardest thing. How did you find gary . Heather garry found me. Garry, a few days later, was watching cnn, and i went on cnn and had an interview about the fact this clip had gone viral and it reached 8 million views. So, he heard my voice again, and he had never seen or heard me before the cspan show, and he heard my voice again and ran into the living room, saw me talking about the clip, and at the bottom, it said my twitter handle, so garry got on twitter for the first time in his life, and his first tweet said, how does this thing work . And he found me. He entered in my twitter handle, and he said, i am garry from North Carolina. And i immediately i wanted to know, you know . The way those shows were, i gave my answer and then we went onto the next call, so i did not know how it landed with him. I did not know if you brushed it off, or anything about who he was. There was no way to know. So he found me and said i am garry from North Carolina, and i sent him a private message and i said, garry, i would love to talk to you about what you thought about my answer to your question. So i gave him my phone number, and a few days later, i got a phone call, and he was sitting at a burger joint having lunch, and he decided to call me. He was very nervous and i was very nervous, but he said you know, what you said changed my life. To which i was shocked. I thought, sure, when asked a pretty hard question at the top on my head, i gave some decent answers, but i did not think it would be something he would take so seriously, and he explained path. That he is now on a he wanted to get right about this before he died. He said he was inspired by the fact that newspapers across the country, and obviously it went viral on social media, but it was picked up in the normal press, and he was inspired by that, and said, there probably a lot of other people like me out there who have these prejudices, about what would happen to them if they admitted it. When did you go down there and why . Heather we had a few phone conversations. The first one was good. 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, i am willing to talk with you about it. So use me to keep the conversation going because the country needs it. And so, i took that to heart. I did not know exactly what and ie of it, but got married, and i got and i talked to garry once before i got married. He talked about the books he was reading and told me a funny story about going to the bookstore to get a bunch of africanamerican studies books and send me a little photo of himself to show me he was at the bookstore, and then, i got an invitation to go speak at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. So, my new husband and i said, lets call garry and see if we could driveby and meet with him. So we did that. And garry 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, garry, i think we should record as meeting, and he said, yeah. That footed you saw was from my husband that footage you saw was from my husband and it was a really beautiful conversation. It exceeded my expectations. Where is that . Heather he lives outside of asheville, North Carolina. He wanted us to meet in asheville. It is in a park outside of a hotel in downtown asheville. It was a beautiful fall day with the changing leaves. It was a week before the election. And we did not talk about the election. We did not talk about politics. He told me about his life. We got to know each other, where he is from, the experiences he has had in life. How old is he . Heather he is in his mid50s. He was born in connecticut, new haven, connecticut, but he was in the navy, and had a heart condition, and went down to asheville in his early 20s for heart surgery. And had in his life in connecticut, this is one of those beautiful things that peoples stories where the things he was afraid of from the media stereotypes about africanamericans had been a part of physics. His expenses growing up in connecticut with gangs that have been a part of his experiences growing up in been a part of his experiences growing up in connecticut with gangs. He was an electrician, an operator, and i think hes mostly retired. Has he been married . Heather no. So he has had no children . Heather no. Havew often in your life you heard the kind of things he was staying about he is a white man thought about black people . Mean, it is innumerable account. Staying thatomeone to me personally, probably not so many times. Started career, really out as an Economic Policy person, and would go across the country in my role at demos and other jobs, talking to groups of people about the economy. And often times, you know, in church basements, union halls, talking about what is happened in our economy so that working people finding it so hard to get about and i talked globalization and technological change, Corporate Power in washington, and trade rules and tax rules and workers rights, but i felt that if i did not mention race, i was not telling the whole story. A piece of the puzzle was really missing about how it was my grandfathers generation, you could have had a workingclass job, did not have to go to college, and you had a great job with benefits, retirement, Public Schools were wellfunded and you could go to college debtfree, but something changed in the late 1970s. There are lots of reasons why that change, but something shifted in our politics were the very idea of a government that invests in its people and supports workingclass folks and supports mobility, had become tarred, and racialized so that the conservative argument against government very much carried on these stereotypes of undeserving people of color. I was, it felt to me like getting drawn into more and more conversations about race, even when i was supposed to be talking to a white laidoff field worker about the economy. And i sort of learned a way to talk about race with white seele that allowed them to their self interest in it, their story in it. Back in your own life, tell us where you were born . Heather i was born and raised on the south side of chicago. My mother at the time i was born, my mom was a Holistic Health practitioner on the south side of chicago, and ended up working in social policy, so i come by rightly. My father was a photographer. For they together . Buther they were together, divorced when i was young, but i had a Great Community i grew up in. My grandparents on both sides had come up on the south side and worked in the Public Sector as a cop and a social worker. It was a great way to grow up. How many white people were in your high school . Heather that is a great question. In mostly grew up allblack schools until i went away to boarding school. And this was a decision my mom made when i was in seventh grade, pretty early. I went from growing up in to a virtually all the white school in new england. It was a small school in western massachusetts. I was one of two black children in the whole school. A pretty phenomenal adjustment. 11, but in, i was some ways, being that young helped. It helped me still be a child and have a sense of adventure about this incredible cultural shift that i had just experienced. That i my high school went on to was diverse, but a very elite prep school and most of the kids were color came in on scholarships. Where was that . Heather that was Milton Academy outside of boston, massachusetts. And how were you treated at 11 years old by the white girls . Heather it was hard. We were kids. In some ways, we were just young ofugh to have a little bit that childhood innocence. There are a lot of moments where they did not understand kind of some of the basic things about being black and young. Like i went from living with my family to living with all white people. All white dorm parents and fellow students, so the little upngs of the way i grew versus how they grew up, but i developed wonderful friends. I flourished in the school. And then going from a big Public School to a tiny school where you sat around in a library room with five teachers and a book. Students and a book and a teacher. In in many ways, a many ways, i was very fortunate. For your parents wealthy were your parents wealthy . Heather no, but they were able to use Financial Aid and it was a big leap my parents made to say, i wasnt getting the challenge i was in Public School. One ofthe people the things people noticed when you answered garrys question was that there wasnt an ounce of anger in your voice. . Ow did you do that and when people are not nice to you, how do you get this even temperature about you even temper about you . Joke aboutere is a the obama anger. He has to do that all the time, the amount of disrespect thrown at him and the amount of victory all he has had to rise above. That is the way he has managed to be president of the United States. How do you do it . Heather i think there has to in ao be a person of color white, dominant society, you , at least i have learned, to have and 51st. Garrys question was extraordinary. Is different when someone is racist to me at a line to me in a line at a store. He was sane, i am prejudiced and i need to change. He was staying, i am prejudiced, and i need to change. It is racism or prejudice some and that is an individual people, or is it baked into the fabric of this country and is communicated in subtle messages every single day in our media . And if we believe, as most racial as most social racist racial advocates do, it is is about a and system that was set back in this country to communicate a belief in a hierarchy of humans value, then is it any surprise that people would absorb that belief . I am not saying that that takes the blame away from everyone, but it does mean when someone identifies and is willing to admit that, yeah, they have absorbed a lot of stereotypes about our fellow americans, should be answer that call . I think we have to. I think we all have to. One of the big mistakes this country, this culture has shifted over the course of my stopped talking about race and it made in that prejudice about race, and admitting that racism is far more common. How many times have you talked to garry . I have talked to him several times on the phone and met with him in person three times. What is the future of the heathergarry relationship . Heather i dont know. He is on this incredible journey and he created this system all on his own where he forced himself to interact with people of color that he normally would not have. He started in the waiting room at the v. A. Where black men sat created am, and he system, on a scale of one to 10, i am not going to like him. We will have a bad interaction. I am kind of afraid of him and i am anxious. He would rate the person of three, then he forced himself to i 91really bad traffic on or whatever or some kind of opening, and get to talk, and then after the interaction, he would rate how he felt about the interaction. It was a five to seven point spread. That is not something i would have come up with and showed him to do, but in some ways, it is basicingly simple and the spirit of it, which is, if you have gone to a point, were not only do you consume a lot of stereotypes on television, but in your life, you are finding it is affecting who you feel comfortable sitting next to or talking to, sending your children to school with any work up that ladder, paying taxes to support their education, we got work to do. I want to talk about class because this may be an example. When you look at your background, what happened after high school . Wenter i went to yale and to law school at uc berkeley. How did all that happen . That is an expensive ride. [laughter] heather the good old american of Student Loans and debt. What was moving you . Heather that community i talked about in chicago where i grew up, there was a sense growing up everyone has to sort of do something, whether it is work in the Public Sector, or work at a nonprofit. It was how i grew up. I really never question the idea that in some ways, making this country better was going to be the work of my life. What did you start right after you went to law school . Heather i started working at demos right after college, a year after college. It was an entry level position and i was 22 years old. The organization had only been around for two years, and i got a job because i had some jobs during college, actually working, doing research for a small Public Policy organization and worked on issues for low income families and children, and i was able to get this job working on the issue of debt. At that time, we were working on how the issue of how Credit Card Debt and Mortgage Loans and payday loans had become this plastic safetynet for working and middleclass famil