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The decade Richard Boulware spent as a public defender before becoming a federal trial judge in Nevada meant he looked at his courts local rules differently upon joining the bench.

Requiring court documents be sent to email addresses or dismissing a case when a litigants address wasnt promptly updated could disadvantage people without online access or a stable address, Boulware said.

I have the privilege to have experienced how frequently our system can feel unfair to individuals who dont have the same access to resources as other individuals, Boulware said.

If progressive activists had their way, President Joe Biden would appoint many more judges who represented criminal defendants as well as workers, consumers, and civil rights plaintiffs. Wish lists assembled by two progressive groups, Demand Justice and the Peoples Parity Project, provide a window into what exactly their vision for the federal bench looks like.

Boulware, who is Black, is among the 76 lawyers and judges on the lists that are composed overwhelmingly of women and minorities, a Bloomberg Law analysis found. Whats equally important, insist progressive activists, is diverse work experiences, and the lists draw heavily on former public defenders, as well as alumni of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other public interest legal groups.

As the layers of diversity grow, however, so does the potential for new tensions. Thats already evident in Colorado, where Democratic senators are facing pushback from progressives for putting forward a Latina Big Law attorney for an open district court seat.

The decision by Senate Democrats to retain home-state input for district court nominees, at least for now, means it will be harder to get unconventional nominees confirmed in states with Republican senators. Nominees with nontraditional resumes may also be less likely to be deemed qualified by the American Bar Association.

The Peoples Parity Project, composed of law students and new lawyers, wants to change the narrative among Democrats about whats considered qualifying experience for judicial nominees, said Molly Coleman, the groups executive director and co-founder.

For us, it was really showing that if you want people who will make outstanding judges, you actually dont need to look to Wall Streets lawyers, Coleman said of her groups list, which was composed with the federal appeals courts in mind.

Judges who have predominantly had experience in private practice and as federal prosecutors make up more than 70% of the appellate bench, while just 1% of circuit court judges have spent the majority of their careers as public defenders or within a legal aid setting, according to a August 2020 Center for American Progress study.

In comparison, 20% of those suggested by the Peoples Parity Project and Demand Justice have spent at least part of their careers working as public defenders. The wish lists include 15 attorneys who have worked at the NAACPs Legal Defense and Education Fund and 11 who have worked for the ACLU on issues including reproductive rights, gay rights, immigration, and election law.

The ranks of attorneys on the lists who have represented consumers, workers, or unions include Nicole Berner, general counsel for the Service Employees International Union, and Deepak Gupta, who founded a public interest law firm after working at Public Citizen and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Christopher Kang, chief counsel and co-founder of Demand Justice who worked on judicial nominations in the Obama White House, said diversifying the federal bench is not only having people that look like America but who have represented individual Americans. His groups list is aimed at potential Supreme Court nominees, but Kang said it broadly represents the type of people it would like to see on district and appellate courts.

Judges backgrounds can make a difference in outcomes. Judges with experience as federal prosecutors or corporate lawyers are less likely to rule in favor of workers in employment disputes, according to a recent study by Emory University law professor Joanna Shepherd and supported by Demand Justice.

Adding new criteria for ideal progressive judicial appointments sets up the potential for conflicting priorities. Progressives already pushed back on Colorados Democratic senators for their recommendation of WilmerHale partner Regina Rodriguez for a federal judgeship, because of her corporate law background.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said while he understands there is a lot of ground to make up in terms of professional experience because both parties focused on nominees with Big Law experience in the past, racial and ethnic diversity remain important.

There will always be corporate lawyers and federal prosecutors on the federal bench and the ranks of those former corporate lawyers and prosecutors should also reflect diversity, Saenz said.

There are still federal courts that havent had a Latino or Latina judge, including the D.C. Circuit, Saenz said. Hed like to see the Biden administration change that.

American Indian judges remain rare. There are currently two active judges who are American Indian, according to Federal Judicial Center data.

That leaves a gaping hole in American jurisprudence, said Angela R. Riley, professor and director of the Native Nations Law and Policy Center at the UCLA School of Law, and chief justice of the Supreme Court of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation of Oklahoma.

An American Indian judicial nominee with or without corporate ties might add a much needed understanding of the challenges facing Indian country and tribes to the federal bench, Riley said. That still brings something.

The first challenge to getting more diverse judges confirmed to the federal bench is getting people to step forward, said former U.S. district court judge Nancy Gertner, chair of the bipartisan judicial nominations advisory committee for Massachusetts Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey.

Our job is oftentimes convincing legal services lawyers, public defenders, environmental lawyers that they should apply, said Gertner. That we meant it when we said they should apply.

The advisory committee opened up applications in January, received 32 applications, interviewed 22 people over Zoom, and has made its recommendations to the senators, Gertner said. But the commission missed the Jan. 19 deadline the White House requested because they were prioritizing diversity.

Untraditional candidates may be younger and have fewer years of professional experience. They run the risk of not getting a qualified recommendation from the ABA, which rates judicial picks. The ABA typically requires nominees to have a minimum 12 years experience as lawyers.

Biden isnt asking the ABA to vet his selections to the federal bench before theyre nominated as was the practice of the Obama administration, but its ratings still carry some weight during the confirmation process.

Easha Anand, a Supreme Court and appellate lawyer at the MacArthur Justice Center who focuses on criminal defense, was surprised to see her name on the Peoples Parity Project list.

Historically, Anand said her background representing prisoners, taking on reproductive rights cases, and making her views on issues publicly known would have been disqualifying.

I have no illusions about ending up on the bench, but the fact that Im even a part of the conversation shows how much has shifted in the past couple of years, Anand said.

Gertner, who now teaches at Harvard Law School, can relate. As she tells it, her resume included representing a lesbian feminist radical revolutionary accused of killing a cop and working on abortion and sex discrimination cases. Plus, she married the legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Gertner says those experiences gave her a different perspective during 17 years as a district court judge in Boston. Her criminal defense background made her ask different questions, such as whether traffic-related stops on a Black defendants prior record were racially motivated.

I added the experience of walking into the courtroom with your client and walking out of the courtroom with him in chains, Gertner said.

Original post:
Progressive Judges Wish List Heavy on ACLU, Light on Big Law - Bloomberg Law

Rosemary Boeglin, who has been handling the economic portfolio in the White House press shop, is expected to play a role in the outside efforts that are still coming together, particularly as the administration works to maintain ties with progressives as their policy agenda takes shape.

Boeglin, who came to the White House after roles in Biden's transition and campaign, served as the national press secretary to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign. She also served as a deputy press secretary for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"It's been an honor to work for President Biden on the campaign and in the White House, and I look forward to taking on the task of advancing the teams progressive agenda," Boeglin said in a statement to CNN.

A nonprofit advocacy group, named Building Back Together, will launch next month with the White House's blessing and is expected to air ads and coordinate pro-Biden messaging with other supportive outside groups, sources told CNN earlier this month.

White House officials view the group as a key element in the effort to both sell and maintain support for Biden's agenda in the months ahead and top White House officials are expected to stay in close touch with the nonprofit's strategists but will not direct or control the group directly.

"Rosemary Boeglin is an extraordinarily talented and highly valued member of the Biden team and we look forward to continuing to work closely with her as she takes on a new role in the coming weeks advocating on the outside for the President's progressive agenda," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.

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White House aide with close progressive ties leaving to join nascent outside group - CNN

When a wing of progressives called on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to force a Medicare For All vote in the House, it drew a line in the sand for people on the left. #ForceTheVote was an effort that intended to ostracize Republicans and centrist Democrats who don't support an overhaul of our nation's healthcare system. AOC didn't think it was a good idea, noting that forcing a vote that doesn't have a chance in the House, let alone the Senate, could only cause friction among Democrats and harm their cause.

This disagreement created a loud faction of progressives who are now anti-AOC. They are seemingly led by comedian-turned-political talk show host Jimmy Dore, who in December said that AOC is now "standing between you and healthcare," and went on to call her a liar, gaslighter, and coward.

Unthinkably, given her standing as the highest profile progressive member of Congress, AOC saw her Twitter mentions flooded with hate-fueled banter and accusations of being a sellout and fraud.

She'll be fine, of course, as that's just part of her job. But the impulse from progressives to turn on their own and for relatively dumb reasons has become a baffling spectacle and a maddening trend that's stalled real change. Instead of infighting and bickering, progressives need to take a step back and understand what the best path to progress is.

The 2020 Democratic primaries were heated. People who were passionate about a particular candidate would sometimes wade into insults and ridicule on social media. Just about every candidate had a small but loud faction of supporters who would do this, but for whatever reason, Bernie Sanders' online faction got the most media attention. While Sanders continued to offer an inclusive agenda and even denounced the more annoying parts of his base, scores of liberals and progressives became turned off by even the thought of Sanders. They held this grudge despite his long-standing record on vital issues and humble demeanor.

This became clear when Sanders, as head of the Senate Budget Committee, asked Neera Tanden, Biden's pick to lead the Office of Budget Management, to reflect on her own attacks on social media, including personal attacks she hurled at Bernie himself. Tanden apologized for her actions, but if you looked under any tweet about the exchange, you saw countless accusations of sexism on Bernie's part, attacks on his character, and a general sense of pure hatred for the man.

This grudge against Bernie Sanders held by so-called progressives remains weird and a little bit sad, especially considering how long it's been since the primaries. The disdain for the Vermont senator even affects the people he associates with. When MoveOn, a high-profile progressive advocacy organization, endorsed Nina Turner, a former Bernie Sanders surrogate, for Congress, it was met with a wave of displeasure.

The list of pointless grudges doesn't stop there. I'll be the first to admit that I was upset with Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the 2020 primaries.

I felt that she had undermined the progressive cause not just by promoting a misleading story that implied Sen. Bernie Sanders was sexist, but also by not corralling her supporters behind him when her campaign ran out of steam.

But now that a whole year has passed, it is easy to admit that Warren is a pivotal part of the progressive agenda and should be supported as such. Many progressives, though, simply can't get over that grudge. She's still a "snake" in too many people's eyes.

These people are too petty to see that she's fighting for everything they want, including universal healthcare, a $15 minimum wage, and a cancellation of student loan debt. It will be harder for progressives to accomplish those things if people who advocate for them aren't supportive of the lawmakers who can make them happen. It's not just Warren who's been targeted by progressive grudges, either.

Like Sanders, Warren has fought for a slew of policies that progressives dream about, but for those who illogically consider them enemies of the progressive movement, that doesn't matter.

Read more: The 2 reasons Republicans can't move on from Donald Trump

As someone who spends a lot of time on Twitter pointing out the hypocrisies of politicians, I am not saying you shouldn't be skeptical of them in general. Even trivial forms of ridicule aren't so bad in the larger discourse. But people should save their real disdain for an actual policy or platform they disagree with, instead of hating on someone who's on their side, and for some trivial thing that happened more than a year ago. Debate is fine and encouraged, but the shaming and booing of one's own team is counter-productive.

Figuring out who the best options for progress are shouldn't be nearly this complicated. Think of the things you support, and support the politicians who agree with you. Naturally, when different strategies towards progress are debated, things may get heated. You might grow weary of someone and have less tolerance for them. That's totally fine, and normal even. But progressives holding these year-long grudges against other progressives can only hurt the ultimate goal.

I wish Bernie Sanders was the Democratic nominee in 2020 and I wish Elizabeth Warren, after realizing her campaign was toast, had done more to solidify his chances. But both of these officials, along with newly chastised-from-the-left AOC, have a moral fortitude that's actually pretty rare in politics. They serve us, but we have a role to play in their success. We just have to be smart about it.

Read more from the original source:
Pointless infighting among progressives is becoming exhausting and harmful - Business Insider

When I was the same age my kids are now, I was a giant Carl Sagan fan. Cosmos had begun airing on PBS, and for my birthday there was just one thing I wanted: a $50 donation to the Buffalo PBS affiliate. That was the only way to get the not-available-in-any-store (especially not a Canadian store) Cosmos companion book featuring lots of photos of Cornells least modest professor of astronomy and space sciences. My friends got Gretzky jerseys so they could skate like stars, but this nerd wanted Cosmos because were all star stuff (especially Carl).

For me, the most electrifying part of Cosmos -- the highest-rated show in public television history until Ken Burns came along -- was Sagans exposition of the Drake equation, which estimates the number of detectable technical extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way via seven discrete factors. The answer, Sagan expounded, could be in the millions, which raises a question: Shouldnt some of them have voyaged to earth?

As evidenced by increased UFO sightings around the time of Cosmos, many people thought they had. Lots still do. A 2019 poll found about a quarter of Americans believe aliens have visited the U.S. and the government is keeping it a secret. But with President Trump out of office for a month and continued silence on this conspiracy, we now have Sagan-caliber proof that the U.S. government has no such evidence. For if it did, Trump would have surely spilled the beans by now in an incoherent, attention-seeking fit of pique.

Sagan even had a signature phrase, not from Cosmos, but rather Johnny Carsons Cosmos parody: Billions and billions (overemphasizing the B). It was nonetheless richly deserved given the many, many times he used large numbers to make us all feel small. Sagans celebrity was well worn by Cornell, which featured him prominently in promotional materials, suggesting students would have frequent contact with Americas most telegenic scientist. Naturally, Sagan only taught one seminar each year, prompting the Cornell Review to launch an I touched Carl Sagan contest; students who had physical contact could win a prize by submitting essays on their experience.

Cornell tuition may not be in the billions and billions, but its galactically higher than when Cosmos first aired. In 1980, annual tuition at Cornell was $4,090. This year, students paid $59,331: nearly five times, adjusted for inflation. In endlessly increasing tuition far above the rate of inflation, Cornell is in good company. The predictable results are the progressive free college and student debt forgiveness movements that dominate higher education policy discourse as the Biden administration takes flight.

But one major critique of so-called free college is that it wouldnt actually be free. Students need to live while theyre studying. Rent, food and other expenses range from 30percent of total student budgets at schools like Cornell to 60percent at state universities and 80percent at community colleges. Since the Great Recession, these costs have been rising just as fast as tuition. Cornell now charges $15,706 for room and board for its 235-day academic calendar, and has students budget an additional $3,000 for books and living expenses.

Thanks to the former conspiracist in chief, Democrats dominate Americas political scene and will for the foreseeable future. But while President and Dr. Biden promote free community college, students still need to be able to afford to live while they learn. That means more of the same borrowing that has led to progressives putting pressure on the administration to forgive student debt. One solution is earn-while-you-learn models. Paying students a living wage while they learn is the best way to address cost of living and truly level the playing field for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

You wont be surprised to learn theres a federal program for this. Its called Federal Work-Study (FWS), and each year 3,400 colleges and universities receive $1.2billion in wage subsidies to employ about 700,000 students. So its surprising that neither FWS nor any other earn-while-you-learn model (e.g., apprenticeships) shows up on the list of progressive policy priorities. Elizabeth Warrens campaign platform didnt mention FWS, and President Bidens platform references FWS only in the context of reforming the program. Progressives should be all over FWS and other earn-while-you-learn models. But theyre not, and Im wondering why.

***

Earn-while-you-learn programs are popping up more frequently than Carl Sagan on the Cornell campus. Launched last fall with CARES Act funding, the Digital Upskill Sacramento Program pays students from disadvantaged communities $600 per week to participate in free last-mile training. Students are given a laptop and trained for data analytics or software support roles. Said one participant who gave birth days before the start of training, Not having to use my credit card to pay for groceries, because I had the money, that was amazing. I didnt have a reason not to go forward, because they provided me with tools to go forward. In November, San Antonio voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure to allocate sales tax proceeds to workforce development, and programs like Project Quest are now paying students $15 per hour for short-term training.

Of course, earn-while-you-learn is more realistic for short workforce development programs than paying students for years as they pursue degrees. But as federal workforce development funding pales in comparison with government support for colleges and universities, paying wages for job training is still not a layup. For every $100 spent on accredited higher education, only $1 is spent on job training, spread across 43 uncoordinated programs. Public support for apprenticeships works out to less than $100 per apprentice each year and is a fraction of what other developed nations spend. The proposed $1.9trillion COVID relief plan includes billions and billions more for colleges and universities ($35billion to be exact), but no additional funding for workforce development or apprenticeships. Just as Cornell collegians were kept clear of Sagan, its as though grubby job training must be segregated from the big money of TitleIV of the Higher Education Act.

At current spending levels, federal workforce funds only flow to a million Americans each year, and there are only about half a million apprentices (with little government support). So moving the needle with earn-while-you-learn means reaching the 20million students enrolled at colleges and universities, specifically in multiyear degree programs. But a new program on the scale of free college would require a massive expansion of Federal Work-Study, which could be hard, seeing as colleges and universities dont need thousands of student dining hall workers and custodians -- not this year, and not any year.

Unfortunately, thats how FWS works. The current structure incentivizes colleges and universities to employ students to wash dishes and clean toilets rather than connect them with private sector jobs. The FWS handbook provides a 75percent wage subsidy for any on-campus job but only 50percent for off-campus jobs with private for-profit organizations. FWS also disincentivizes private sector employment in two other ways: (1) by requiring that private sector jobs must be relevant to your course of study and (2) by limiting schools from using more than 25percent of FWS funding to subsidize private sector employment. Not surprisingly, 92percent of FWS funds are used for on-campus jobs. The rest goes to off-campus jobs at not-for-profit or community services organizations. Less than 0.1percent subsidizes work at private for-profit organizations. This warped structure has come into focus via COVID as tens of thousands of students who might have been able to perform subsidized private sector work remotely have had campus jobs canceled, resulting in hardship and dropouts.

In non-pandemic years, washing dishes and cleaning toilets may help support 700,000 students through college, but its not scalable and much less likely to help launch careers than relevant work experience. Of the approximately 150million jobs in the U.S., less than 25percent -- approximately 36million -- are in the public and nonprofit sectors. Over 75percent of jobs are in the private sector. And its private sector employers that have become much pickier in job descriptions for entry-level positions, increasingly listing digital and business skill requirements that realistically are only obtained through relevant work experience. This explains why less than a third of students are confident theyll get a good job after graduation. So if were serious about not only solving the short-term problem of paying for college, but also the long-term problem of socioeconomic mobility, expanding earn-while-you-learn to colleges and universities means deeper and more sustained engagement with the private sector.

This is where progressives get nervous. It may be an unconscious block. After all, how may progressive leaders -- public officials and policy makers -- have worked outside government, think tanks, foundations and universities? Looking at the Biden administrations 24 appointees to the U.S. Department of Education, only six have held private sector jobs. Three are counsel who trained at law firms. The other three average 2.5 years in private sector jobs in careers than span decades. Fully 18 of the 24 have never worked in the private sector since graduating from college. Come to think of it, this may also explain other federal higher education policies that are skewed against private sector employment.

By now, it may also be a reflex. For too many years, progressive leaders have characterized for-profit companies as predatory and maligned the motivations of private sector actors as unethical rent seeking rather than serving customers, growth and building value for shareholders. In many ways, its hard to blame them. After all, the constituents progressives try hardest to protect are front-line workers in dead-end jobs and at-risk Americans who have been victimized by bad actors in pharmaceuticals, financial services and -- yes -- postsecondary education (creating a natural aversion to short-term job training from private sector providers).

Even more than their forebearers of a century ago, progressives take a dim view of private sector employers and employment. This allergy to private sector employment may also explain why progressives arent counting on unions to close the education-to-employment gap. For while many private sector unions -- particularly in the building and construction trades -- run earn-while-you-learn apprenticeships, public sector unions do virtually nothing. Progressives arent sure how they feel about career trajectories outside government and nonprofits. That's their Achilles heel, and thats why were not hearing more about earn-while-you-learn.

***

There is a place where the best-educated and most highly skilled members of the work force are in government-controlled jobs. Unfortunately for progressives, Im quoting last weeks New York Times report on Cuba. If progressives want New Deal-level investment for education and employment, the current political configuration isnt likely to yield a Depression-era government-funded, government-run WPA or NYA (National Youth Administration). Theyll need to embrace the private sector.

If they can, the opportunity is huge. If theres any area where progressives can find common ground with moderates and conservatives, its here. A grand earn-while-you-learn bargain could incorporate not only FWS, but also apprenticeships, public-funded internships and work-integrated learning. Theres broad public support for spending on solving unemployment and underemployment. A recent Rutgers University survey found 74percent of Americans support spending more money on job training for laid-off workers. To paraphrase FDR, the only thing we have to fear is fear of the private sector itself.

Right before he passed away in 1996, Carl Sagan appeared on Charlie Rose and warned America might be up for grabs for the next charlatan political or religious who comes ambling along. Sagan's fear was lack of scientific literacy, which has never been clearer than it is now (see e.g., COVID pandemic). But he might also have been talking about economic opportunity. If the American dream is dead -- if there arent clear pathways for our children to do better than we did -- maybe its worth selecting conspiracy-spinning leaders for sheer entertainment value.

Sagan believed were not alone in the universe. And although he was progressive for his time -- working at universities and nonprofits like PBS, combating nuclear proliferation -- I bet he also understood that the public and nonprofit sectors arent alone, either: theres a universe of companies and employers out there, not all of which mean harm to customers and employees. And that a quest for economic development that disregards the private sector is likely to yield something like Cuba.

If progressives are going to play a constructive role in rekindling the American dream, theyll need to overcome private sector phobia and understand that connections from publicly funded education to privately funded employment arent inherently perilous like the Bridge of Death in Monty Pythons Holy Grail. Short of creating tens of millions of new jobs at the Department of Education, failing to make peace with the private sector (aka the United States economy) will damn Gen Z to a rinse-and-repeat doom loop of underemployment and student debt forgiveness. And the fault won't be in our stars -- or aliens or Trump or Fidel Castro -- but in ourselves.

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Progressives should focus more on work-study and other earn-while-you-learn models (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

When Heather McGhee was a 25-year-old staffer at Demos, the progressive think tank she would eventually lead, she went to Congress to present findings on shocking increases in individual and family debt.

Few politicians in Washington knew what it was like to have bill collectors incessantly ringing their phones about balances that kept growing every month, McGhee writes in her new book, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together.

Demoss explanatory attempts failed. When Congress finally took action in 2005, it made the problem worse, passing a bankruptcy bill that made escaping unsustainable debt harder than ever. For McGhee, the disaster was an education in the limits of research, which is often no match for the brute power of big money. But as she was walking down the hallway of the Russell Senate Office Building, she learned something else.

Stopping to adjust her new shoes near the door of a Senate office, she wrote, she heard the bombastic voice of a man going on about the deadbeats who had babies with multiple women and then declared bankruptcy to dodge the child support. She doesnt know whether the man was a Democrat or a Republican, but when she heard him she realized she and her allies might have missed something. Theyd thought of debt and bankruptcy primarily as a class issue. Suddenly she understood that for some of her opponents, it was more about race.

She wondered how, as a Black woman, shed been caught off guard. I hadnt even thought to ask the question about this seemingly nonracial financial issue, but had racism helped defeat us? she wrote.

McGhees book is about the many ways racism has defeated efforts to create a more economically just America. Once the civil rights movement expanded Americas conception of the public, white Americas support for public goods collapsed. People of color have suffered the most from the resulting austerity, but its made life a lot worse for most white people, too. McGhees central metaphor is that of towns and cities that closed their public pools rather than share them with Black people, leaving everyone who couldnt afford a private pool materially worse off.

One of the most fascinating things about The Sum of Us is how it challenges the assumptions of both white antiracism activists and progressives who just want to talk about class. McGhee argues that its futile to try to address decades of disinvestment in schools, infrastructure, health care and more without talking about racial resentment.

She describes research done by the Race-Class Narrative Project, a Demos initiative that grew out of her work for the book. McGhee and her colleagues, she writes, discovered that if you try to convince anyone but the most committed progressives (disproportionately people of color) about big public solutions without addressing race, most will agree right up until they hear the countermessage that does talk, even implicitly, about race.

But McGhee, who leads the board of the racial justice organization Color of Change, also implicitly critiques the way parts of the left talk about white privilege. Without the hostile intent, of course, arent we all talking about race relations through a prism of competition, every advantage for one group mirrored by a disadvantage for another? she asks.

McGhee is far from an opponent of the sort of social justice culture sometimes derided as wokeness. But her work illuminates whats always seemed to me to be a central contradiction in certain kinds of anti-racist consciousness-raising, which is that many people want more privilege rather than less. You have to have an oddly high opinion of white people to assume that most will react to learning about the advantages of whiteness by wanting to give it up.

Communicators have to be aware of the mental frameworks of their audience, McGhee told me. And for white Americans, the zero-sum is a profound, both deeply embedded and constantly reinforced one.

This doesnt mean that the concept of white privilege isnt useful; obviously it describes something real. What privilege awareness does, at its best, is reveal the systematic unfairness, and lift the blame from the victims of a corrupt system, McGhee said. However, I think at this point in our discourse also when so many white people feel deeply unprivileged its more important to talk about the world we want for everyone.

So McGhee is trying to shift the focus from how racism benefits white people to how it costs them. Why is student debt so crushing in a country that once had excellent universities that were cheap or even free? Why is American health care such a disaster? Why is our democracy being strangled by minority rule? As the first line of McGhees book asks, Why cant we have nice things? Racism is a huge part of the answer.

McGhee describes a solidarity dividend gained when people are able to transcend racism. Look at what just happened in Georgia, where the billionaire Kelly Loeffler, in an attempt to keep her Senate seat, waged a nakedly racist campaign against Raphael Warnock, who ran on sending voters $2,000 stimulus checks. He still lost most white people, but won enough to prevail. He did it by appealing to idealism, but also to self-interest. In the fight for true multiracial democracy, counting on altruism will only get you so far.

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Opinion | The Book That Should Change How Progressives Talk About Race - The New York Times