Author Heather McGhee POSTPONED

NOTE THIS EVENT WAS POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER. Check back for more information about a new date and time.

This year Clark College’s annual event honoring the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a presentation by and conversation with Heather McGhee, The New York Times bestselling author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. 

All faculty, staff, and students are invited: The New York Times bestselling author Heather McGhee will be the keynote speaker during Clark College’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. event from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 17 in Gaiser Student Center. The event is presented to the college community by the office of the president and funded by Clark College Foundation. The book is available for purchase at the Clark College Bookstore for $16.50. 

About Heather McGhee

McGhee designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America. During her career in public policy, she has crafted legislation, testified before Congress, and helped shape presidential campaign platforms including the idea of debt-free college. McGhee holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from Yale University and a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. She chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.  

About the book The Sum of Us:  

• Spent 10 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list 
• Adapted into a podcast produced by Barack and Michelle Obamas’ production company 
• McGhee’s TED Talk, “Racism Has a Cost for Everyone” has more than 2.5 million views 

Summary

Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the 2008 financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism, but not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy, and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crisis that grips us all. Learn more about McGhee’s book here. 

Media reviews

• “The book that should change how progressives talk about race.” — The New York Times 
• “Required reading to move the country forward.” — The Chicago Tribune 

The book’s Clark College connection:  

McGhee’s book tells the story of Clark College employee Susan Parrish (writer in Communications and Marketing) on pages 95 and 96.  

Here’s what Susan says: “In The Sum of Us, author Heather McGhee shares my story of “cascading loss and downward mobility” in the aftermath of the Great Recession. In a short period, I got divorced, was laid off from my job, had to sell my house at the lowest point in the housing market, claimed unemployment for the first time in my life and had to reinvent my career—and my entire life.”