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Drained swimming pools represent the way that zero-sum racial politics hurts everyone, including white people, by destroying public goods and services. As Heather McGhee explains in the second chapter of The Sum of Us, local governments all around the U.S. constructed extravagant municipal pools in the mid-20th century. These pools were designed to give middle-class white families a place to mingle, relax, and cool down in the summer months; they even helped recent immigrants assimilate into American life. In short, they represented the triumphant American middle class, the first of its size anywhere in the world. But Black families weren’t allowed in. When courts started ordering cities to integrate these pools, many of them defunded, privatized, or even shut down their pools. (Montgomery, Alabama even closed its entire parks department and sold off its zoo animals.) In other words, white Americans chose to destroy beautiful public infrastructure that benefited them, instead of sharing it with Black people.
McGhee shows how the drained pool is classic zero-sum thinking: white people viewed a loss for Black people as a win for themselves, even when they didn’t actually gain anything of value from it. To McGhee, this pattern is the key to understanding why Americans don’t have the same “nice things” as people in other developed countries, from universal health insurance to a fair minimum wage. Since the civil rights movement, white Americans have consistently chosen to drain the public sector’s resources instead of sharing with people of color. This is why the solid majority of Americans—regardless of race—have only seen their economic situation worsen in the last 50 years. As McGhee puts it, “we’re all living at the bottom of the drained pool now,” and the only way out of this predicament is to “refill the pool of public goods, for everyone.”
Public Swimming Pools Quotes in The Sum of Us
The The Sum of Us quotes below all refer to the symbol of Public Swimming Pools. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4
Quotes
And all of it was preventable, if only we had paid attention earlier to the financial fires burning through Black and brown communities across the nation. Instead, the predatory practices were allowed to continue until the disaster had engulfed white communities, too—and only then, far too late, was it recognized as an emergency. There is no question that the financial crisis hurt people of color first and worst. And yet the majority of the people it damaged were white. This is the dynamic we’ve seen over and over again throughout our country’s history, from the drained public pools, to the shuttered public schools, to the overgrown yards of vacant homes.
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Chapter 9
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Over the years that I have sought answers to why a fairer economy is so elusive, it has become clearer to me that how white people understand what’s right and wrong about our diverse nation, who belongs and who deserves, is determining our collective course. This is the crux of it: Can we swim together in the same pool or not? It’s a political question, yes, and one with economic ramifications. But at its core, it’s a moral question. Ultimately, an economy—the rules we abide by and set for what’s fair and who merits what—is an expression of our moral understanding. So, if our country’s moral compass is broken, is it any wonder that our economy is adrift?
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Public Swimming Pools Symbol Timeline in The Sum of Us
The timeline below shows where the symbol Public Swimming Pools appears in The Sum of Us. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2: Racism Drained the Pool
In the 1920s and 1930s, American cities started building thousands of grand, public swimming pools. They were supposed to be “social melting pots” where Americans from different ethnic backgrounds could...
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Montgomery, Alabama officials even drained their pool instead of integrating it. In fact, Montgomery closed down all of its public parks, its...
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Many other cities, like New Orleans, also shut down their pools. After St. Louis integrated its grandiose pool, a white mob rioted and attacked Black swimmers....
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Chapter 3: Going Without
...of free public education in the U.S., just like it explains the drained public swimming pools. For instance, California leads the U.S. in innovation today in part because it built the...
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Chapter 8: The Same Sky
...block the bill again. This strategy reminds McGhee of the communities that drained their public pools. But the climate walkout didn’t appear to have anything to do with race. As climate...
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Chapter 10: The Solidarity Dividend
...to achieve Solidarity Dividends instead. Second, the way to do this is by “refill[ing] the pool of public goods.” Third, policies should recognize that racism hurts everyone, but they shouldn’t be...
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...the very ideas of government action and public goods. The solution is to “refill the pool” by holding the government to higher standards, giving it the resources it needs, and engaging...
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...public health and hospital systems are so weak because the nation has drained the metaphorical pool—or stopped investing in public goods. And the U.S. government is dominated by white men, who...
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