In Conversation: On How Racial Hostility Destroyed Our Promise

Sam Gill is senior vice president and chief program officer at John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In this role, he oversees all of Knight’s grantmaking programs — Community and National Initiatives, Journalism, and Arts. He also oversees Learning and Impact, Knight’s research and assessment program. Sam is the host of the podcast The Future of Democracy, a weekly conversation about the trends ideas and disruptions changing the face of democracy.

Eduardo Porter was born in Phoenix and grew up in the United States, Mexico, and Belgium. He is an economics reporter for The New York Times, where he was a member of the editorial board from 2007 to 2012 and the Economic Scene columnist from 2012 to 2018. He is the author of The Price of Everything (2011), an exploration of the cost-benefit analyses that underpin human behaviors and institutions. In American Poison (Knopf) Porter argues that compared to other industrialized nations, the United States is losing ground across nearly every indicator of social health. Its race problem is largely to blame, he says. Racial animus has stunted the development of nearly every institution crucial for a healthy society, he notes, including organized labor, public education, and the social safety net. The consequences are profound and are only growing graver with time. But he also suggests that, as the nation becomes increasingly diverse, it may well be possible to construct a new understanding of racial identity–and a more cohesive society on top of it. Publishers Weekly called it “An anguished and incisive treatise on how racism has contributed to 21st-century America’s economic and social decline.”