In November, we remember our first Thanksgiving in America - the usual telling is about strangers sitting down together to share a bountiful meal, a story of two races of people showing generosity and goodwill towards each other. However, we know the early history of our country is actually a history of Indigenous people robbed of their lands and then driven to reservations. Colonial white Americans enriched themselves at the expense of non-white peoples, including Indigenous peoples and thousands of slaves brought forcibly from Africa. In her book The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (2021), Heather McGhee explains the concept of zero-sum hierarchy, the false idea that resources and opportunities are finite, so that if one group gains or succeeds, it subtracts from the dominant group. McGhee argues that our resources are not finite; instead, with cooperation and using diversity as an asset, we increase rather than decrease our resources. The zero-sum paradigm is counterproductive because it reinforces destructive divisions. Diverse people sharing resources and working together for justice is so much stronger than a divided country. Our first Thanksgiving story of strangers sitting down together and sharing what they have is the vision we need to work for.

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