If You Win, Do I Lose? From Zero-Sum to Win-Win Thinking

In 1959, Montgomery, Alabama was ordered to open its public parks to Black residents. Instead, the city closed them all and filled its swimming pools with dirt.

Nobody got to swim. Losing everything felt better than sharing.

That’s zero-sum thinking: if you win, I lose. In this episode, Casey and Jay take on the question friends keep asking: why keep talking about race?

Isn’t it better to just treat everybody the same? We look at what “equal treatment” did when it was first tested in Griggs v.

Duke Power. We dig into who thinks in zero-sum terms and why.

We follow it into hiring: who gets referred, who gets the call, and why identical résumés with different names still get different results. And we land somewhere hopeful.

Zero-sum thinking is learned, and it can be unlearned. Equity is the remedy for the harm, once we’re willing to name the harm.

A note: in the study where white Americans read that the US is becoming majority-minority, the “other group” we mention is a third group in the same experiment. They read the same news, plus a line saying white Americans would keep higher incomes and wealth.

Their politics didn’t shift. Real Ones and Robots looks at social justice issues through the eyes of a thirty-something woman and an AI.

SOURCES Griggs v. Duke Power (1971): Norton & Sommers (2011): 2022 follow-up: Chinoy et al. (2026): Craig & Richeson (2014): Montgomery pools: Heather McGhee: Royster: DiTomaso: Quillian et al. (2017): Oreopoulos (2011): Black doctors, Oakland: Same-race teachers: Peterborough PiT count 2024: Toronto SNA: UChicago, zero-sum and age: Overestimating zero-sum beliefs: StatCan 2021 Census: US homeownership gap: UN resolution (2026):