The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials)

What this book does is recount the author's three-year journey across the United States in search of something akin to the American Dream, and what has become of it. Most of what she found will break your heart. Two of the concepts she explores are (1) the Zero-Sum Paradigm, and (2) the Solidarity Dividend.The Zero-Sum Paradigm is the belief that there is not enough to go around, that in order for one to succeed, someone must lose. It's a belief that has haunted America since its inception, beginning with slavery, and, in our time, racism, (a.k.a. "the fear of the other"). The Solidarity Dividend, on the other hand, are the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply cannot do on our own. Quite simply, that is the point of Heather McGhee's book--that people truly do need each other, and when working together they achieve the American Dream.The author illustrates how the fear of "the other" is not only irrational, but has led to a number of clearly irrational--and costly--public policies; policies that have hurt both black and white Americans equally alike, many of which she cites, beginning with the building of public pools in the early twentieth century, pools sometimes big enough to hold thousands of swimmers.RACISM DRAINED THE POOL -- Rather than share the pool with the local black community, a number of towns instead chose to drain them, and in some cases fill them in with dirt, and pave them over with concrete (as examples, she cites Warren, Ohio, and Montgomery, West Virginia). Where did white people (who through their property taxes paid for the pool) take their children to swim? To private clubs, where they paid for the privilege with stiff membership fees.PUBLIC EDUCATION -- Another example is public education, where, in wealthy white communities (she sites Houston, Texas), white families refuse to send their children, choosing instead to send them to costly all-white private schools. The result is a generation of kids who feel superior and entitled, and ultimately unable to cope in a changing world.Another example, is government funding of higher education, such as the G.I. Bill, and publicly funded colleges (she cites City University of New York, and the University of California system). The massive public investment wasn't considered charity; as individual states saw a return of three to four dollars back for every dollar it invested in public colleges. However, at some point law makers, from California to Washington D.C., yielded to short-sighted politics, and began cutting budgets, thereby shifting the cost of a higher education onto students in the form of student loans. Such policies hurt black and white students alike, with high-interest loans that take several years--even decades--to pay off.SUBPRIME HOUSE LOANS -- Remember the global financial crisis of 2008? The cause was blamed on poor-lending practices (in the form of subprime loans) encouraged by the federal government's push to make home ownership easier for African Americans. The author presents statistics that reveal this not to have been the case at all. In fact, most of these subprime loans were not intended for first-time home buyers, but rather were loans designed to refinance existing home loans at a lower interest rate. Indeed, many disproportionally Black homeowners were targeted by aggressive mortgage brokers and lenders. An analysis conducted by the Wall Street Journal in 2007, revealed that the majority of subprime loans were sold to Black home owners who could have qualified for less expensive prime loans. So, why would homeowners switch to subprime loans in the first place, when it meant higher monthly payments, refinance fees, plus a higher debt burden? The short answer is they were never informed.It turns out a number of these homeowners were making monthly payments and well on their way to paying off their home loan, and actually owning their own house. However, when the economy went south, they could no longer make monthly payments and, as a result, lenders foreclosed on them and took their home.Why did this happen? Greed, says the author. "I'm sure most of the people in the industry (who made lots of money pushing subprime loans on unsuspecting Black homeowners) would claim not to have a racist bone in their body--in fact, I heard those exact words from representatives of lending companies in the aftermath of the crash. But history might counter: What is racism without greed? It operates on multiple levels. Individual racism, whether conscious or unconscious, gives greedy people the moral permission to exploit others in ways they never would with people whom they empathized with."VOTING DOWN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING -- The author went to a Nissan Assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, to find out why auto workers rejected collective bargaining. The victories unions won reshaped work for us all, she writes. "The forty-hour workweek, worker compensation, employee health insurance and retirement benefits--all these components of a 'good job' came from collective bargaining and union advocacy in the late 1930s and '40s. And the power to win these benefits came from solidarity--Black, white, and brown men and women, immigrant and native-born." Indeed, unions made the American middle class. So, why was it rejected in Canton, Mississippi, and, for that matter, throughout the South? The antiunion forces won in part by turning the union into a sign of weakness, as a refuge for the "lazy". Writes the author: "The word union itself seemed to be a dog-whistle in the South, code for undeserving people of color who needed a union to compensate for some flaw in their character."RELIGION AND RACISM -- On her journey, the author met two white Evangelical ministers: pastor Daniel Hill, of River City Church, in Chicago, and Reverend Jim Wallis (retired). Both lead (or have led) deliberately multicultural churches.Explaining the mission of his church, Pastor Hill said, "Well, Revelations 7:9 is a vision of heaven that is every tongue and every tribe that God's ever created." Furthermore, Pastor Hill says, "It's impossible to have a meaningful relationship with Jesus and not care about evil in our day and age. The ideology of white supremacy is, if not the premier form of evil, it's at least one of the clearest forms of evil on a large scale in our day and age."Reverend Wallis confided to her of speaking to the heads of the several major Christian denominations in America. "Now," he told them, "you all have been told or taught or learned how slavery was common, and slavery was all over the world. We Christians, in fact--British and American--were the ones who decided that we couldn't do to Indigenous people and kidnapped Africans what we were doing, if they were indeed people made in the image God."So, we said they weren't. They weren't humans made in the image of God. What we did we threw away 'Image Dei'. We threw it away to justify what we were doing . . . white supremacy was America's original sin . . . At the heart of the sin was a lie," he said.THE SOLIDARITY DIVIDEND -- The author's search for the American Dream ended in Lewiston, Maine, where in the presence of shuttered businesses on Main Street, and closed manufacturing plants on the edge of town, it appeared the American Dream had come to an end. Lewiston was an example of a town where the nation's textile industry had once thrived, but as with so many towns in northeastern United States, the big manufacturing companies had moved to the American South for cheaper labor, and eventually to China and Southeast Asia.However, a closer look on the next street revealed that many of the stores and shops had reopened for business, and one street over from that the public school had reopened its doors to teach children again. The secret of Lewiston's renewed success was something of an accident: in the early 1990s the U.S. government accepted thousands of refugees from the Somali Civil War and resettled many of them in the now-empty towns in New England, such as Lewiston.Writes the author: "Lewiston is not alone in this new wave of new people; for the past twenty years, Latinx, African, and Asian immigrants have been repopulating small towns across America. Pick a state, and you'll find this story in one corner or another." Further on, she writes: "Towns across the Texas Panhandle have been drying up and losing populations for years, but the potato farming stronghold of Dallart grew by 7 percent from 1990 to 2016 because of Latinx families. Low-paid farmland food-processing work is what draws foreign-born people to these small towns at first, for sure. But once there, immigrants have, as European immigrants did a century ago, started businesses, gained education, and participated in civic life . . . Today's immigrants of color are revitalizing rural America."A NEW WORLD -- In summary, the author concludes: "This moment is challenging us to finally settle this question: Who is an American, and what are we one to another? We have to admit that the question is harder for us than in most other countries, because we are the world's most radical experiment in democracy, a nation of ancestral strangers that has to work to find connection even as we grow more diverse every day."But everything depends on the answer to this question. Who is an American, and what are we one to another? Politics offers two visions of why all the peoples of the world have met here: one in which we are nothing more than competitors, and another in which perhaps the proximity of so much difference forces us to admit our common humanity."The choice between these two visions has never been starker. To a nation riven with anxiety about who belongs, many in power have made it their overarching goal to sow distrust about the goodness of the Other. They are holding on, white knuckled, to a tiny idea of 'We the People', denying the beauty of what we are becoming. They're warning that demographic changes are the unmaking of America. What I've seen on my journey is that they are the fulfillment of America. What they say is a threat is, in fact, our country's salvation--for when a nation founded on a belief in racial hierarchy truly rejects that belief, then and only then will we have discovered a New World."

As a white person who has tried especially in the last few years to learn more about our country's bitter history of racism, I have learned still more about that racism and just how massively that history affects the present. For example, I had a vague knowledge of "red-lining" from the 1930's, but didn't realize just how directly this was the product of federal government rules, and didn't understand how the redlining of the 30's led to today's segregated neighborhoods, and so many ongoing inequities--the huge difference in home values, the ease with which blacks ave been stuck in environmental disaster areas, the continuing de facto segregation and unequal financing of public schools.There are times when I have found it extremely painful to read more details of this history (and present).BUT: McGhee's purpose with each chapter is to show how racism, whether overt or implicit, hurts ordinary white people and as well as blacks. The damage may be disproportionally wrecked on blacks (and other minorities), but usually the NUMBER of whites hurt is actually greater.AND: This all this is not an accident. There is a small group of highly wealthy influential people (usually white males), who advance "zero-sum thinking" and often subtle racist messages to "divide and conquer"--to keep middle/lower class whites from joining with blacks to advance social and economic policies that would help "the sum of us"--all of us who are not in the 1% of our highly unequal country.She also gives specific examples of situations where blacks and ordinary whites have united to achieve positive results. This involves a lot of work in building coalitions, and sometimes clever messaging to de-fang the old racist tropes, but it can work.I believe her analysis and suggestions offer a way for us to regain our democracy and implement the political, social, and economic changes that most Americans already support in poles--better healthcare, better education, a cleaner environment, really effective steps to reverse climate change, etc.PS: What am I doing, besides educating myself and coming to terms better emotionally with my status as a middle class white person? I live in the benighted state of North Carolina, which is currently running rampant with regressive anti-democratic laws (including a recent 12-week abortion ban), now that the Repubican legislature has a veto-proof majority. So my top priority right now is to help NC become a democracy again. Within my means, I donate money to moderate/progressive local and state candidates. I phone bank and canvass to elect or re-elect good candidates to our legislature. And I plan soon to joint a non-partisan group to help get more folks registered to vote. Not much perhaps, but it's what I can do now.White, black, or ethnic, what are you doing? A good next step is to read this book!

A must read for anyone trying to understand the cost of racism and how it affects us all. Well reasoned and well written

Very empirical and historically informed. Loved all the interviews with ground-level people making awesome changes in their communities! Deep insights

Tells the true history. A must read for anyone that cares about this world going forward. An amazing book that you must read.

This book should be read by every American. Then maybe...

An informative look at the interaction between economics and racism.