This is a truly great, breakthrough book. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Author Heather McGhee takes on American racism in a whole new way (for me), crisscrossing the country and relentlessly bringing the reader face to face with the universal damage and waste caused by racial discrimination and injustice. But somehow, she suffuses it all with love.
"The Sum of Us" is not an easy read for us white Americans, not at all. It can be excruciating. McGhee goes into every corner of our social, political, industrial and economic systems unsparingly, with history- and data-driven facts, and it’s never been made clearer to me just how pervasive racism is, how it was deliberately mapped out and built in—what that word “systemic” really means.
But I never, ever felt stigmatized or belittled. I never got that “Now YOU are the despised ‘other’” message I sometimes get from antiracist polemicists.
McGhee is profoundly merciful and even startlingly empathetic to us white folks, telling us how the upper echelon has bamboozled us into our untenable position, how much racism hurts us as well, its blowback hitting us too (as in toxic environments we mistakenly think we're safe from 'cause we're across "the tracks"), sometimes in even greater numbers than it does people of color, since there are more of us.
Her most vivid, urgent message is how much we can help ourselves by letting go of the lie of the “Zero-Sum Economic Model” that keeps us in constant fear and resentment by telling us that if those "others" gain anything, we will lose something— when in truth, an economic boom for Black Americans would expand both our public and private economies exponentially, and bring more prosperity to us all.
It’s the concept of the “solidarity dividend”—that whites could improve our lot (for we are struggling too, all over) by finding common cause with Black Americans, how it has already been proven that this happens when we make the effort and overcome our irrational fear.
Black America is a treasure we’ve buried at the behest of not just the hateful, vengeful former Confederacy and its Northern industrial and banking partners, but of the political ruling class, who want us to trust them more than each other. Remember that “trickle-down” mantra, about how we white folks on the floor would catch the best crumbs from the plutocrats’ table? It’s a baldly false promise.
Politicians helped raise up a prosperous white middle class with racially exclusionary government programs like the New Deal and the G.I. Bill, proving that government could do great things-- for us. Then, once so many of us were thriving, they convinced us that such government programs were downright evil-- and the beneficiaries lazy freeloaders-- when they benefited nonwhites. So now, there are no such bold, broad programs for anybody, of any race, but whites are brainwashed to console ourselves with the illusion that at least we’re not at the very bottom of the boat.
McGhee’s inspired, perfect recurring analogy is government-subsidized public pools, built for us in a midcentury surge, but that we shut down rather than comply with court orders to admit Black swimmers. The result? No one had a pool except rich people. And many of the remnants of that spite are still there in the shells of these public pools, still empty or half-buried like fossils, visions of a resource we decided we’d rather waste than share.
McGhee really reads our beads here. I promise you will twist and cringe if you’re white (though I hope Black readers scarf this book up too, so they’re armed with both its merciful vision and its irrefutable arguments). But you’ll see a path to redemption—our own.
Throughout this book, and leavening the pain, McGhee’s love for this country shines through, She ultimately endorses the idea of a true American Exceptionalism, reminding us that our work is so difficult-- so scarred with false starts, failures, conflicts and backlash-- because we’re still a new country, relatively, and because no one has ever tried anything like this before.
“Who is an American, and what are we to one another?” she writes. “We have to admit that this 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.” After the rough ride we've taken in "The Sum of Us," it’s indescribably wonderful to hear our country affirmed-- and by a Black American woman, no less-- as young, radical, unprecedented and still brimming with potential.
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Popular Highlights in this book
The zero sum is a story sold by wealthy interests for their own profit, and its persistence requires people desperate enough to buy it.Highlighted by 2,618 Kindle readers- In my gut, I’ve always known that laws are merely expressions of a society’s dominant beliefs. It’s the beliefs that must shift in order for outcomes to change.Highlighted by 1,925 Kindle readers
- The authors concluded that “making the changing national racial demographics salient led white Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly.”Highlighted by 1,705 Kindle readers
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About the author
a complete dismantling of the idea that the majority suffers due to the gains of the minority
“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.”There are a few truths that we must face if we want to build a nation that is truly great: we are living on a stolen land built by stolen labor, the freedom and privilege that we enjoy is a product of the exploitation of a racial hierarchy, and we are equipped to dismantle that hierarchy so that all of us, rather than just some of us, can be greater than the sum of us.
Read this for:🌎 a complete dismantling of the idea that the majority suffers due to the gains of the minority💸 compelling truths about the high costs of racism, white supremacy, systemic oppression, and denial in *all* communities – be they white, nonwhite, liberal, conservative🔍 eye-opening clarification about our shared realities and the invisible boundaries we all live within🖊️ top notch writing, research, and accessible presentation- an expert blend of meticulous data analysis, personal experiences, and investigative research.🧭 guidance for realistic, hopeful, multi-racial solutions that can bend the moral arc of our nation back toward justice, and begin to transform AmericaAt this point, anyone who is aware of our nation’s history (and recent history) has been confronted with the hard realities that many of our problems, from housing to healthcare, education, voting rights, clean air, etc – can be traced to racial injustice.Unlock our shared history, and take a closer look at the insidious ways that racial hierarchy has baited the white majority into believing in a false zero-sum model… and then use this book as a guidebook, as a roadmap into what solidarity actual looks like.This is simply excellent.“𝑨𝒎𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒄𝒂 𝒉𝒂𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒕𝒆 𝒄𝒉𝒊𝒍𝒅𝒓𝒆𝒏 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒔, 𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒓𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒅𝒐𝒎 𝒊𝒏𝒔𝒕𝒆𝒂𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒃𝒆𝒓𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒓𝒖𝒕𝒉.”
Top reviews from other countries
max druker
an exceptional meaningful contribution
Reviewed in Canada on January 29, 2022Mark McCullagh
Deeply informed, sober and illuminating
Reviewed in Canada on December 28, 2021
