The Sum of Us

Just as good the 2nd time around, going through with my students in a “Personal finance and systemic inequality” course. The students got a lot out of the book and the discussions it inspired!
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Another “required reading” book. Excellent treatise linking historical events and policies with modern economic and health outcomes in the U.S. A perfect blend of policy research and statistics with personal narrative and anecdotes.

McGhee tries a novel approach: Hey, white people, your racism is costing you dearly. Your health, your wealth, your lives. She exhaustively dives into the racist roots of the decline of public services and unions; the mortgage crisis; school segregation; health care; pollution and climate change. She infuses the text with reminders of how the ultrarich fund politicians who sow discord and disunity. She conclusively shows how each of these policies imposes far more costs on whites than on Blacks; how whites are being tricked into acting against their own self-interest. Cutting their noses off to spite their faces. It would seem a no-brainer for whites to stop this, ¿que no? (Spoiler alert: it is. But “no brain” is exactly what we're dealing with.)

Will white America come to its senses? Will we unite, burn Fox “News” to the ground, oust the Nazis, and start rebuilding while we still can? McGhee is an optimist. She shows a number of isolated examples of communities coming together.

I love how the author talks about how racism affects the economy and discusses social movements like Black Lives Matter. I'm glad that she brought up the example where American pools had to be drained so that black people couldn't swim in them and that costs America millions of dollars in revenue at the very least. Thanks for writing this and bringing to light the economic costs of racism. We can all do better.