Heather McGhee claims racism costs us all. And then she presents the data that proves she’s right. Along with the detailed economic analysis McGhee provides, she drops nuggets like this: “A 1669 Virginia colony law deemed that killing one’s slave could not amount to murder because the law would assume no malice or intent to ‘destroy his own estate.’ ” (p. 11)
My favorite chapter in The Sum of Us is Chapter 7, “Living Apart.” McGhee steps away from her economics of racism and writes about growing up on the South Side of Chicago and learning that white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods were very different. School was very different, too. Because McGhee is highly intelligent, she was put in advanced classes where she was the only African American student. It was here where McGhee started to think about how segregation punished both races. She learned “When slavery was abolished, Confederate states found themselves far behind northern states in the creation of the public infrastructure that supports economic mobility, and they continue to lag behind today.” (p. 20)
If you’re interested in the economic consequences of racism (as well as the moral and psychological aspects), The Sum of Us lays it all out. This is not an angry book (although I got angry several times while reading about the meanness and cruelty in our history). Heather McGhee presents her case for change…and it is a powerful one. GRADE: A
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Chapter 1 An Old Story: The Zero-Sum Hierarchy 3
Chapter 2 Racism Drained the Pool 17
Chapter 3 Going Without 41
Chapter 4 Ignoring the Canary 67
Chapter 5 No One Fights Alone 103
Chapter 6 Never a Real Democracy 139
Chapter 7 Living Apart 167
Chapter 8 The Same Sky 193
Chapter 9 The Hidden Wound 221
Chapter 10 The Solidarity Dividend 255
Acknowledgments 291
Notes 295
List of Interviews 399
Index 401
All chauvinisms (“my group is clearly better than yours and all others”) are ridiculous and evil and are usually exploited by the most ridiculous and most evil for their own benefit, and clung to by their often desperate collaborators. The latter can sometimes be identified as those, who say to one degree or another, “I might not be much, but at least I’m not ___…now you, inferior person, serve me somehow!” Hence what the kids today sometimes call intersectionality.
Every once in a while, particularly in my public universities and colleges (three so far) in Hawaii and Virginia, I’d finally note I was the only mostly-white male male in a given classroom/course I was in. I’d finally note, Isn’t that interesting (it happened less often in my high-schools, three in New Hampshire–where I often was as close to “diverse” as the room would be, ethnically at least–and Hawaii). A very few times, I’d be the only male. It was also interesting checking out the dynamics in those cases. Usually, they were pretty subtly different, small favors of pockets of segregation partially overcome in action. Occasionally there was even apparently sufficient wheelchair access and the like. Also interesting, at times, was that my upper middle-class nuclear family was among the poorer in one of my Hawaiian high schools, and less surprisingly among the more affluent at the public universities…my extended family’s and parents’ extremely multi-ethnic (and bi-“racial”) roots among the less well-off in most places, at least in where they came from…and that can inform your perspective, too.
We pay for all the oppression one way or another. Always have. One can hope it’ll fade but it’s always in someone’s interest to exploit…so, one tries do what one can. Without too much self-congratulation for just treating one’s fellow humans like humans, with their own sets of problems in past and present.
Helps to be kind. Wish I was as good at that as some are. Helps, usually, to be smart. Likewise, at least more consistently.
There’s always so much to do. And so much of it should’ve already been done, in so many ways.
Todd, AMAZON just shut down the construction of a new Fulfillment Center in Connecticut when nooses were found hanging in the building. I can’t believe the amount of hatred in our country.
Anyone who doesn’t think that racism destroys infrastructure and economic mobility for EVERYONE (but the very wealthy) needs to live in a state below the Mason-Dixon Line for a while. It’s amazingly awful what programs get cut or deemed “unnecessary” just to ensure that the “undeserving” and “lazy” (obvious dog-whistle code words) get as little access to the social safety net as possible.
I lived my entire young life in Alaska, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Virginia (my adult life in the latter two and in and around Philadelphia)…and you don’t have to go South to note how racism and its related evils mess over everyone to too great an extent–I certainly couldn’t miss it, in many directions, when visiting my grandparents and those who didn’t Get Out in continually depressed mining and quarrying country in Vermont and West Virginia.
And continual thinking in terms of Us V. Them (not solely racially) as opposed to essentially Us All is what helps cut off the noses to spite the faces with most voting against self-interest.
Todd—since I’ve only lived in Georgia, California, and Louisiana, my experience may be skewed. Perhaps what I observe more in the southern states is how overt the racist “rationale” behind governmental decisions is—and how correspondingly flimsy is any attempt to paint the decision as color-blind/not-racist.
Deb, I spent 10 years in Wisconsin going to Marquette University and later the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For a progressive state, there was a surprisingly high level of hostility toward African-Americans, Asians, and Indians. I never understood it.
History has done A Lot of the institutional work/propagandization for the thugs in the old Confederacy, it’s true.
Mom’s birth state of WV withdrew from the withdrawing Virginia since mountain folk didn’t have All That Much in common with plantation owners calling the shots in the East. But damn, how the dynamics were way too similar everywhere.
Todd, THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD shows a lot of the thugs on the TV screen.
Todd, I’m always surprised (although by this time I shouldn’t be) at the animosity some people express against minority groups. The recent attacks against Asians is just another example. One “religious” woman at the Pool told me last week that she won’t eat Chinese food any more because “they are all Communists.” Nutty!
Oh, I meant the current thugs of today, George.
Such as the former Governor of Wisconsin.
Deb, my friends in Texas complain about Federal aid for social programs–like anti-eviction assistance–that never gets used. Possible recipients are never told about these programs or informed they may qualify for aid. It’s a vicious strategy.
One thing that is so offensive is when something really bad and clearly racist happens and people (not only politicians) says “this isn’t who we are.” Yeah, it is. Maybe not you and me and not everyone, but plenty of others. Trump’s ascendancy took away the need for dog whistles and let – indeed, encouraged – “good people” to come right out and let everyone know how they felt without having to worry about shaming or guilt. Looking at what is still going on makes it clear that it will be hard if not impossible to get that genie back in the bottle.
Jeff, I totally agree with you. Trump gave the Green Light to all the hate groups to come out from under their rocks and spread their destructive ideas and violence. My father was the head of the Neighborhood Youth Corp in Niagara Falls during the 1960s and 1970s. He provided jobs for minority youths at a time when the youth African-American Unemployment Rate in the city was over 50%. One morning my father went to work and found a young man sleeping on the doorstep to his Office. When my father walked up to him, he woke up. “What are you doing here?” my father asked him. “Mr. Kelley, I really need a job bad,” the young man explained. My father got him a job by noon.
Even though I live in the relatively sane Atlanta area it’s impossible to forget that less than an hour north of here is the congressional district that elected MTG by a landslide and will surely reelect her next year. Except for some USAF time spent in Texas, the Philippines, and two years in Rome, NY, I’ve lived here all my life. Racial progress has been slow coming to Georgia, but there’s a considerable difference between how things are now and how they were when I was a kid in the 50s. I’m afraid, though, that all the progress is draining away under the influence of Trumpism.
Michael, well said. Trumpism is the acid that is eating away the hard-fought racial progress we have achieved. I have never understood the meanness and cruelty of racists. Pure Evil.
With the notable difference that some victories are coming out of the activism of Democrats and progressives (not the same groups, if they do have some overlap). Of course, these just cause the reactionaries to attempt to overreact.
Todd, and a lot of those reactionaries have a lot of guns!
Generally, I’m more worried about the reactionaries with governmental offices, elected and not so much (the Stephen Millers of the world…and I do mean the world, not exclusive in the States).
I grew up in California, my high school was about half/half, white and Latino. We all got along, there was no segregation that I was aware of, I had friends from both. I never understood the racism and hate in the South.
These days, make a list of the racially affected, disadvantaged, underprivileged, victims of prejudice, etc. include them all. Who isn’t on that list? Straight white males. So if we just eliminate them…
Eliminating and otherwise keeping “down” people, of course, is the problem. And those advocating that aren’t joking, at least not at the heart of their desire and actions.
Lenny Bruce’s joke, paraphrased: They like to say [ca. 1958] that there is no anti-black prejudice in Minnesota. That’s because there are hardly any black people in Minnesota. But they beat the hell out of the Native Americans.
I’m glad there wasn’t too much blatant anti-Latinx bigotry or institutional hostility in your neighborhood, Rick. That you were aware of, however, might or might not be a key phrase there. At the turn of the ’80s, when my family lived in Hawaii, my mother met a visiting family on Kailua Beach, and invited them over for lunch; the son, at least as white as I am and perhaps a year younger, felt the need to go on and on about the “Beaners”, by which he meant those of Mexican descent. His mother just thought that was the funniest thing. “Oh, we call them that.” Perhaps people had better manners than to engage in that kind of nonsense around you back in the day.
Rick, a lot of people fear minorities, fear they’ll take their jobs, and fear that they will out-perform them. Basically, racism is a strategy to curb competition.
Or they are encouraged to think in those terms, so they won’t/don’t demand a greater share of the wealth they help create.
I keep hearing that shifting demographics will eventually erase the Republican advantage, but I’ve been hearing that for 30 years and I no longer have much faith in it. How many times have we heard that in the NEXT election cycle Texas will turn purple, and eventually blue? Instead, two of the anticipated shifts, Blacks and Hispanics, are seeing the male portion of their cohort shift toward the GOP. Can women alone save us?
Michael, if Republican voter-suppression laws work, the GOP will stay in power in may States…and the Senate.
It will also help if the Democratic Party would actually begin working for the disadvantaged, unless by disadvantaged one means corporate donors, on a regular basis. Much of the source of “Reagan Democrats” and their current heirs. Likewise not ceding the state races to the Republicans, also a general trend over the last four decades.