Genre: Nonfiction
Length: 448 pages
Audiobook Length: 11 hours and 8 minutes
First Published: 2021
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Rachael’s Review
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Why do so many people think of racism as a zero-sum game where advances for minorities only come at harm for the majority? With a specialty in studying the economy, Heather McGhee takes an extensive look at how racism hurts us all. McGhee looks at the root of the problem and the incalculable costs of racism and paints a brighter vision for America.
As with most books about racism, McGhee makes plenty of powerful points about how race affects America much more than we might even imagine. Yet, I didn’t love McGhee’s style of conveying the information. The personal stories in each chapter didn’t often coordinate well with the corresponding theme and McGhee’s conclusion was a jump instead of a natural extension of her work.
Publisher’s Description
Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?
McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.
But in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own.
The Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here: divided and self-destructing, materially rich but spiritually starved and vastly unequal. McGhee marshals economic and sociological research to paint an irrefutable story of racism’s costs, but at the heart of the book are the humble stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.
About Heather McGhee
Heather McGhee is an American political commentator and strategist. She is the former president of the think tank Demos, a regular contributor on NBC’s Meet the Press, and the chair of Color of Change. She currently lives in Brooklyn. Visit the author’s website →
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