Rich Thanks to Racism: How the Ultra-Wealthy Profit from Racial Injustice

by Jim Freeman

Overview

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. In Rich Thanks to Racism, Jim Freeman, one of the country's leading civil rights lawyers, explains why as he reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. He details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality.

In this groundbreaking examination of "strategic racism," Freeman carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. He uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. He exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and our most extreme anti-immigrant policies. Freeman also demonstrates how these "racism profiteers" prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color.

Rich Thanks to Racism is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501755132
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2021
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	1,045,218
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jim Freeman directs the Social Movement Support Lab at the University of Denver, which works with communities of color across the US to dismantle systemic racism and create positive social change. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Notre Dame, and was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He served under President Obama as a Commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

Table of Contents

Introuction: Strategic Racism
1. The Racism Profiteers
2. The Squandered Brilliance of Our Disposable Youth
3. Tough-on-Crime for You, Serve-and-Protect for Me
4. From Jim Crow to Juan Crow
5. Defeating Goliath
Conclusion: A Declaration of Interdependence

What People are Saying About This

Pedro Noguera

Rich Thanks to Racism is an insightful and timely analysis made for this moment in history. Jim Freeman makes connections that frequently go unrecognized and unacknowledged. This important new book will open eyes and minds for those who are ready to be challenged.

Angela Glover Blackwell

Rich Thanks to Racism unites both sides of the chasm—the facts and data and how to work on the ground. If we are serious about creating the change at the heart of the book's end, it is imperative that we engage at all levels. This book inspires that kind of action.

Editorial Reviews

The book's strengths lie in centering the voices of those most harmed by strategic racism, the well-researched financial trail of spending to support the political agenda of a core group of the ultra-wealthy, and the examples of community-generated solutions to end systemic racism. Freeman does a great job supporting his claim that a small group of ultra-wealthy people are using strategic racism to undermine democracy and amass a disproportionate amount of wealth for themselves.

ILR Review

2021-01-26
A survey of an economy tilted strongly in favor of the ultrawealthy, who are overwhelmingly White.

For corporate America, writes civil rights attorney Freeman, the damage wrought by systemic racism is a feature, not a bug. Addressing fellow White readers, he advances the familiar but still important observation that, shielded by all manner of psychic and social defenses and avoidance strategies, that audience has trouble discussing such issues as racial inequality and White privilege: “As a result, we, as a whole, continue to demonstrate a shocking lack of awareness about the realities of racial inequality in this country.” Among the lowest of earners, as a class, are former prisoners, who are disproportionately Black and Latinx; they also make up a large percentage of those paid at “poverty or near-poverty wages,” with fewer opportunities for advancement. Freeman takes a broad view of the relevant issues: Education is a key vehicle for economic improvement, of course, and the rush to privatize schools is meant to divert tax money from public schools to private ones. “Of the fifty wealthiest individuals listed by Forbes in 2017,” he writes, “at least forty-two of them have been directly connected to school privatization efforts.” Moreover, he notes, these individuals support not just causes and organizations, but “ecosystems of organizations” whose net effect is to support White supremacy. Other elements of this unequal system are social control by policing, harsh anti-immigrant policies, and like measures. Overall, Freeman’s book is less vigorously written than Dorothy Brown’s The Whiteness of Wealth, which covers much of the same ground in a more compelling fashion. Usefully, though, Freeman closes with the provocative call to amend the Constitution to recognize rights to education, health care, equal pay for equal work, and other public goods.

Of interest to students of ethnic and economic equity and social justice.

Kirkus Reviews