JUNE 2021 - AudioFile
Writer/narrator Heather McGhee, current chair of Color of Change's board and former president of the nonpartisan think tank Demos, engagingly explains how racism damages all Americans. Her expertise as a researcher and author of economic legislation is combined with reports from her personal tour of the U.S. She interviews other experts and ordinary people to expose the fallacy of our nation's capitalist tenet that if others were treated equitably, it would harm those who already are. While not a professional narrator, McGhee is a fine public speaker. Her voice appropriately expresses smiles or indignation as passages suggest. This audiobook is an excellent way to discover and attend to her important work. F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 01/04/2021
Political commentator McGhee argues in her astute and persuasive debut that income inequality and the decline of the middle and working classes in America are a direct result of the country’s long history of racial injustice. Many white Americans, McGhee claims, center their political beliefs and actions—often to their own detriment—on the false premise that social and economic gains for one race result in losses for another. She traces the history of race relations in America from slavery through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the dawn of neoliberalism, documenting instances in which racism against Black Americans has diminished everyone’s quality of life and forestalled social progress, including the mass closure of public swimming pools in the 1950s and ’60s to avoid integration, and the American Medical Association’s “racist red-baiting campaign” to undermine President Truman’s efforts to pass universal health-care legislation. McGhee holds up a recent economic turnaround in Lewiston, Maine, as an example of how communities can thrive thanks to immigrants and people of color, driving home the point that racial inclusivity benefits all Americans. McGhee marshals a wealth of information into a cohesive narrative that ends on a hopeful note. This sharp, thorough, and engrossing report casts America’s racial divide in a new light. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
A book for every American.”—Elizabeth Gilbert
“Illuminating and hopeful . . . McGhee isn’t a stinging polemicist; she cajoles instead of ridicules. She appeals to concrete self-interest in order to show how our fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of others. ‘We suffer because our society was raised deficient in social solidarity,’ she writes, explaining that this idea is ‘true to my optimistic nature.’ She is compassionate but also clear-eyed, refusing to downplay the horrors of racism. . . . There is a striking clarity to this book; there is also a depth of kindness in it that all but the most churlish readers will find moving.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
“One of the most fascinating things about The Sum of Us is how it challenges the assumptions of both white antiracism activists and progressives who just want to talk about class.”—The New York Times, “The Book That Should Change How Progressives Talk About Race”
“Required reading to move the country forward . . . Every so often a book comes along that seems perfectly timed to the moment and has the potential to radically shift our cultural conversation. [The Sum of Us] is one of those books. . . . It is a sometimes angry or frustrated book, rooted in McGhee’s long career at Demos trying and mostly failing to secure legislation that would benefit the public. But in the end, it’s a hopeful book because McGhee’s vision is so clear and so convincing.”—Chicago Tribune
“If everyone in America read this book, we’d be, not only a more just country, but a more powerful, successful, and loving one. A vital, urgent, stirring, beautifully written book that offers a compassionate roadmap out of our present troubled moment.”—George Saunders, New York Times bestselling and Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo
“Supported by remarkable data-driven research and thoughtful interviews with those directly affected by these issues, McGhee paints a powerful picture of the societal shortfalls all around us. There is a greater, more just America available to us, and McGhee brings its potential to light.”—BookPage
“[McGhee] takes readers on an intimate odyssey across our country’s racial divide to explore why some believe that progress for some comes at the expense of others. Along the way, McGhee speaks with white people who confide in her about losing jobs, homes, and hope, and considers white supremacy’s collateral victims. Ultimately, McGhee—a Black woman viewing multiracial America with startling empathy—finds proof of what she terms the Solidarity Dividend: the momentous benefits that derive when people come together across race. A powerful, singular, and prescriptive blend of the macro and the intimate.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
Library Journal
★ 08/01/2021
McGhee posits that U.S. disinvestment in civic infrastructure stems from a zero-sum mindset among white people—that if Black people benefit, white people lose. She travels the country to investigate the impact on public hospitals, parks, and schools.
JUNE 2021 - AudioFile
Writer/narrator Heather McGhee, current chair of Color of Change's board and former president of the nonpartisan think tank Demos, engagingly explains how racism damages all Americans. Her expertise as a researcher and author of economic legislation is combined with reports from her personal tour of the U.S. She interviews other experts and ordinary people to expose the fallacy of our nation's capitalist tenet that if others were treated equitably, it would harm those who already are. While not a professional narrator, McGhee is a fine public speaker. Her voice appropriately expresses smiles or indignation as passages suggest. This audiobook is an excellent way to discover and attend to her important work. F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2020-12-22
A head-on consideration of the costs of American racism.
Former Demos president McGhee undertook her first project for the organization by studying credit card debt—which, by the early 2000s, was far more likely to affect Black and Latinx families than White ones. When the subprime mortgage bubble burst, that problem became ever more urgent. However, as the author notes, Congress made it worse when it caved to the demands of the credit industry, after which “many of my fellow advocates walked away convinced that big money in politics was the reason we couldn’t have nice things.” One senator she overheard in the halls of the Capitol railed that the cause was the irresponsibility of minorities themselves, which set her on a diligent investigation of coded racism in the financial sector, which hinges on the zero-sum assumption that any gain for Blacks, say, would mean a concomitant loss for Whites. Not so. To this day, throughout the old Confederacy, the counties most dependent on slavery are the poorest today. “When slavery was abolished,” writes McGhee, “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. These deficits limit economic mobility for all residents, not just the descendants of enslaved people.” Compassionate but also candid about the tremendous challenges we face, the author clearly shows how Southern racism extends throughout the country today. Those most opposed to unions, public education, and integration are mostly those at the top of the financial ladder; those lower down, of whatever ethnicity, wind up paying richly. In Chicago, McGhee estimates the cost of segregation is $4.4 billion in income and $8 billion in GDP. Restoring public goods is only a start in addressing those costs; the larger task, she writes provocatively, is getting Americans of all ethnicities to believe that “we need each other.”
An eye-opening, powerful argument for working ever harder for racial equity.