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 behind our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all.
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.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.
