purplepenning's review

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

There are a lot of excellent "antiracist" reads out right now but if I had the power to grant my friends, family, and colleagues access to and genuine understanding of one, and only one, this would be my pick. 

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caseythereader's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Thanks to One World Books for the free copy of this book.

 - We know anti-Black racism is at the heart of so much in our country, and in THE SUM OF US, McGhee demonstrates exactly that and then some, using the public pools we white people opted to drain rather than integrate as a metaphor: we'd rather cause pain to everyone than let Black people take even one step up the ladder. Everything from the decline of union organizing to the subprime mortgage crisis has an element of racial animus at the root.
- It's one thing to know white Americans treat life as a zero-sum game, and it's quite another to see it laid out like this. I think if you are a white American, you should read this book. It's a lot to chew on and I think will inform a lot of antiracism work going forward, as you'll be better prepared to look for this side of whatever issue you're working on. 

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just_one_more_paige's review

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challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

 I’ve really gotten into educational nonfiction over the past few years. I’m not sure what really started it, but honestly, I have enjoyed and appreciated, to a degree I didn’t anticipate, learning and un-learning. I always felt like reading was educational, even fiction (and I stand by that), from a “perspectives different from your own” standpoint. But reading more diversely in a fictional sense has made me want to straight up learn more too, in a nonfictional sense. So, here’s the most recent iteration of that in audiobook, of course, because while I’ve gotten into it, I still need that push through, if you will (and in this case, read by the author, it was absolutely the right call – wonderfully narrated).   
 
Heather McGhee, with a background in the American economy and the myriad inequalities within it, spent years traveling across the US and interviewing people and communities that have somehow managed to succeed within the context of widespread financial crisis in this country. She finds that the root of so many of these economic issues are based in racism, and she examines the fallacy that that structure is based within, the zero-sum paradigm that says progress for some of us might come at the expense of others.  
 
So, I read Stamped From the Beginning last year and un-learned/re-learned so much of what US History in high school told me. It was amazing, but overwhelming, and definitely more than a little crushing. There was just so much there, so much wrong, so much to overcome, and I finished it feeling eye-opened, but kind of defeated. Well, enter this book. It feels like a natural and much-needed continuation that takes the history lessons Kendi gave us, adds even a little more contemporary context, and shows us the path forward. With incredible research and evidence-base, as well as tangible examples, from partnerships and communities who have overcome centuries of ingrained prejudices and come together to find a better situation and future for everyone in a way they could never have achieved in a racial vacuum, McGhee brings action-steps and hope to the table. 
 
This work is based on two major tenets, the fallacy of the zero-sum outlook and what McGhee calls the solidarity dividend (the way we will all benefit the most when we choose to work together over racial differences). These theories are applied across many areas of life from housing to public works to education to unions/jobs to general interactions and more. This is one of those books where I took a ton of notes while reading, so I’m going to kind of just bullet point my thoughts and reactions, as I often do with intense and super informative nonfiction. I’ll end with a little (as much as possible) summary, so feel free to skip right to that as well, haha. 
 
-          I had heard of zero-sum, but the details about how much of a disillusion it is was honestly a bit shocking. The policy level misdirection, using zero-sum as a baseline, that distracts the public from the fact that no progress is being made for all of us (which is the end goal of the solidarity dividend) is astounding.  
-          Related, it was horribly frustrating to see, time and again, how manipulated white people have been/are for generations by the elite/powerful and how we’ve suffered for it. But we can’t even see it past what we’ve been conditioned to believe. 
-          The false narrative of race solidarity being chosen over a class solidarity that, if it existed, could do so much good – causing people to actually side against their own interests in favor (most obviously during segregation practices and people preferring to close their pools rather than open them to Black people, but it continues in myriad and less obvious ways). 
-          On this note, the pattern of predatory racial practices (the economically powerful “practicing” harmful policies populations whose disenfranchisement will be unheeded, and perfecting them in that setting) foretelling the (fully preventable) future downturns for wider racial populations is ignored over and over. 
-          I personally learned so much about unions. I had never really heard anything good about them, in a present-tense way, but this outlining of their advantages for a solidarity dividend (and a recognition of how, like everything, they too can face corruption) in both a historical and a contemporary context, was really eye-opening. It really goes to show how the pattern of race and dog-whistle politics in the US has infiltrated and “ruined” so many positive institutions. 
-          I learned new vocabulary for a concept I totally have felt before, the idea of “last place aversion.” I have experienced this in a sports competition settings (“well, at least I didn’t come in last”), but seeing it play in “real life” is scary. McGhee’s psychological explanations for much of the way that white immigrants sided with white elites against POC and their own interests – because at least they weren’t at the bottom – really illuminates. 
-          I mean, I’ve read a few things that describe and show this, but McGhee is a truly gifted writer, in terms of clarity, and following her explanations of the intertwining of politics/laws, voter suppression (ummm, that that whitest states have easiest voting access…we should definitely be asking more questions there…), economics, property ownership, education (and more) with racism over the centuries is just…wow. 
-          Another note on voting because like, it made me so angry. If I heard anything growing up, it was that the US is an amazing place because we all have the right to vote and it’s a civic duty, etc. etc. And every time I learn more about the many ways that right is withheld and manipulated, the non-representative electorate with voter suppression and the underhanded ways this country strips people of this “inalienable right,” I just…it’s just…I cannot. 
-          Climate change, that politically divisive buzzword. It’s just the most obvious. There’s no way it cannot affect us all – you cannot shut yourself off from or put a barrier between you and the environment. And yet still, the fight to disbelieve it is so strong. The ridiculous ways people think they’re safe enumerated in this chapter are just ridiculous. 
-          I was deeply fascinated by the studies and discussion in the Hidden Wound chapter that talked about the psycho-emotional damage of racism on white people. I realize that completely centers white people (not the goal in a general sense), but that was partially the point for its inclusion and it’s definitely something I hadn’t really considered or been exposed to before. It hit pretty hard to think about having to acknowledge the way you’ve participated in and benefitted from interpersonal/social fear-based racist interactions, over centuries IRL, that you’ve always been able (and put effort into) ignoring/pretending doesn’t exist…how one’s own place in that could cause moral/cognitive distress once you’re committed to addressing it. 
-          In line with the above point, I had never before seen research like what McGhee talked about, how [white] youth’s ability to learn, within a system that contradictorily teaches justice and morality while practicing extreme prejudice in reality, actively results in non-adaptive/violent/bucking authority reactions from students. And it wasn’t new research. Like, how are people not more aware of/concerned about that? Again, white people are hamstringing ourselves based on centuries of divisive BS being fed to us from an elite few.  
 
I want to close out here with another term I learned: targeted universalism. I loved this. It takes into account that success in the face of our challenges will only come when we join across race lines, choosing against the divide-and-conquer tactics of generations. But it also continues to center Black and brown people, those most harmed by this history. Because yes, we have all been harmed, but the most acutely affected are those groups of people of color. McGhee addresses it early on, but the danger in her approach here, the illumination and shifting blame to white political/economic elites is that then we (we in this sense being “regular white people”), can feel relief in doing less to move for change towards racial equality. So, it’s important to be able to feel a bit of relief from guilt and still continue to fight for better. To this end, targeted work must be included within that universal effect to take into consideration those varied situations and backgrounds. What a beautiful and important concept. It helps guide us towards the solidarity dividend that McGhee structures this book around, the idea that we can be more than the sum of our parts. It’s an inspiring and hopeful message, with clear and tangible steps to achieve it. And in the face of centuries of instilled fear and separation that seem impossible to overcome…I needed that and this book. 
 
“I didn’t set out to write about the moral costs of racism, but they kept showing themselves. There is a psychic and emotional cost to the tightrope white people walk, clutching their identity as good people when all around them is suffering they don’t know how to stop, but that is done, it seems, in their name and for their benefit.” 
 
“Yes, the zero-sum story of racial hierarchy was born along with the country, but it is an invention of the worst elements of our society: people who gained power through ruthless exploitation and kept it by sowing constant division. It has always optimally benefitted only the few while limiting the potential of the rest of us, and therefore the whole.” 
 
“White society had repeatedly denied people of color economic benefits on the premise that they were inferior; those unequal benefits the reified the hierarchy, making whites actually economically superior. What would it mean to white people, both materially and psychologically, if the supposedly inferior people received the same treatment from the government?” 
 
“When the people with power in a society see a portion of the populace as inferior and undeserving, their definition of “the public” becomes conditional. It’s often unconscious, but their perception of the Other as underserving is so important to their perception of themselves as deserving that they’ll tear apart the web that supports everyone, including them.” 
 
“If growing cynicism about higher education is the result of this sudden and total shift from public to private, then our entire society will bear the cost.” (I have heard a number of times from people I’ve met/know, “I wish I had never gone to college; it wasn’t worth it.”) 
 
“That’s a late-stage benefit of a forty-year campaign to defund and degrade public benefits; in the end, they’re so stigmatized that people whose lives would be transformed by them don’t even want them for fear of sharing the stigma.” 
 
“Our research showed that color-blind approaches that ignored racism didn’t beat the scapegoating zero-sum story; we had to be honest about racism’s role in dividing us in order to call people to their higher ideals.” 
 
“What is racism without greed?” 
 
“But the systems set up to exploit one part of our society rarely stay contained.” 
 
“To a large degree, the story of the hollowing out of the American working class is a story of the southern economy, with its deep legacy of exploitative labor and divide-and-conquer tactics, going national.” 
 
“In a hierarchical system like the American economy, people often show more concern about their relative position in the hierarchy than their absolute status.” (re: last place aversion) 
 
“Or perhaps, as the sociologists argue, it’s deeper than that: a zero sum between the winners of the hierarchy today and those who are just fighting for air.” 
 
“Denial leaves people ill-prepared to function or thrive in a diverse society.” 
 
“It’s the moral upside down of racism that simultaneously extolls American virtues in principle and rejects them in practice. America’s symbols were not designed to represent people of color or to speak to us – nonetheless, the ideals that signify have been more than slogans; they have meant life or death for us. Equality, freedom, liberty, justice – who could possibly love those ideals more than those denied them? Africans Americans became a people here, and our people sacrificed every last imaginable thing to America’s becoming. The promise of this country has been enough to rend millions of immigrants from their homes, and for today’s mostly of-color immigrants, it’s still enough, despite persecution, detention, and death, to keep them dreaming of finding freedom here. The profound love for America’s ideals should unite all who call it home, of every color – and yet America has lied to her white children for centuries, offering them songs about freedom instead of the liberation of truth.” 
 
“Five Discoveries: solidarity dividend, refill the pool of public goods, one size never fits all, we truly do need each other, a new story together.” 
 
“It’s a powerful, liberating frame to realize that the fallacy of racial hierarchy is a belief system that we don’t have to have.” 
 
 

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