A review by ayem
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

challenging hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

There were times when I was reading this book where I to put it down just to take a second to gape at (my marginalia is filled with "!!!!"s and "???"s and "WTFFFF!!"s) and try to comprehend the enormity of the penalty we've inflicted on ourselves to maintain the farce of racial hierarchy and white supremacy. Despite my general familiarity with the topics of this book, it was a deeply valuable read; it will open readers' eyes to just how much we have been and continue to be tricked, manipulated and divided to keep the working class down. 

My only critique is that to the extent that her audience is in part bourgeois white people, I think that the argument requires such readers to have already bought in to the project of racial justice; while I'm sure many of those readers are, it might limit the number of people for whom the argument is truly transformational.