ladybusiness | Let's Get Literate! The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

"Ultimately, though, we are all paying for the moral conflict of white Americans." — Heather McGhee, The Sum of Us

It was 2019, and I was out at lunch at Panera, the favorite mid-day meeting spot of the kind of white people who enjoy sitting in a public space near readily available snacks to pretend to work. I do love being near snacks and I was, in fact, pretending to work on an upcoming podcast episode while I browsed Twitter, when a white man stopped at my table and stared hard at my laptop. At the time I had an Elizabeth Warren sticker prominently displayed, along with several other overtly leftist stickers.

The man stood there for several seconds, which if you've ever been a woman in public who has come under the attention of a strange man, felt like much longer. Finally he said, "Are you one of those n-word loving socialists?"

I wish I could remember exactly what I said in response. I wasn't shocked, per se. That word being used in my community by white people is not new. I do remember saying, "Yes." because factually he was correct and "Don't use dehumanizing language around me." because I do remember being proud of myself that I didn't tack on the automatic "please". But I don't recall anything after the initial exchange, although we did have a dialogue that went on for a few minutes and which ended with me putting my chunky headphones on and ignoring his additional requests to keep talking and him, finally, finally, going away. First rule of anti-racism: know when your precious energy is being wasted on unreachable white supremacists and check out.

I remembered this exchange with Racist White Dude during my time with Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. It's not a history book in the traditional sense, but it is a book filled with a light history of how the modern economy of the United States is still rife with racism, and how that racism grew largely unimpeded and oftentimes cultivated, in our institutions. McGhee shows the ways in which increasing wealth inequality, the gutting of unions, social programs, and public goods, rebounds on not only Black and Brown communities, but on middle class and poor white communities, too. By ensuring racism stays baked into all aspects of American culture, the wealthiest people have convinced white people that equality and equity with Black and Brown communities will make them lose something, when really they lose more in reinforcing the current system.

My Panera encounter stayed in my mind while reading this book because of the derision this random white man spoke about the entirety of the Black community. With one word filled with contempt and disrespect, his question summed up the wall I've been hitting in my anti-racism work here in Northeast Arkansas for years. White people have been taught by our schools that continue to propagate the original Big Lie of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy and by our own government, that to be Other is a moral failing in and of itself. The propaganda is so effective here, because facing the truth would cause a cascade failure in a lot of white people who think of themselves as "good people." They don't know how to unpack their internalized and learned racism. They don't know how to cope with the feelings of guilt and associated emotions. There's no social support at all for the people who choose to undertake such a journey, so it is simpler to cling to the lie. Racism is a generational violence we're doing to marginalized communities, but it's also a violence we're doing to ourselves, renewing in every generation that is born to our national experiment in building sick systems.

I'm familiar with a lot of the areas McGhee explored: redlining, the subprime mortgage crisis, the beating down of unions and the suppression of collective action by multi-racial coalitions. I was less aware of the central story McGhee built her book around: the metaphor of our country as a pool, and the real story of how America lost its public pool culture because white people failed to let go of their internalized racism to integrate the pools they built in their neighborhoods. Thus, many pools were privatized or closed altogether, robbing communities of a public good just so non-white families couldn't possibly benefit.

The pool metaphor is perfect for the points McGhee wants to make about white people trying to face racism head on. It's flexible enough to apply to almost every scenario she lays out and how those things impact the economics of families, upward mobility, and generational wealth. From city zoning to financial credit to school districts and beyond, The Sum of Us breaks down all the ways racism and increasing segregation is hurting everyone but the wealthiest among us. McGhee threads the metaphor through the whole book to make her ultimate point: throughout the history of this country, racism has been the most effective tool to convince white people to compromise our own health, happiness, and enjoyment of life just to ensure that non-white people don't benefit from any part of the so-called American Dream. (I am constantly reminded of George Carlin's quote, "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it." every time I hear someone give an impassioned defense of the concept.) No part of our culture or society is free of racism. Politicians, corporations, courts, and individuals have all used racism to divide potential allies in order to prevent them from advocating for better conditions for us all. They've just stopped referring to racism in racial terms. It's "the economy," “political correctness,” dog whistles, and the occasional bullhorn, all the way down.

We're seeing a lot of churning from racist and white supremacist coalitions, including culture war drama, the voter suppression bills meant to block marginalized populations from their rightful voice in elections, to the sudden fervor to ban studies of Critical Race Theory in schools. These are all tools people in power are using to convince white people that the people that don't look like them are undeserving, immoral, and their very existence and history are a danger to a white way of life. It's an old story, constantly refreshed every election cycle, and trotted out to the masses living underneath the crushing weight of unregulated capitalism: if marginalized communities rise, then white communities will lose and suffer. It's a powerful emotional message. It's also an outright lie, peddled over and over again by those with power in order to retain that power. Racism and the fear of change is a powerful combination.

On the subject of the rampant voter suppression bills being passed by Republican-controlled legislatures through the country: last year a young person I know told me voting is useless as a process for change. I don't disagree with them, but we've taken drastically different things away from the awareness that voting hasn't worked well in a long time, if ever. They see voting as a failed system that must be replaced with mutual aid networks and consensus. I see a system that's been deliberately broken to make people doubt it in order to drive them away from the power of the concept. The way we handle voting now is insufficient to stem the tide of rising fascism and the codification of racism even further into our national identity. The United States has never been a true democracy, despite people touting it as such. Until every aspect of our society is multi-racial, including voting, and white people learn to face their own culpability in the systems that seek even now to divide us, we're going to be trapped in a renewing cycle of racism that disenfranchises everyone.

However, as McGhee points out in her book: we don't have that much longer for white people to fool around pretending racism isn't baked in to every aspect of life. "We all live under the same sky," she says, referring to the ongoing catastrophe of environmental racism and destructive climate change that's regularly destroying parts of our communities with wind, water, or fire. Will white people choose the planet and the better world that's out there for everyone, including them? Or will they continue choosing racism? I'm too cynical now to want to answer this question.

Regardless of my lack of optimism for white people's anti-racist future, The Sum of Us is a great overview of an ongoing struggle that's only gotten more focused and heated since this book was published. The text of the book is excellent, but research McGhee pulled together is fascinating and expansive. This book is worth the price of entry from the notes and citations alone. Two books I took away from The Sum of Us as recs were:

The Hidden Wound by Wendell Berry
Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America by Jeff Wiltse

White folks: even if you think you're good and you've got this anti-racism work on lock, I promise you will benefit from the perspectives in their book. Learning never ends!

Quotes I liked:

"The Nordic country's social democratic policies: generous subsidies for housing, education, and retirement, and, newly relevant to me, 480 days of parental leave in Sweden, are almost unimaginable in today's America. Because the dominant American political culture would say that people lacking those privileges are responsible for their situations. You can't find a starker contrast between two versions of society that are both wealthy democracies. But the Nordic model of democracy rests on mostly homogenous demos. Unlike the United States, Finland didn't have mass slavery and genocide to cut their empathic cord at the country's birth."

"Over the years that I've sought answers to why a fairer economy is so elusive, it has become clear to me that how white people understand what's right and wrong about our diverse nation—who belongs and who deserves—is determining our collective course. This is the crux of it. Can we swim together in the same pool or not? It's a political question, yes, and one with economic ramifications, but at its core, it's a moral question. Ultimately, an economy—the rules we abide by and set for what's fair and who merits what—is an expression of our moral understanding. So if our country's moral compass is broken, is it any wonder that our economy is adrift?"