The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials)

by Heather McGhee

Racism, then, works against non-wealthy white Americans in two ways. First, it lowers their support for government actions that could help them economically, out of a zero-sum fear that it could help the racialized “undeserving” as well. Yet racism’s work on class consciousness is not total—there are still some New Deal–type economic policies that the majority of white Americans support, like increasing the federal minimum wage and raising taxes on the wealthy. But the racial polarization of our two-party system has forced a choice between class interest and perceived racial interest, and in every presidential election since the Civil Rights Act, the majority of white people chose the party of their race. That choice keeps a conservative faction in power that blocks progress on the modest economic agenda they could support.

“We compute that voter racism reduced the income tax rate by 11–18 percentage points.” They conclude, “Absent race as an issue in American politics, the fiscal policy in the USA would look quite similar to fiscal policies in Northern Europe.”

When the Knights began organizing in the volatile years of Reconstruction, they recruited across color lines, believing that to exclude any racial or ethnic group would be playing into the employers’ hands. “Why should working men keep anyone out of the organization who could be used by the employer as a tool in grinding down wages?” wrote the official Knights newspaper in 1880. With black workers in the union, white workers gained by robbing the bosses of a population they might exploit to undercut wages or break strikes; at the same time, black workers gained by working for and benefiting from whatever gains the union won. The Knights also included women in their ranks.

The share of workers in a union has directly tracked the share of the country’s income that goes to the middle class, and as union density has declined, the portion going to the richest Americans has increased in step.

“They get their southern mentality…. ‘I ain’t votin’ [yes] because the blacks are votin’ for it. If the blacks are for it, I’m against it.’ ”