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

by Heather McGhee

Norton and Sommers had begun their research during the first Obama administration, when a white Tea Party movement drove a backlash against the first black president’s policy agenda. They had been interested in why so many white Americans felt they were getting left behind, despite the reality of continued white dominance in U.S. life, from corporations to government. (Notwithstanding the black president, 90 percent of state, local, and federal elected officials were white in the mid-2010s.) What Norton and Sommers found in their research grabbed headlines: the white survey respondents rated anti-white bias as more prevalent in society than anti-black bias. On a scale of 1 to 10, the average white scoring of anti-black bias was 3.6, but whites rated anti-white bias as a 4.7, and opined that anti-white bias had accelerated sharply in the mid-1970s.