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

by Heather McGhee

Low-paid farm and food processing work is what draws foreign-born people to these small towns at first, for sure. But once there, immigrants have, as European immigrants did a century ago, started businesses, gained education, and participated in civic

“We’ve found the enemy, and it’s not each other.”

“if racial gaps for blacks had been closed 20 years ago, U.S. GDP could have benefitted by an estimated $16 trillion.”

But the truth isn’t that there’s some innate magic within us; it’s that the social and economic and cultural conditions that have been imposed on people at the base of the social hierarchy have given us the clearest view of the whole system. We can see how it’s broken and all those who are broken by it.

“The white citizens murdered their neighbors and burned the edifice of their own government,” I wrote about a history we were apparently willing to repeat, “rather than submit to a multiracial democracy.”

believe their intent is really to have the public lose confidence in public education.” A record number

e are not just…morally deprived because of systemic racism; we’re also less prosperous, we’re less successful, we’re less secure.