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

by Heather McGhee

the movement encourages parents not to view “diversity primarily as a commodity for the benefit of our own children” and not to view schools that serve primarily students of color as “broken and in need of white parents to fix them.”

They’re both the products of what parents in the Integrated Schools Facebook group Tracy now belongs to call “Global Majority” public schools,

“If there’s a roomful of black people and [we walk in and] we’re the only white people? I think they sort of say—like, ‘Oh, like, let’s leave.’ Or they say, like, if we’re out at night, ‘Oh, this is, like, a little sketchy.’

one of the downfalls of growing up in a homogeneous setting is that the process of understanding…racial inequalities and recognizing one’s own privilege can be very uncomfortable and might take longer, but it doesn’t mean they don’t get there.”

Chapter 8 THE SAME SKY

The United States is, in many ways, the problem. We are the biggest carbon polluter in history, but we have one of the strongest and most politically powerful factions opposed to taking action to prevent catastrophic climate change.

fewer than 25 percent of white people said they were willing to join a campaign to convince government to act on climate change.

majority of white Americans fell into the categories the researchers called “Cautious,” “Disengaged,” “Doubtful,” or “Dismissive,”

70 percent of Latinx and 57 percent of black people are either “Alarmed” or “Concerned.”

“Maybe it’s because, despite the prominence of so many leaders of color, white environmentalists play such an outsize role in the Big Green leadership.

“The same power structures that advantage white people in the world are advantaging white people in the advocacy field,

the most powerful worldview we need to contend with is white supremacy.

“and the patriarchy.”

the racial divide on support for climate change action sharpened as Barack Obama made it a priority during his administration,

the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers and their network covertly supported the spread of the Tea Party movement, which actively opposed measures to address climate change.

the coal miner had become a symbol of white masculinity under attack from big government.

even within the Republican Party, racism increases the likelihood of opposing climate action.

McCright and Dunlap wrote, “Conservative white males are likely to favor protection of the current industrial capitalist order which has historically served them well.”

politically moderate or conservative white men, whether in Congress or in the editorial pages, had weighed in against action on some social good—environmental protection, raising revenue for public investment, consumer financial regulation—by claiming that it would be “bad for the economy.”

the sum total of our population’s consumption, goods, and services.

could go on quite well and even flourish without white men

“The economy” that they were referring to was their economy, the economic condit...

“social dominance orientation” was predictive of climate change denial.

society shouldn’t do anything to reduce [those hierarchies], because there’s probably something in these groups who have a lower position that has caused their lower position.”

people who are poor, they are guaranteed to have their own apartments. They have food. And they have treatment if they have mental health issues, physical health issues. It’s not like people are left, just thrown out from the system.”

“If you’re in a society where you’ve already let someone go without shelter, then what does it matter if they drown?

For most of our history, the government was the racist. But many white people now believe, consciously or unconsciously, that the government has taken the other side and is now changing the ‘proper’ racial order through social spending, civil rights laws, and affirmative action.

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.

just as southern Democrats in Congress had weakened the New Deal in 1938 and would go on to kill national healthcare in 1948, they would have sabotaged FDR’s Second Bill of Rights as well.

you would have learned along the way to accept inequality as normal; that you’d come to attribute society’s wins and losses solely to the players’ skill and merit. You might also learn that if there are problems, you and yours are likely to be spared the costs.

Six out of eight of the city-owned incinerators were in black neighborhoods. And three out of four of the private-owned landfills were in black neighborhoods.

The theory behind the lawsuit, he said, was “that the city of Houston was practicing a form of discrimination in placing landfills in…black communities.

The Federal Housing Authority guaranteed the developer’s financing on the condition that none of the seven hundred new homes be sold to anyone “not wholly of the Caucasian race.”

The African American wartime workers had to fend entirely for themselves while their white co-workers had all their housing needs met by government subsidy, policy, and planning.

Richmond is left with the worst of both worlds: few middle-class jobs and lots of toxic pollution, including abandoned waste.

The polluter that’s most synonymous with Richmond, however, is the one-hundred-plus-year-old Chevron refinery,

Richmond children are hospitalized for asthma at almost twice the rate of those in neighboring areas.

(That paint job is an unfortunately apt metaphor for corporate social responsibility efforts that are only cosmetic; the darker color wound up making the tanks absorb more heat, leading to more toxic evaporation.)

If a set of decision makers believes that an environmental burden can be shouldered by someone else to whom they don’t feel connected or accountable, they won’t think it’s worthwhile to minimize the burden by, for example, forcing industry to put controls on pollution.

It just wouldn’t be that expensive to give everybody a clean and healthy environment.”

Chevron lobbyists had learned how to pit community groups against each other for small funding grants and scholarships,

we launched a…strategy to recruit and support a [city council] candidate who would not take corporate money,”

The good news is the type of multiracial coalition that has begun to loosen Chevron’s grip on Richmond is starting to assemble across the nation, putting within sight a Solidarity Dividend for people and the planet.

Chapter 9 THE HIDDEN WOUND

when your life trajectory has taught you that the system works pretty okay if you do the right things, then it’s easy to wonder why whole groups of people can’t seem to do better for themselves.

When I asked her how she justified her actions, she explained that she simply accepted the opportunity that the story of white supremacy has always offered: a way to shift the blame.

Nazism gave her not only a justification for the race-based hierarchy of human value she believed in, but also a ready scapegoat for every disappointment in her life.

Angela became an activist,

cofounding an organization called Life After Hate,

White supremacy had given Angela something she desperately needed in order to feel better about herself: scapegoats.