Move the country forward together
Why Heather McGhee’s ‘The Sum of Us’ should be required reading
Every so often a book comes along that seems perfectly timed to the moment and has the potential to radically shift our cultural conversation. “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” by Heather McGhee is one of those books.
McGhee, a native Chicagoan and former head of progressive think tank Demos, has crafted a book that combines economics, sociology, public policy and memoir to tell the story of how all Americans (save the very wealthiest) have been harmed by “zero sum” thinking — that the benefit to one group must come at the expense of another.
As McGhee shows through a combination of academic studies, economic analysis and on-the-ground examples, the zerosum mentality is rooted in the country’s long legacy of racism. In the era of Civil Rights, the racism was overt: Consider, for example, municipalities throughout the country that filled in their majestic public pools with concrete, rather than integrate them.
The racism is somewhat more sublimated now in racist tropes, like “welfare queens” or immigrants coming to “steal our jobs.” McGhee shows how some people are willing to deprive themselves of welldeserved help as long as some other group they think is undeserving is worse off.
The result of all this zero-sum thinking is a greatly degraded public sphere, where people of all races and backgrounds are harmed by a failure to provide access to basic conditions — a living wage, affordable housing, access to health care — that promote overall well-being.
The coronavirus pandemic has been a perfect example of how zero-sum thinking has harmed everyone. The public-health infrastructure, which was eroded because a majority white culture has been allowed to believe that public spending goes to “undeserving” people, has led to a disastrous response for everyone.
The devastating effects have been disproportionately borne by Black and Hispanic people, but because whites are a majority of the population, far more white people have been sickened or died in aggregate.
McGhee spends no time suggesting that white folks like me feel any guilt about what’s happened in the past. Instead, she
lays out a blueprint for achieving a “solitary dividend.”
A solitary dividend is a collective social multiplier where our government and policy-making apparatuses are genuinely focused on the collective needs of society. We’re talking about things like free (or very inexpensive) college — which was once widely available before minorities and women tried to access it — and abundant renewable energy, which will prevent our planet from being destroyed.
It is a sometimes angry or frustrated book, rooted in McGhee’s long career at Demos trying and mostly failing to secure legislation that would benefit the public. But in the end, it’s a hopeful book because McGhee’s vision is so clear and so convincing.
I didn’t need much convincing. The bigger test for the book is if it busts out of the liberal demographic to impact others who are not already on board.
There is hope. While congressional Republicans are uniformly against President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, bipartisan majorities of the public and many Republican governors and mayors say it’s necessary. There is a growing recognition that we are all in this together, and there are some things we should do to benefit everyone.