'With intelligence and care (as well as with a trove of sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes heart-opening true stories) Heather McGhee shows us what racism has cost all of us' – Elizabeth GilbertPolitical commentator McGhee argues in her astute and persuasive debut that income inequality and the decline of the middle and working classes in America are a direct result of the country’s long history of racial injustice. The Sum of Us offers a priceless insight into the workings of prejudice, and a timely invitation to solidarity among all humans, 'to piece together a new story of who we could be to one another'. There can be little prospect of tackling global climate change until America's zero-sum delusions are defeated. As McGhee shows, it was bigoted lending policies that laid the ground for the 2008 financial crisis. McGhee marshals overwhelming economic evidence, and a profound well of empathy, to reveal the surprising truth: even racists lose out under white supremacy.Īnd US racism is everybody's problem. Their tragedy is that they believe they can't win unless somebody else loses. Why do they block changes that would help them, and even destroy their own advantages, whenever people of colour also stand to benefit? What would make a society drain its public swimming baths and fill them with concrete rather than opening them to everyone? Economics researcher Heather McGhee sets out across America to learn why white voters so often act against their own interests. Picked for the Financial Times Summer Books by Gillian Tett 'With intelligence and care (as well as with a trove of sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes heart-opening true stories) Heather McGhee shows us what racism has cost all of us' - Elizabeth Gilbert
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