{"product_id":"the-sum-of-us-isbn-9780525509585","title":"The Sum of Us","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNEW YORK TIMES \u003c\/i\u003eBESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eWINNER OF THE PORCHLIGHT BUSINESS BOOK AWARD •\u003c\/b\u003e ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eTime, The Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Ms. \u003c\/i\u003emagazine, \u003ci\u003eBookRiot\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This is the book I’ve been waiting for.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling author of \u003ci\u003eHow to Be an Antiracist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLook for the author’s podcast, \u003ci\u003eThe Sum of Us,\u003c\/i\u003e based on this book!\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHeather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis of 2008 to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMcGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm—the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others. Along the way, she meets white people who confide in her about losing their homes, their dreams, and their shot at better jobs to the toxic mix of American racism and greed. This is the story of how public goods in this country—from parks and pools to functioning schools—have become private luxuries; of how unions collapsed, wages stagnated, and inequality increased; and of how this country, unique among the world’s advanced economies, has thwarted universal healthcare.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut in unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. \u003ci\u003eThe Sum of Us\u003c\/i\u003e is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL\u003c\/b\u003e“A book for every American.”\u003cb\u003e—Elizabeth Gilbert\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Illuminating and hopeful . . . McGhee isn’t a stinging polemicist; she cajoles instead of ridicules. She appeals to concrete self-interest in order to show how our fortunes are tied up with the fortunes of others. ‘We suffer because our society was raised deficient in social solidarity,’ she writes, explaining that this idea is ‘true to my optimistic nature.’ She is compassionate but also clear-eyed, refusing to downplay the horrors of racism. . . . There is a striking clarity to this book; there is also a depth of kindness in it that all but the most churlish readers will find moving.”\u003cb\u003e—Jennifer Szalai, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“One of the most fascinating things about \u003ci\u003eThe Sum of Us\u003c\/i\u003e is how it challenges the assumptions of both white antiracism activists and progressives who just want to talk about class.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eNew York Times, \u003c\/i\u003e“The Book That Should Change How Progressives Talk About Race”\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Required reading to move the country forward . . . Every so often a book comes along that seems perfectly timed to the moment and has the potential to radically shift our cultural conversation. [\u003ci\u003eThe Sum of Us\u003c\/i\u003e] is one of those books. . . . 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.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“If everyone in America read this book, we’d be, not only a more just country, but a more powerful, successful, and loving one. A vital, urgent, stirring, beautifully written book that offers a compassionate roadmap out of our present troubled moment.”\u003cb\u003e—George Saunders,\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003ebestselling and Booker Prize–winning author of\u003c\/b\u003e \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLincoln in the Bardo\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Supported by remarkable data-driven research and thoughtful interviews with those directly affected by these issues, McGhee paints a powerful picture of the societal shortfalls all around us. There is a greater, more just America available to us, and McGhee brings its potential to light.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookPage\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“[McGhee] takes readers on an intimate odyssey across our country’s racial divide to explore why some believe that progress for some comes at the expense of others. Along the way, McGhee speaks with white people who confide in her about losing jobs, homes, and hope, and considers white supremacy’s collateral victims. Ultimately, McGhee—a Black woman viewing multiracial America with startling empathy—finds proof of what she terms the Solidarity Dividend: the momentous benefits that derive when people come together across race. A powerful, singular, and prescriptive blend of the macro and the intimate.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eO: The Oprah Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eHeather McGhee\u003c\/b\u003e is an expert in economic and social policy. The former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos, McGhee has drafted legislation, testified before Congress, and contributed regularly to news shows including NBC’s \u003ci\u003eMeet the Press\u003c\/i\u003e. She now chairs the board of Color of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. McGhee holds a BA in American studies from Yale University and a JD from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.\u003cb\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Why can’t we have nice things?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps  there’s  been  a  time  when  you’ve  pondered  exactly  this question. And by nice things, you weren’t thinking about hovercraft or laundry that does itself. You were thinking about more basic as-pects of  a high-functioning society, like adequately funded schools or reliable infrastructure, wages that keep workers out of  poverty or a public health system to handle pandemics. The “we” who can’t seem to  have  nice  things  is  Americans,  all  Americans.  This  includes  the white Americans who are the largest group of  the uninsured and the impoverished  as  well  as  the  Americans  of   color  who  are  dispropor-tionately so. “We” is all of  us who have watched generations of  Amer-ican leadership struggle to solve big problems and reliably improve the  quality  of   life  for  most  people.  We  know  what  we  need—why can’t we have it?“\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhy can’t we have nice things?” was a question that struck me pretty  early  on  in  life—growing  up  as  I  did  in  an  era  of   rising  in-equality, seeing the wealthy neighborhoods boom while the schools and  parks  where  most  of   us  lived  fell  into  disrepair.  When  I  was twenty-two  years  old,  I  applied  for  an  entry-level  job  at  Demos,  aresearch  and  advocacy  organization  working  on  public  policy  solutions to inequality. There, I learned the tools of  the policy advocacy trade: statistical research and white papers, congressional testimony, litigation, bill drafting, media outreach, and public campaigns.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was  exhilarating.  I  couldn’t  believe  that  I  could  use  a  spread-sheet to convince journalists to write about the ideas and lives of  the people I cared most about: the ones living from paycheck to paycheck who needed a better deal from businesses and our government. And it actually worked: our research influenced members of  Congress to introduce laws that helped real people and led to businesses changing their practices. I went off to get a law degree and came right back to Demos to continue the work. I fell in love with the idea that information, in the right hands, was power. I geeked out on the intricacies of the credit markets and a gracefully designed regulatory regime. My specialty was economic policy, and as indicators of  economic inequality became starker year after year, I was convinced that I was fighting the good fight, for my people and everyone who struggled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd that is how I saw it: part of  my sense of  urgency about the work  was  that  my  people,  Black  people,  are  disproportionately  ill served  by  bad  economic  policy  decisions.  I  was  going  to  help  make better  ones.  I  came  to  view  the  relationship  between  race  and  inequality  as  most  people  in  my  field  do—linearly:  structural  racism accelerates  inequality  for  communities  of   color.  When  our  govern-ment  made  bad  economic  decisions  for  everyone,  the  results  were even worse for people already saddled with discrimination and disadvantage.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTake  the  rise  of   household  debt  in  working-and  middle-class families, the first issue I worked on at Demos. The volume of  credit card debt Americans owed had tripled over the course of  the 1990s, and among cardholders, Black and Latinx families were more likely to be in debt. In the early 2000s, when I began working on the issue, bankruptcies and foreclosures were rising and homeowners, particularly Black and brown homeowners, were starting to take equity out of  their houses through strange new mortgage loans—but the problem  of   burdensome  debt  and  abusive  lending  wasn’t  registering  on the radar of  enough decision makers. Few politicians in Washington knew what it was like to have bill collectors incessantly ringing their phones about balances that kept growing every month. So, in 2003, Demos launched a project to get their attention: the first-ever comprehensive research report on the topic, with big, shocking numbers about the increase in debt. The report included policy recommenda-tions about how to free families from debt and avoid a financial melt-down.  Our  data  resulted  in  newspaper  editorials,  meetings  with banks,  congressional  hearings,  and  legislation  to  limit  credit  card rates and fees.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwo years later, Congress took action—and made the problem of rising  debt  worse.  Legislators  passed  a  bankruptcy  reform  bill  sup-ported by the credit industry that made it harder for people ever to escape  their  debts,  no  matter  how  tapped  out  they  were  after  a  job loss, catastrophic medical illness, or divorce. The law wasn’t good for consumers,  did  nothing  to  address  the  real  problems  in  family  finances, and actually made the problem worse. It was a bad economic policy  decision  that  benefited  only  lenders  and  debt  collectors,  not the public. This was a classic example of  the government not doing the simple thing that aligned with what most Americans wanted or what the data showed was necessary to solve a big problem. Instead, it did the opposite. Why?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWell, for one thing, our inability to stop bankruptcy reform made me  realize  the  limits  of   research.  The  financial  industry  and  other corporations had spent millions on lobbying and campaign donations to gin up a majority in Congress, and many of  my fellow advocates walked away convinced that big money in politics was the reason we couldn’t have nice things. And I couldn’t disagree—of  course money had influenced the outcome.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut  I’ll  never  forget  something  that  happened  on  the  last  day  I spent at the Capitol presenting Demos’s debt research to members of Congress.  I  was  walking  down  the  marble  hallway  of   the  Russell Senate  Office  Building  in  my  new  “professional”  shoes—I  was twenty-five years old—when I stopped to adjust them because they kept slipping off. When I bent down, I was near the door of  a Senate office; I honestly can’t remember if  it belonged to a Republican or a Democrat. I heard the bombastic voice of  a man going on about the deadbeats who had babies with multiple women and then declared bankruptcy  to  dodge  the  child  support,  using  the  government  to avoid  personal  responsibility.  There  was  something  in  the  senator’s invective that made my heart rate speed up. I stood and kept moving, my mind racing. Had we advocates entirely missed something about the fight we were in? We had been thinking of  it as a class issue (with racial disparities, of  course), but was it possible that, at least for some of   the  folks  on  the  other  side  of   the  issue,  coded  racial  stereotypes were a more central player in the drama than we knew?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI left Capitol Hill, watching the rush hour crush of  mostly white people in suits and sneakers heading home after a day’s work in the halls of  power, and felt stupid. Of  course, it’s not as if  the credit card companies had made racial stereotypes an explicit part of  their communications strategy on bankruptcy reform. But I’d had my political coming-of-age  in  the  mid-1990s,  when  the  drama  of   the  day  was “ending welfare as we know it,” words that helped Bill Clinton hold on to the (white) political center by scapegoating (Black) single mothers for not taking “personal responsibility” to escape poverty. There was nothing explicit or conclusive about what I’d overheard, but perhaps the bankruptcy reform fight—also, like welfare, about the de-servingness and character of  people with little money—was playing out  in  that  same  racialized  theater,  for  at  least  one  decision  maker and likely more.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI felt frustrated with myself  for being caught flat-footed (literally, shoe in hand!) and missing a potential strategic vulnerability of  the campaign. I’d learned about research and advocacy and lobbying in the  predominantly  white  world  of   nonprofit  think  tanks,  but  how could  I  have  forgotten  the  first  lessons  I’d  ever  learned  as  a  Black person in America, about what they see when they see us? About how quick so many white people could be to assume the worst of  us . . . to believe  that  we  wanted  to  cheat  at  a  game  they  were  winning  fair and  square?  I  hadn’t  even  thought  to  ask  the  question  about  this seemingly nonracial financial issue, but had racism helped defeat us?New York Times bestseller; National Book Award longlist; One World Essentials","brand":"One World","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305229242597,"sku":"NP9780525509585","price":21.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780525509585.jpg?v=1767741720","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-sum-of-us-isbn-9780525509585","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}