by Heather McGhee

Summary

Heather McGhee opens with a puzzle: why do policies that would help nearly everyone, better schools, stronger labor protections, universal health care, keep failing in a country with a white majority that would also benefit from them? Her answer, in The Sum of Us, is a zero-sum worldview: the belief that gains for people of color must come at the expense of white people.

McGhee traces that belief through drained public pools, shuttered hospitals, and defunded schools, real policy decisions with real costs that fall on everyone, not just the communities most directly targeted. Her counterargument is what she calls the solidarity dividend: the measurable gains available when people build coalitions across racial lines instead of competing for a shrinking pie. Racism, in her account, is not a zero-sum game with a winning side. It is a story that leaves nearly everyone poorer.