This rhetoric has been so effective during the pandemic that millions of Americans reject vaccines and masks because they see them as assaults on their control over their bodies. Republicans promote a (selective) libertarianism and equate that belief in freedom and small government with what it means to be “real” Americans. Were Blacks who voted for Trump racist? Trump attacked Hispanics and Muslims as well as Blacks. This belief, like the argument that Trump was elected because of racism, is only partly true. According to McGhee, whites support Republicans solely because of racism. Nonetheless, reading The Sum of Us can be frustrating because McGhee often reduces complex social/economic problems to the issue of race. Robert Putnam covers some of the same territory in his best-seller Bowling Alone. This movement serves as an emblem of the loss of support for community programs during the years following the ’60s, when Civil Rights legislation was passed by Lyndon Johnson. She travels to sites and speaks with people who were there when it happened. In particular, she traces the closing of public swimming pools in the US once Blacks were allowed. McGhee has done an enormous amount of research to prove her thesis. McGhee claims racism is a weapon the Republican party has used to divide us, lower taxes on the rich, and transfer wealth upward. In doing so, she updates and expands on positions taken by Martin Luther King among others - that the way the wealthy and powerful maintain their status is by dividing the poor, the working class, and the middle class into camps at war with each other, often on the basis of race. Heather McGhee makes the argument that racism has hurt all of us and continues to harm the country as a whole. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee. The Sum of Us shows how the economic and political powers-that-be have exploited race to split Americans into warring tribes trapped in a zero-sum game fighting for what’s left after the top 1% take 40% of the wealth.

The sum of us heather