The Sum of Us: Racism Benefits No One

Author Heather McGhee wants us to know that racist policies don't benefit anyone.  That's why she wrote The Sum of Us.  I downloaded it from Net Galley.  I didn't have a chance to start this review until now.  I was way too absorbed by what was happening in politics.  Now let's get back to book reviewing which is what I do on this blog.

                                    

                                

 

This book covers a variety of topics and provides historical perspective on each one.  I considered it thorough and insightful.

McGhee argues that when  racist whites are opposed to public services, it's not because they want smaller government.  It's because of their racism.  They don't want blacks to benefit.

When President Truman proposed government health insurance, 90% of the senior beneficiaries would have been white, but McGhee claims that the idea that any blacks would get health insurance was considered unacceptable.  This caused the introduction of union health benefits which hadn't existed previously. Eventually Medicare came into being twenty years later.

I was fascinated with the history of labor unions included in this book.  The Knights of Labor, founded in 1886 included whites, blacks and women, but in the 1890's  the American Federation of Labor unions didn't allow blacks to join. 

There was also another disturbing development in the 1890's. The National Guard were called out to break strikes. McGhee says that employers were calling the National Guard, but as I suspected it was really governors.  Employers don't have the authority to do that.  They needed the support of their state's governor.

The Congress of Industrial Organizations ,which began in 1935, re-integrated their unions which allowed unions to become more powerful.  When blacks, immigrants or women are excluded from unions, employers can hire these excluded categories of workers as scabs.  Scabs disrupt strikes.  Unions were at their peak during the 1950's.  After the 1950's unions have continuously declined.  This wasn't because of unions excluding people.  It was because employers began to ignore the laws that protected workers.  They illegally fired workers who tried to organize unions, and even shut down entire factories rather than deal with unions that were already in existence.  

There were numerous other developments involving labor organizing that I knew very little about--such as the Fight for $15 which has been racially inclusive.  

I consider voter registration a standard part of the voting process, but Heather McGhee says it began as a voter suppression tactic intended to prevent blacks from voting.   Registration is most difficult for people who move often.  McGhee says this includes the poor who are inaccurately thought to be largely non-white.  Presumably, she's talking about involuntary moves.  As a poor person myself, I've noticed that moving is expensive and I try to move as little as possible.   

McGhee points out that whites say in surveys that they prefer to live in racially integrated neighborhoods, but the overwhelming majority of whites don't.  As a case in point, I grew up in a white suburban neighborhood that my civil rights activist father chose to live in.  As an adult, I've mainly lived in integrated neighborhoods, and no they are not  "bad" neighborhoods.

McGhee also points out that in many localities polluting enterprises were deliberately situated in black neighborhoods, but the white neighborhoods nearby are also polluted.  Pollution doesn't stop at the border of the black neighborhoods.

McGhee concludes that the strength of the United States is in its diversity.  If we capitalize on it, we can become the nation we were meant to be.  For me, this is self-evident. 

                         

                                          

    

The Failures of White Feminism As Observed by Koa Beck

 I admit that as a white woman myself, I didn't wonder why I never encountered non-white women at the feminist meetings that I attended in the early 1980's.  That's when I broke away from my family and started acting independently.  I wasn't comfortable with all the feminist organizations that I found.  In some cases, I would attend one meeting and never come back.  But yes, all the women were white.  I've just finished White Feminism by Koa Beck, and she told me that this was no accident.

                               

Beck reveals in her book that she is a light skinned person of color who has passed for white.  She charges white feminists with being self-centered in their approach to feminism.  They also don't challenge societal institutions, but treat them as a given.  Their priority is achieving success in the political and economic context that men have established.  Once they have realized this goal, they can sit back, and say "I've got mine."  They benefit from the pervasive racism and classism, and don't question them.  Since they are totally immersed in their myopic perspective,  it doesn't even occur to them that women of color have other needs and priorities.

After discussing the problem that women of color have with obtaining child care, Beck launches into an attempt made by a woman named Priya  to work with white women on the issue of child care.   She proposed cooperative daycare without realizing that this wasn't an issue for these upper middle class white women.  They all had nannies.  They made a presentation to management, but it didn't include Priya's  appeal for childcare.  The white women ended up getting what they wanted which was extended maternal leave after giving birth.  I couldn't believe that they didn't even try to go to bat for what Priya needed.  They didn't care about the issue, so as far as they were concerned it didn't matter.  The colossal arrogance of these women was astounding.  

I do have to say that Beck didn't present the complete picture when she portrays the Pankhursts who fought for women's suffrage in England.  She mentions Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel who confirm Beck's view of white feminists with their upper class snobbery.  Yet Emmeline Pankhurst had another daughter named Sylvia who focused on working class women.  Sylvia Pankhurst was actually a socialist.  See my review of a biography of Sylvia Pankhurst.  There have been exceptions among white feminists. 

 It is often said that exceptions prove the rule.  So even though there may be a contemporary white feminist equivalent of Sylvia Pankhurst who is eager to be a genuine ally with lower class women and women of color, the majority of white feminists probably are as Beck depicts them.  White Feminism is a tongue lashing that its targets richly deserve.