The Sum of Us

McGhee opens Chapter 8 with a description of the increasingly dire state of the climate crisis, as sea levels rise, extreme weather becomes more frequent, and biodiversity rapidly declines. Technological solutions to many of these challenges now exist—but as McGhee notes, the United States has not opted to adopt them, a decision she attributes to American political conservatives, most of whom are white. Though few of the country’s major environmental organizations have focused on this fact—instead emphasizing greed and corruption as the source of resistance to climate change reform—McGhee suggests that identity and racism have roles to play as well.

McGhee notes that in one poll, the majority of white respondents said they were either dismissive of or opposed to the need to address climate change, whereas 57% of Black people said they were either “concerned” or “alarmed.” Other polls found that an attitude of racial resentment (a feeling that Black people are undeserving and receive too many handouts) is correlated with denial of climate change; similarly, research found that white men are most likely to deny climate change. To explain this, McGhee looks to the theory of social dominance orientation, a worldview that believes hierarchies are natural and inevitable, and that therefore resists acting on climate change because doing so would disrupt a status quo that benefits the dominant group. This framing has limitations when applied to climate change, however, because no one is immune from the consequences of a warming planet.

Nonetheless, the costs of environmental degradation have historically not been distributed equally. One 1978 study—a pioneering study on environmental racism in Houston—found that all of the city’s landfills, and three out of four private landfills, were in Black neighborhoods, despite Black people making up just 25% of the population. A lawsuit connected to that research launched the environmental justice movement. That movement continues in the present day in places like Richmond, California, which became majority Black during World War II, and which is home to several sources of pollution, including a Chevron refinery. The refinery contributes to poor air quality, especially in the mostly of-color neighborhood of North Richmond, which reports high rates of asthma, heart disease, and cancer among residents. But not even the wealthier white residents of the Point Richmond neighborhood are spared the effects of air pollution, even if they think they are. However, the perception that there is a divide prevents action on pollution overall, because privileged residents assume they’re not the ones most affected.

To counter this, a multiethnic coalition of Richmond residents formed and supported a city council candidate who would not take money from Chevron. Ultimately, the coalition halted a plant expansion and forced changes that reduced emissions. The success of this movement is mirrored by the environmental groups, labor unions, Native-led coalitions, and conservationists working to combat climate change. Individuals like politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and activist Vashrini Prakash have also come together to articulate a climate change solution that also tackles white supremacy.

In Chapter 9 McGhee explores how white people can come to terms with their connection to white supremacy and tackle the guilt and shame that stems from this connection. For answers on how to do so, she seeks out Angela King, a former neo-Nazi who fell in with the far-right as a teenager growing up in South Florida. While in prison as a young woman, King befriended a Black woman who challenged King’s racist beliefs and her scapegoating of people of color for her problems. Upon release, King launched an organization called Life After Hate to help people leave white supremacist groups and educate people about more diffuse forms of racism.

These diffuse forms of racism are facilitated by colorblindness, the idea that people don’t see skin color, which is an admirable goal, “but when it is put into practice in a still-racist world, the result is more racism” (228). If people refuse to see the impact of race and racism, they have to seek other explanations for the inequality they can’t help but acknowledge; consequently, many white people blame Black people for the disparities they experience, or they believe Black people aren’t working hard enough to overcome these disparities.

This has negative consequences for white people as well as people of color. It undermines white people’s ability to function in diverse societies or manage conflict in cross-cultural settings. In the United States, it also gives white citizens a false sense of their own history—a tension explored in the 1968 book The Hidden Wound by Kentucky poet Wendell Berry. The false sense that the United States is a meritocracy also distorts white people’s sense of the degree of economic and racial equality that exists; thanks to this distorted perception, white people—particularly those who are wealthy—are able to justify their own privilege. The belief that society is fair, and that white people have earned their advantages, fosters opposition to policies like affirmative action and creates an exaggerated sense of how much these policies shape schools and workplaces.

The inability to acknowledge the impact of racism also has life-or-death consequences because it shapes white people’s fearful response to people of color, which can be lethal for Black people. This fear is born partly out of segregation as well as systemic racism, which causes underinvestment in Black neighborhoods, making them appear poor and dangerous to white eyes. Media coverage that disproportionately reports on crime committed by Black people is also to blame. Similarly, media coverage often focuses on scenes of violence, as seen in the protests following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Consequently, this diminishes white people’s assessment of racism as a significant problem.

Another element is projection; while white people have posed, and continue to pose, a safety risk to Black people, many white people feel themselves to be the ones threatened. This happens as white people project onto Black people their own worst attributes and fears, from criminality, even though it was white people who stole the lives and labor of Black people through chattel slavery, to hypersexuality, even though white men are the ones who have raped Black and brown women without repercussions.

McGhee also notes that white Christians have struggled to come to terms with the impact of racism, and particularly the role of Christianity in justifying the genocide of Indigenous people in the Americas and the enslavement of Africans. This religious justification for racial inequality has consequences that endure in the present day, but religious traditions also have the capacity to challenge racism, especially in Judaism, which has historically supported the civil rights movement, and Islam, which was adopted by many civil rights leaders. Both these faiths have elements of anti-Blackness, but they also contain framing that can help adherents overcome racial divisions.

McGhee begins Chapter 10 with a visit to Lewiston, Maine, a formerly wealthy mill town that began to decline at the same time as the civil rights movement. Lewiston’s decline was painted as part of the zero-sum equation—in which increased status for people of color has negative consequences for white folks—but it was in fact a consequence of shifts in global trade and local demographics, as the city lost most of its young people. But in the 1990s, refugees fleeing Somalia’s civil war began to settle in Lewiston, renting formerly vacant apartments and storefronts. This story has been repeated across America; in the early 2000s, people of color comprised 83% of the growth in rural populations in the United States. This shift has occurred without significant opposition from white residents because they recognize the benefits: “The growth and prosperity the new people bring give lie to the zero-sum model” (260). This immigration brings jobs and retains services in rural communities, but it also has personal benefits, including for people like Cecile Thorton, who was born to francophone parents in Lewiston (themselves immigrants from Canada) but had intentionally lost her ability to speak French as a child, out of a desire to fit in to white society. As a retiree in Lewiston, Thorton recovered her French by joining French conversation groups comprised largely of Black immigrants from francophone African countries; these groups gave Thorton meaning and community, in addition to language skills.

But obstacles remain at the government level. Since the arrival of Somalis in Lewiston, the city’s mayors have used anti-immigrant rhetoric to resist their settlement and deployed tropes about immigrants “unfairly” using welfare at the expense of taxpayers. This rhetoric turned many white people against immigration, even as the benefits were evident, resulting in policies that cut taxes for the wealthy, squeezed public services, and increased the tax burden on middle- and working-class people. In 2017, however, a multiracial coalition of mostly working-class people successfully fought for initiatives like an expansion of Medicaid and action to address the opioid crisis in the state.

From here, McGhee draws on the experiences of advocates in Maine and elsewhere to draw five conclusions about how Americans can move forward together. She asserts that progress requires: (1) aiming for a solidarity dividend and rejecting a zero-sum economic model; (2) restoring generous public benefits for all Americans; (3) helping white people recognize that when it comes to these benefits, some people’s needs are greater than others, and that solutions cannot be the same for everyone; (4) encouraging people to recognize that citizens do depend on one another; and (5) encouraging a truthful recognition of US history, so that all citizens can move forward together.

McGhee offers specific examples of how to set these principles in motion, including providing down payment assistance to residents living in redlined areas, which would increase homeownership among Black households (and could serve as part of a national strategy for providing reparations for slavery); increasing public health capacity, particularly in underserved neighborhoods; organizing Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation efforts to bring diverse people together to share their stories about race and connect these stories to policy change.