It tackles the history and present problems of American racism better than any piece of nonfiction I’ve read to date. Heather McGhee’s The Sum of Usis that book.

I remember thinking that I’d very much like to read a whole book devoted to the idea of building solidarity between disenfranchised Americans of all colors and backgrounds. Solidarity is standing in unity with people even when you have not personally experienced their particular oppression. Success or failure are contingent on whether or not working people see themselves as brothers and sisters whose liberation is inextricably bound up together. Solidarity is only possible through relentless struggle to win white workers to antiracism, to expose the lie that Black workers are worse off because they somehow choose to be, and to win the white working class to the understanding that, unless they struggle, they too will continue to live lives of poverty and frustration, even if those lives are somewhat better than the lives led by Black workers.

The common experience of oppression and exploitation creates the potential for a united struggle to better the conditions of all…Political unity, including winning white workers to the centrality of racism in shaping the lived experiences of Black and Latino/a workers, is key to their own liberation…In this context, solidarity is not just an option it is crucial to workers’ ability to resist the constant degradation of their living standards. Here’s my favorite passage from that excellent book: Back in 2018, I read Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor’s From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.

Book the sum of us