The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together is a wide-ranging and unpolished portrait of how racism costs everyone - rich and poor, white and black, young and old. Heather McGhee reviews American history with the lens of the zero-sum concept: where one person's gain would be another's loss. In this sense, White people's gain and Black people's loss. However, McGhee systematically unpacks our shared history of policies, laws, and daily lives to find equivalent loss on all sides - meaning White people are losing out just as much as Black people, even though these policies are covertly directed at Black Americans. I strongly urge readers to listen to the audiobook. The book is dense and thought-provoking, yet I found the audio to be like listening to a professor. Like someone was laying out all the details before me. Highly recommended to all readers.