Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reviews Heather McGee’s The Sum of Us, which he highly recommends. As we saw in the Olympics, Americans are different that other countries. We are a remarkably diverse people, and we succeed when we work together across lines of race and class.
Hinnefeld writes:
There’s a “solidarity dividend” to be gained when we work across lines of race and class to improve lives for everyone, Heather McGhee writes in her excellent and incisive book “The Sum of Us,” published this year. Everyone gains when we work together and don’t waste our efforts holding others back.
Conversely, she writes, we all pay a penalty when we succumb to racism and to social and economic divisions. The zero-sum myth, which holds that someone else’s gain is necessarily our loss, lets politicians and the powerful divide us into warring, partisan factions.
One sphere where this plays out is education. The belief that there is a limited supply of “good” schools — and that they are in affluent communities and enroll mostly white students — hurts us all. Schools become more segregated by race and class. Many children attend schools that are stigmatized as failing while the fortunate pay a premium for the schools they want.
“But what if the entire logic is wrong?” McGhee writes. “What if they’re not only paying too high a cost for segregation, but they’re also mistaken about the benefits?”
Evidence that white people are wrong about the benefits of being at the top of our nation’s racial hierarchy is at the core of “The Sum of Us.” McGhee, an economic policy expert and a former president of the research and advocacy group Demos, describes how racism robs people of all races of political power, economic security, health care and other amenities.
The book’s central metaphor is the drained swimming pool. In the first half of the 20th century, large public pools were the pride of many U.S. communities. They brought people together, including rich and poor, native-born and immigrants. But in many locales, they were open to white people only. This was especially true in the South, but there were plenty of examples in the North: for example, Engman Public Natatorium in South Bend, Indiana, initially banned Black swimmers and later let them in on a segregated basis, on designated days.
When the civil rights movement swept the country and courts ordered public facilities to desegregate, a common response was to close swimming pools or turn them over to private clubs. McGhee describes examples where white officials filled the pools with concrete rather than share them with Black families. As a result, white children had no safe place to swim unless they had access to private pools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Empty swimming pools are easily filled with tears.
I always attended integrated schools and frankly I never could understand segregation which is our legacy from racism. I taught black and brown students in a white majority school district. Poor students benefited from attending safe, well resourced schools, and middle class students learned about cultures they otherwise would know nothing about. All students benefited from the diverse friendships they made. These experiences make people better members of a diverse society, and all are healthier because of it. In a nation as polarized as ours, we need opportunities to learn how to get along despite our differences. Understanding and tolerance are key elements of a healthy society, and public schools provide this important social function. Segregation is isolating, and it is a breeding ground for racism.
isolating is a key word: studies are now showing that with “austerity” shut downs of community centers, neighborhood schools and elder programs, a more manipulable racism grows
I wonder if the author of this book understands why this is a myth that sells. What is required of a person who wants to gain power by dividing people? Only that he inspire fear. Power concentration lies at the base of all prejudice. If I want power, I must convince the people that there is something tangible to fear. Loss of collective power at the hands of someone you despise is the greatest fear of all.
I’m reading this book right now and it’s great. It put in words so many thoughts I’ve been having these past few years. I would highly recommend this book.
Jim Tankersley (an economic and tax reporter for the NYT) wrote a book called “The Riches of this Land” [2020], where he explodes the myth that America’s post-WWII economic boom was about having smashed potential economic rivals to glean a brief window of social success, where everyone gained due to trade domination/ more $$ to go around. Based on exhaustive stats, he shows that women and minorities played a far more crucial role in building the post-WWII middle class than politicians typically acknowledge. What made thing click was that we incorporated previously-excluded sectors into the middle-class labor force, which benefited all. His book includes ideas on how to reinvigorate the middle class based on that experience.
This is just me, not Tankersley; Things changed under Reagan [started under Carter], in his response to the double-whammy of rising Asian market/ global trade and the digital revolution. He crushed unions, and deregulated banking/ stocks so that $$ would trickle to the top; the consequence has been the creation of an uber-moneyed class that dictates policy enabling them to multiply wealth to the detriment/ gross diminishment of working/ middle classes.
The lesson of Tankersley’s research is [per reviews, I haven’t read the book]: he lays out specific policy prescriptions and social undertakings that can begin moving the needle in the effort to make new and better jobs appear. By fostering an economy that opens new pathways for all workers to reach their full potential — men and women, immigrant or native-born, regardless of race — America can once again restore the upward flow of talent that can power growth and prosperity.
I would say this about McGhee’s ” The belief that there is a limited supply of “good” schools — and that they are in affluent communities and enroll mostly white students — hurts us all”: this is not just a “belief,” it is reality. The zero-sum, “limited supply” aspect, I agree, is absolutely wrong– aspirationally. Money is elastic. And in those rare places where residential segregation does not dictate otherwise [e.g., smaller towns where the midschs & hischs gather all town kids together], integrated schools rock, & benefit the whole community.
But from where I sit in NJ [& greater NYC is not much different], residential segregation establishes a paradigm where greater resources dictate better schools, period– mirroring the grossly unequal distribution of wealth/ resources typical nationwide. This is true even in my state where state taxes are pooled & redistributed to the poorest districts. As of 2010, we can only raise property taxes 2% per annum to replace those lost state taxes & plump up the district schsys. But for many decades before that, NJ towns were free to amp up RE taxes at will in that effort. So we’re way ahead of the game; at this point, a mere 2% per year does the job.