Summary: Chapters 5–6

Chapter 5

The author went to Canton, Mississippi, to speak with workers at the Nissan plant, where they had just voted not to join the UAW, a union. McGhee, who grew up knowing that union jobs in auto plants are good jobs, is shocked that workers would reject the obvious benefits of unionizing. Prior to unions, these jobs were low-paying and dangerous. Without unions, they were going back to that. The author speaks of workers describing body parts mangled in machines.

She found out that the factory pitted workers against each other, a common tactic used by management to keep many from wanting to unionize. Some of the workers who had been there the longest were “legacy” workers who had good pay and benefits. Others came through the Kelly temp agency and only made $12.00 an hour with no benefits. The temps couldn’t vote to unionize, and the legacy workers didn’t want to unionize, because they felt like they were above the temps. All hoped to get cushy jobs that weren’t on the assembly line, jobs that got whiter as they became easier and better paid. Workers felt like they couldn’t get those jobs if they caused trouble.

Anti-union people said that the unions would help the Black workers, whom they described as lazy. The author questioned this. If Black workers were lazy, how were they doing the hardest jobs for the lowest pay? One of the UAW organizers, Sanchioni Butler, says she told them the same thing. “You . . . have to keep up with the line . . . How can you be lazy with [that] job?” When they think about it, they realize she’s right. Still, the company uses rhetoric to divide people.

“There’s been no greater tool against collective bargaining than employers’ ability to divide workers,” the author writes. If workers think their boss can hire someone to do the work cheaper, they have less leverage. Again, they see it as a zero-sum game, but the boss is the one who wins.

America’s first union was called the Knights of Labor. It included all races, men and women, and created better conditions and pay for all. But Jim Crow stopped it from growing. This was followed by the American Federation of Labor (AFL). AFL was racist and saw Black workers as strikebreakers, McGhee writes. However, during World War II, when there were labor shortages, the AFL formed the Congress of Labor and Industrial Organizations (CIO), which was committed to interracial unity. Racial tolerance spread and benefited everyone. There was a solidarity dividend, as workers got better pay, 40-hour work weeks, health insurance, and overtime pay.

So why are unions on the decline? Some blame President Ronald Reagan’s action in 1981, firing 11,000 striking union air traffic controllers. But it wasn’t just that, McGhee says. Since the 1970s, businesses had been flouting the laws meant to protect workers. They even fired workers for attempting to unionize. The Nissan workers heard about that on TV screens throughout the plant. Since factory jobs are becoming scarcer due to globalization and automation, workers are scared to lose them, even if they’re bad jobs.

But other countries have faced these issues and still have unions. The decline of unions in the United States may have had something to do with the UAW being seen as backing civil rights, McGhee suggests. This happened as more white workers moved to management positions, so more laborers were Black. White people also had a negative response to Obama’s rescue of the Detroit auto plants. Right-wing media fed the anti-union narrative. The author spoke to two workers, Johnny and Melvin, and both said that the white workers don’t want to vote for what the Black workers want. Even the word union is a dog whistle in the South. Many businesses moved to the South since they can get people to work for cheaper without unions.

McGhee had thought that the benefits of a union would be obvious to all. However, white workers were being given better jobs and other benefits by not being in a union. All the workers, even the white ones, were getting a worse deal than union workers in the Midwest. They worried Nissan would shut down the plant entirely if there was a union. Historically, white immigrant workers, such as Irish or Italian workers, had to compete with Black workers for jobs. It truly was a zero-sum story, as employers would hire either Irish or Black workers.

The Irish workers wanted to identify with the white people, who were viewed as better and more powerful. Therefore, they were against Black people, even physically attacking them. Robin DiAngelo (born 1956), a white writer who coined the term white fragility, recalls being very poor growing up, but her mother encouraged her to think of herself as above Black people. She said, “In those moments, the shame of poverty was lifted. I wasn’t poor . . . I was white.” People don’t want the minimum wage raised for everyone, McGhee explains, because they don’t want to drop into last place.

Chip Wells, a white member of the pro-union faction, was harassed by anti-union people. Finally, he gave in and went with the anti-union group. He mentioned that the white people had a zero-sum mindset. “If you uplift black people, you’re drownin’ white people [like] a crab in a barrel mentality,” meaning they have to pull someone down before they can get above you. However, some white workers saw that they had the same interests as Black workers. One Black worker, Melvin, said he approached white workers: “You find out what you have in common . . . Whenever you’re [both] tired, it’s the same.”

However, there are some success stories. One was hundreds of fast-food workers in Manhattan who rallied for a fifteen-dollar wage. This was higher than Demos had ever thought they could get. This was a solidarity dividend. The movement spread across the country to the service employees and baggage handlers.

In Kansas City, a group called Stand Up KC, seeking to unite the fast-food employees for higher wages, named racism as the barrier, making signs that said, “United Against Racism–Good Jobs For All.” McGhee interviewed a white woman named Bridget, who realized that her problems were the same as those of a Latinx coworker who was also trying to raise kids on a small budget. She says, “In order for me to come up, they have to come up too.” Similarly, in Alabama, people realized that, even though most white people earned more than $15.00 an hour, most of the people earning less were white. Both the Alabama and the Kansas City groups knew that racism was a barrier, but they embraced the civil rights struggle and had Black people in leadership roles. Many fast food and retail giants have raised their starting pay, some even to $15.00 an hour. Bridget acknowledged that “Racism . . . keeps [white workers] divided from our black and brown brothers and sisters. [White people] need to fight against racism.”

Chapter 6

McGhee writes that the United States never had a true democracy to start with because, when the Constitution was ratified, only white landowners could vote. The Electoral College is a remnant of that because it still gives states with white people an outsized share of the vote, enabling candidates like George W. Bush (born 1946) and Trump to win without winning the popular vote. Eventually, nonlandowning white men could vote, but many feared allowing Black people to vote. This was why John Wilkes Booth (1838–1865) assassinated Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865). There was a great deal of backlash against Black suffrage, as well as attempts to take it away. These included poll taxes and unfair tests. Additionally, many Americans are prevented from voting because of felony convictions, and since Black people are more likely to be convicted due to small offenses, it affects them the most.

In Florida, McGhee interviewed a white woman named Coral, who was a convicted felon. When Florida had a ballot measure to give felons their rights back once they served their time, she walked door to door, along with an African American “brother or sister.” Voters voted to allow felons to get their rights back. However, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis (born 1978), and the legislature passed a state law saying felons had to pay any outstanding fines. This might include court costs and is very hard to figure out. This was a way to continue to deny them the right to vote, even after the people had spoken.

Only a small percentage of people even vote in elections. That’s partly because it’s difficult but also because people think it doesn’t make a difference, McGhee says. States that are mostly white are the easiest to vote in. They can vote by mail, and many don’t even require registration. Southern states might require the type of identification white people are more likely to have. For example, a gun permit is okay, but a student ID isn’t. This also made it harder for many white people, including young people, to vote. Some states even inadvertently disenfranchised married women because the name on their voter registration might not be the same as on their driver’s license.

Additionally, some states purged voter rolls if someone didn’t vote in enough elections. They sent postcards out to voters, and if they didn’t return them, they were purged. POC, renters, and young people are less likely to get and respond to official mail. However, white people also got purged. In Ohio, a man named Larry Harmon was purged from the rolls because he missed one presidential election and one midterm. He was outraged, saying, “I’m a veteran . . . Now they aren’t giving me . . . the most fundamental right I have?” Voting is the only right you lose if you don’t use it enough, McGhee notes. No one is taking away people’s First or Second Amendment rights because they don’t buy a gun or write a letter to the editor every few years. Harmon and others filed a class action lawsuit, Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, but a conservative Supreme Court found in favor of the state of Ohio’s ability to deregister voters.

There is a playbook of anti-voting tactics, put in place by conservative lawmakers and funded by wealthy right-wingers such as Charles Koch (b. 1935), who seek to advance capitalism unfettered by civil rights issues. The policies are not racist on their face, McGhee says, but they do have a racist effect and favor affluent property owners. Those advancing the playbook place advertisements decrying “voter fraud” with images of POC voting. Some conservatives have even admitted they don’t want everyone to vote and take aim at programs that make it easier to vote, such as registering all high school seniors to vote and early voting. Many places also move precincts farther from college campuses.

Prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, states used so-called literacy tests to discourage Black voters. However, the tests had unfair questions, such as “Name all the signers of the Declaration of Independence.” These voter suppression tactics rose from zero-sum theory.

However, eliminating poll taxes and similar also helped nonwealthy white voters, McGhee writes. Disenfranchising voters hurt white people as well. For example, in Alabama in the 1960s, nearly half of the state’s citizens over 25 only had an elementary school education. This included two out of five white Alabamians as well as two out of three Black Alabamians.

McGhee says much of the corruption and inequality is because there are no limits on donations by wealthy special interests, who buy influence. 1.2% of donors, mostly rich, white, older men, donated 71% of campaign donations. They also donate to political action committees, where the public can’t see who is funding them. When the state of Connecticut adopted campaign finance reform, more women, young people, and people of color were able to participate in government. The new legislature passed measures that benefitted many.

Analysis: Chapters 5–6

The idea that racism hurts everyone is particularly strong in this section, which talks about unions. Unions originally existed not only to get better pay, benefits, and hours but also to keep factories and other places where people work safe. In 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York, and 146 women were killed because of unsafe working conditions in the factory—specifically that the doors were locked to keep workers from slipping out to smoke. Following that incident, people became aware of other safety issues in factories. Such safety issues resulted in hundreds of deaths. Unions worked to make factories safer. The author describes the unsafe working conditions in the factory she visited, specifically the fact that it is not uncommon for workers to lose a finger or a limb. She says this is something that unions might prevent. Unions might also make sure people were fairly compensated for their injuries, which, in turn, would motivate companies to keep factories safer. However, because of the racial division in the factories, many white workers, often the majority, don’t want unions. This hurts most of them. Even if an occasional white factory worker might rise to a higher position by allying themselves with management, they are seldom, if ever, going to make as much as management. Therefore, McGhee says, they are hurting themselves and their fellow workers, of all races, by being against the unions.

It is interesting to note that, in the Florida election where voters gave felons their voting rights back, this measure passed with an overwhelming majority. This was despite the fact that, in that same election, voters elected Republican candidates for governor and United States Senator, showing that it was truly a nonpartisan issue. The measure passed in all parts of the state, even those usually thought of as Republican strongholds, and, indeed, most Republicans were in favor of restoring felons’ voting rights. Nonetheless, the governor of Florida has since instituted measures to make it more difficult for ex-felons to get their rights back.