Summary: Introduction–Chapter 2

Introduction

Heather McGhee contemplates the question “Why can’t we have nice things?”  by which she means things like adequately funded schools and health insurance. McGhee explains that, after college, she went to work for a think tank called Demos, where she learned that “I could use [statistics] . . . to convince journalists to write about . . . people . . . living paycheck to paycheck.” She later went back to school to get a law degree. Back to work at Demos, she realized that economic inequality was becoming starker each year.

After a 2003 hearing in which Congress passed a bad bankruptcy reform bill, despite a Demos report that had gotten a lot of attention, McGhee overheard a conversation while passing a senator’s office. The senator was railing, using coded racial stereotypes, about people who have babies with multiple women then use bankruptcy to escape debt. McGhee felt stupid for not realizing how great a part race played in political views, just as it had when Bill Clinton spoke of “ending welfare as we know it.”

Years later, during the Obama presidency, Demos was preparing a study showing that a “dramatically smaller government” by cutting Social Security and Medicaid would be a death blow to the middle class. McGhee asked whether the government would acknowledge that these programs were popular when created for a white middle class, but Congress wanted to renege on them now that the middle class was going to be predominantly people of color (POC). A colleague told her that it wouldn’t be persuasive to say that. She realized he was “probably right.” Even under a Black president, the power structure was white. Soon, the Tea Party would use the language of fiscal responsibility but the “culture of white grievance” to cut social programs. McGhee wondered, “Was it possible that, even when we didn’t bring up race, it didn’t matter?”

On the day Donald Trump (born 1946) was elected president, the author, now president of Demos, knew his programs would hurt everyone, including white people. She realized people weren’t voting based on economic facts. Rather, she writes, they voted for Trump based on a different story of how race and government work and who is deserving. She knew economic research was inadequate to show why this was wrong. Therefore, she quit Demos and began a three-year journey across the country to learn about political opinions and the psychology behind them. Her mission was to change the rules to bring economic freedom to those who lacked it. She looked at studies that showed that people who believed white people’s status was threatened by an increasing population of POC were more likely to be against race-neutral economic policies like raising the minimum wage. She was baffled that white people resisted policies that would benefit them.

McGhee says, “In my gut, I’ve always known that laws are merely expressions of society’s dominant beliefs.” If policies change before these beliefs change, such as with Brown v. Board of Education, the problem will stay. McGhee explains this is also true about the belief by many white Americans that increases in the status of POC will reduce white Americans’ status. Studies showed that people who believed this strongly were against even race-neutral policies, such as raising the minimum wage. McGhee was surprised that white voters would believe this so strongly that they would vote against policies that would benefit them. However, she says, “this zero-sum paradigm is the default framework for conservative media.” There have been cases where white people have benefited from systemic racism: better school funding and less contact with the police. But in many cases, racism hurts white people too. McGhee contemplates, “Racism accelerates inequality for communities of color . . . What if racism is . . . driving inequality for everyone?”

McGhee lists various people she talked to in writing this book. She states she understands the risks of what she’s doing. She states that only the wealthiest benefit from this “racial bargain.” They are selling this story for their own profit.

Chapter 1

As a child, McGhee was part of what she calls the “fragile middle class,” with no assets and income from volatile earnings. Her parents came of age right as the Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act were signed, outlawing explicitly racist barriers. At that time, the American Dream was as easy to achieve as ever, but labor and trade laws changed that. By the author’s 18th birthday, 40 percent of working adults couldn’t reliably meet their basic needs, and many lacked health care. The richest one percent owned as much as the entire middle class.

The author wondered why people wanted to blame POC for economic woes. When she came across a study called “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing,” by two Harvard professors, she decided to visit them. They found that white people saw racism as a zero-sum game but that Black people didn’t. They didn’t really understand it.

The story of the United States’ rise has a lot to do with race, McGhee says. Race was used to justify taking Indigenous land and enslaving Black people. The government justified this action by stating that the Indigenous people were heathens. They were able to spend very little on slaves and use them for profit, even increasing their profit through rape. There was no profit in sharing with Black or Indigenous people then. At that time, McGhee writes, many white Americans were also less than free, due to indentures and other forms of bondage. But enslaved people’s bondage extended to every aspect of their lives. However, poor white people could see themselves as above Black people, and affluent white women who owned enslaved people had some freedom, since the slaves would do their work. The United States was able to fight its war for independence due to selling tobacco grown by enslaved people. The northern states profited from slavery as well. It was as if they felt someone had to suffer, so it would have to be Black people, not white people.

McGhee must acknowledge that the immiseration of Black people benefited white people. However, it has always benefited only a few while hurting the many. “The zero-sum is a story sold by wealthy interests for their own profit,” she writes.

McGhee cites several examples of this belief. For example, she says many white people fear affirmative action, but they are more likely to be competing against another white person, especially since POC are less likely to be able to afford college. In the example of welfare, the majority of people receiving government assistance are white. McGhee blames Fox News for spreading the zero-sum story.

Chapter 2

The United States has the world’s largest economy, with more than enough money to feed and educate its population and have a high standard of living. Yet, McGhee points out, its per capita government spending is near the bottom of industrialized countries.

In 1857, Hinton Rowan Helper (1829–1909), a white southerner, wrote an antislavery book in which he stated that slavery diminished white nonslaveholding southerners. There were fewer schools, libraries, and other resources for people in slave states than in free states. Value of northern land was higher than land in southern states too. The South didn’t support education, innovation, and small enterprise because slaveholding plantation owners had all the wealth and didn’t need others to be educated.

Currently, McGhee writes, most of the poorest states in the United States and the states with the least educational attainment are in the South. Both Black and white people there are poor. A functioning society requires the government to do things individuals cannot, such as build roads and public schools. Historically, white people have gotten more from the government than Black people. For example, the Homestead Act of 1862 gave homesteads to very few Black people. Government-insured mortgages during the Great Depression helped white people, but there were red lines (meaning “Do Not Lend”) around Black neighborhoods, so Black people couldn’t get loans. The G.I. Bill paid college tuition for white veterans, but the government encouraged Black G.I.s to go to trade schools.

In the time before World War II, municipalities built big, beautiful public pools to serve their towns. But when the NAACP started to sue these local governments to get them to integrate the pools, many municipalities simply closed them down. Now, people may not remember the pools, but McGhee says, “the spirit . . . lives on . . . more reflected in a pool of resources than a literal one.”

In the 1950s, most white Americans believed the government should take an activist role in people’s lives, such as guaranteeing a job to anyone who wanted one and ensuring a minimum standard of living. In 1963, Americans saw the March on Washington, and after that, popular support for government programs shrank. While white people are not likely to state that POC are biologically inferior to them, McGhee says, they may still believe that Black culture and behavior are different. A study showed that, while white people believe in racial equality more than they used to, “backing for policies designed to bring equality and integration about has scarcely increased at all.” McGhee notes this is true even if the policies are not phrased as being race based. “When people . . . see [some] of the populace as inferior . . . their definition of ‘the public’ becomes conditional,” she writes.

In the past, white leaders believed that they were creating benefits for other white men who were like them. McGhee says they were not able to see themselves or their grandparents in the POC and women who were demanding a seat at the table. President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) characterized those who needed government programs and aid as lazy and undeserving.

The author’s professor Ian Haney López (born 1964) wrote the book Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, in which he explained the Southern Strategy used by Reagan and other Republicans: “First, fear people of color. Then, hate the government (which coddles . . . [them]). Finally, trust the market.” The government gaslights people through racist stereotyping, McGhee says. Lee Atwater (1951–1991), who was a strategist for Reagan and George H. W. Bush (1924–2018), stated that you can’t use the word “n—–” but you can say “forced busing” or “states’ rights” and then talk about cutting taxes. McGhee argues that Republicans tied welfare to “the inner city” and “the undeserving poor” to get people to vote for them with a stereotype of Black people as “takers” and white people as “makers.”

McGhee recalls a white girl in her seventh-grade class who stated that her family was “fiscally conservative but socially liberal.” Everyone approved, even though fiscal restraint means that one out of six children live in poverty.

According to López, conservatives want people to see government as the enemy so that they will accept “concentrated wealth and corporate power.” Most white voters have voted against Democrats since it became the party of civil rights under Lyndon Johnson (1908–1973). However, McGhee writes, the majority of white voters support Democratic policies, such as government takeover of health insurance. Most white voters will say that their reasons for what they believe have nothing to do with race. If asked in a poll, they will express a nonracist reason, even for their dislike of former President Barack Obama (born 1961). McGhee says many white Americans think of themselves as “nonracist fiscal conservatives.” They may also claim it’s the liberals and the POC who are the racists. Shock jocks like Rush Limbaugh (1951–2021) have encouraged this thinking by claiming that POC want revenge on white people.

Racism hurts nonwealthy white people because it turns them against government programs that could help them too, McGhee writes. European countries have benefits of health care, retirement, and free or low-priced college that the United States doesn’t have. Although Black people get hurt more when government services get cut, McGhee says, “What’s lost in the formulation is how much white people get hurt too.”

Analysis: Introduction–Chapter 2

Throughout the book, McGhee will reference what she calls the “zero-sum paradigm.”

This refers to what is known in game theory as a “zero-sum game,” a situation where one person’s win must come at the expense of the other person’s loss. Similarly, a zero-sum paradigm is an us-versus-them mentality, where one group cannot progress without another group being set back. McGhee says some white people believe—and conservative media teaches them to believe—that non-white people cannot improve without white people losing out, as if the groups are in direct competition for jobs and other benefits.

McGhee uses the pool as a symbol in this section. She paints a picture of white people, happily swimming in beautiful pools. Then, when Black people were invited in, the pools disappeared. It shows what white people are missing out on because they don’t want to invite Black people in to join them.

The idea that racism hurts everyone, a main idea of the book, is introduced in this section. The author seeks to show through her research that racism is what keeps people from voting for politicians who espouse policies that will help them. However, most white people will not acknowledge that they are racist, so politicians must use a code, or a “dog whistle.” The first example of this in the book is McGhee’s description of the conversation she overheard in front of the senator’s office. The senator didn’t say he didn’t want programs to benefit POC. Rather, he stated that he didn’t want people who fathered babies with multiple women to be able to avoid paying child support by filing for bankruptcy. Other coded terms include “states’ rights,” “smaller government,” “forced busing,” and other terms that sound race-neutral but will be understood to refer to being against Black people.