Summary Of Heather Mcghee's 'The Sum Of Us'

In chapter 1 of The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee recalls her childhood growing up in the “fragile middle class”. She took note of her parents and neighbors in similar situations as they worked to stay in that middle class bracket. She came to terms with other family members having more than she did, but didn’t shy away from asking “why” when it came to poverty in Chicago. Her father grew up around the time of the Voting Rights Act and her mother the Fair Housing Act. Both were Black individuals living in America experiencing what McGhee calls a “glimpse of the so-called American Dream”. That dream would soon be taken away as income quickly became too little to pay for even the basic necessities like food and housing. This was the reality for nearly
This zero-sum paradigm can be described as white people feeling discriminated against when they see people of color making progress. She was upset with these findings and began to seek answers from our country's past stating, “if it's an idea that we've chosen to adopt, that means it's one that we can choose to abandon.” Since the Colonial Era, racism has been ever present in the United States. Europeans justified enslavement and land theft with this system of hierarchy, and the economy depended on these systems of exploitation. The zero sum relationship was ever present as white people benefited directly from enslaved people. In the 1600s, it was taken a step further as colonial governments implemented zero-sum laws. These laws took poor white people from the bottom of the pyramid as rights were stripped from black
Already at a disadvantage to the systems of oppression, people of color tend to lose that battle at a growing rate. The zero sum story that white people should see the success of peo­ple of color as a threat to their own success is passed down and until we have a universal progressive change in mindset, no one will benefit. I personally love seeing the connection between things that happened in the past and present day. I think there is a lot of value in looking at how far we’ve come as a nation, but also our flaws and how we have, or still have to, grow in order to right our wrongs. This is the first reading this semester that I was able to understand as I read. The historical references mentioned by McGhee really shape her argument and the extent to which the zero-sum-paradigm has found itself deeply rooted in American history. As years have passed and some work has been done to close the equality gap since the start of our country, we have to acknowledge that zero sum thinking doesn’t necessarily look the same. For starters, slavery is illegal in the United States. On the other hand, there are still many policies and systems in place that are run by zero sum