The Sum of Us

McGhee describes how autoworkers at a Nissan plant voted against unionizing in 2017, despite the benefits that unionization would bring. Unionization had transformed factory work in the United States from a dangerous, low-paid occupation to secure, relatively safe employment that helped many access to the middle class. As McGhee describes—using an example from her own life about an uncle who was in a union in Chicago and had bonds with white men as a result—unions also transcended racial boundaries.

Despite the obvious benefits of unions, union membership in America has declined since the mid-20th century, especially since the 1970s, when employers began punishing workers for unionizing despite laws against doing so. Employers began “accepting fines and fees as a tolerable cost of doing business” (114). This trajectory was accelerated by globalization and automation, which weakened workers’ bargaining position, but McGhee regards racism as the main culprit. Just as more Black workers joined unions, unions declined in popularity among white Americans. Over time, opponents of organized labor cast unions as the refuge for “lazy Black people,” fueling white resentment and opposition to unions. McGhee notes that it likely isn’t a coincidence that these stereotypes are most pervasive in the South, where union membership is lowest and where the economy was built on slave labor.

From here, McGhee writes that another motivation for white workers who oppose unions is the status that comes with whiteness, which is threatened by collective bargaining and increased rights for Black workers. McGhee traces this zero-sum calculus back to the 19th century, when Irish immigrants, who began their lives in America working menial jobs alongside Black workers, came to aggressively enforce racial hierarchy as a way of aligning themselves with powerful whites. In doing so, they protected their perceived interests, including access to work: “becoming ‘white’ afforded them a civic and social esteem that could be constantly compared against the Black second-class citizens one rung below them” (124). In other words, by keeping Black workers consistently at the bottom of the hierarchy, white Americans could feel superior—even if their wages remained low.

Despite the challenges these divisions have posed to organized labor in the United States, there have been surprising victories, including the fight that began with a 2012 protest by fast-food workers in New York and led to a nationwide campaign for a $15 minimum wage. The campaign included Black activist Terrence Wise, a Burger King worker from Kansas City who received a raise after participating in a walkout, and Bridget Hughes, a white fast-food employee who joined the multiracial coalition after realizing that racism and the divisions it creates only serve the interests of employers. While the Fight for $15 coalition was successful because of its multiracial composition, it was white workers who benefited most, since the majority of workers earning less than $15 an hour are white. McGhee notes that, unlike the union drive at the Nissan plant, the Fight for $15 campaign succeeded because it explicitly cited the benefits of solidarity and acknowledged the harm that racism inflicts on all people.

McGhee opens Chapter 6 by noting that American democracy, which is founded on the right to vote, has only ever been partial, with power concentrated in the hands of a white elite. This dates back to the United States’ founding, when the writers of the Constitution restricted voting to property-owning white men and maintained a system of slavery.

In the following century, poor white farmers and Black citizens made attempts build alliances that furthered policies promoting the public good. Elites resisted these alliances by tempting white citizens with privileges that were denied to their Black counterparts. When these division tactics were successful, elites set about denying franchise to Black and white voters alike through tactics like a poll tax and the requirement of registration before voting. Another tactic was the denial of franchise to those with felony convictions, with “felony” defined in such a way to disproportionately target Black people: “the disenfranchisement laws, combined with discriminatory policing and sentencing, hit their target and today ensnare one in thirteen African American voters” (145). Both then and now, many of those impacted by such policies are white.

America’s confusing and discriminatory voting practices mean government officials are elected by a relatively small proportion of the population when compared with other democracies. Within the United States, the whitest states have the easiest voting systems; the states where voting is hardest, like Mississippi, have the highest percentage of Black citizens. New barriers continue to be erected; following the election of Barack Obama, many states have made it harder for people to vote in ways that specifically target Black voters. Tactics include requiring voters to have photo ID (which people of color disproportionately do not have), requiring names to match across all government documents, and requiring voters to respond to an official postcard requiring verification of address (young people, renters, and people of color are less likely to respond to official mail) or else have their names struck from voter lists. Yet such “purges” affected white people as well, such as Larry Harmon, a white veteran who was eliminated from the voter rolls.

Many of the restrictions on voters’ rights have been crafted and promoted by a network of lawmakers and advocacy groups funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, whose influence was exposed by historian Nancy MacLean. In a storehouse of papers belonging to conservative economist James Buchanan, MacLean found evidence of a network of right-wing libertarians “opposed to the very idea of democracy,” instead favoring a model of extreme wealth inequality and no corporate regulation or taxation (154). To pursue this vision, the network has targeted voting rights, operating under the ideology that a functional democracy will undermine their consolidation of corporate power. Racism is a useful tool in pursuing this end; for instance, racist tropes painting Black and brown people as perpetrators of voter fraud made legislation that restricts voting rights, which might otherwise be unpopular, more palatable.

Underlying these tropes is a zero-sum assumption about voting, McGhee writes: As one group gains more status, another loses it. But the story of the 1965 Voting Rights Act shows that this is not the case. The Voting Rights Act allowed a million Black voters in the South to register in the years after its introduction, but poor white voters benefitted too. This led to more responsive governments and better investment in initiatives—such as infrastructure funding for hospitals and schools—that benefited the whole of society, not just the ruling elite.

But even as the Voting Rights Act extended franchise to Black voters, the increasing influence of campaign donors eroded the voting process. Since the 1970s, politicians’ policy agendas have been increasingly set by their donors—who are disproportionately ultrawealthy—and not by the needs of their constituents. Most Americans see this as a problem, McGhee writes, and some states have sought to enact change, including Connecticut, which created a Citizens’ Election Program in 2004. The program offered candidates who raised enough grassroots donations from constituents access to public grants to help pay for their campaigns. Consequently, candidates spent more time listening to the needs of citizens, and the legislature became more diverse and more dedicated to passing public-interest legislation. McGhee ends the chapter on a hopeful note, writing that despite significant challenges, American democracy has been broadened over the course of the country’s history, and it can be broadened further still by those willing to fight for it.