First published 2024
Tracie McMillan poses a direct question: if racism costs people of color so much, what financial benefits do white people receive? She starts by examining three generations of her own family, tracing their modest wealth back to American policies that favored whites. McMillan tracks the complexities of this advantage through personal tragedy. Her mother died at 44 in a nursing home on Medicaid. Her family fell apart. A small inheritance came from her banker grandfather. McMillan assigns actual dollar amounts to the benefits whiteness brought her life. She then studies four other white subjects from different generations across the country. Moving between these cases and her family story, McMillan demonstrates how racial privilege creates material advantages across different classes, time periods, and locations. She connects the abuse people suffer at home with the abuse America permits in public spaces.
Genres: non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, american-history
Vibes: intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: personal-narrative, social-commentary
Setting: America
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
464 pages · Hardcover · Henry Holt and Co.
Content warnings: racism