Wanting to study modern leftist thought, I decided to read Heather McGhee’s bestseller The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. After all, it was festooned with blurbs by the likes of The New York Times, Oprah Daily, George Saunders, Ibram X. Kendi, Robert B. Reich, and David Axelrod.
In her book, she argues that most American Whites are racists who believe in a zero-sum paradigm: if people of color gain, then Whites lose. As a consequence, Whites prevent POC from succeeding, and the top 1% benefit from racial strife while other Americans of all races and ethnicities lead stunted lives full of misery and woe. Regular Whites can demolish the paradigm and the suffering it causes by joining with POC in social solidarity and spending more government money, especially on POC. (I am not sure how calling someone a racist encourages that person to ally with the name caller, but I will let that pass.)
Has Heather McGhee spent her life staggering through this bleak American landscape that brutalizes almost everyone? Let us see.
McGhee’s parents divorced when she was young — her father started a new family while her mother, her brother, and she lived with financial challenges. She had four strikes against her (one more than in baseball): she was Black; she was female; she was raised in a single-parent household; and she was a member of the “fragile middle class” which lacked “nice things”. But was she out? Not at all.
Her parents sacrificed to pay for her attendance at an outstanding boarding school where she encountered “loving teachers.” After graduating, she earned degrees from Yale and Berkeley Law before becoming president of the leftist think tank Demos which she headed from 2014 to 2018. Over the last decade, she has frequently appeared on Meet the Press, Real Time with Bill Maher, and other television shows. By one estimate, her net worth as of 2023 is over four million dollars. At the age of 42, she has more wealth and prestige than almost all of her imagined oppressors. Her life refutes her argument, but there is more.
When Heather McGhee served as Demos president for four years, how did she wield her power on the all-important social solidarity front? Let her speak for herself: “At the end of my tenure, my three-quarters white organization had become a majority-people-of-color think tank.”
How was this achieved and why? Did she violate Equal Protection, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations? I have no idea. I do know that if a White man had accomplished a similar transformation, but in the opposite direction, there would have been hell (and legal settlements) to pay. Heather McGhee’s actions speak more loudly than her published words.
Racism never thwarted Heather McGhee in her personal or professional life, despite her claims that America is irredeemably racist. At the same time, when given the opportunity, she immediately transformed the Demos staff to reflect her racial/ethnic preferences. Ironic, wouldn’t you say?
Image: YouTube video screen grab.