Notes

 

Introduction

largest group of the uninsured Forty-one percent of the uninsured as of 2018 are white; the next-largest share is “Hispanic” (of any race), at 37 percent. There are 18 million white Americans living under the poverty line; the next-largest demographic group is “Hispanic” (of any race), at 11 million. Jennifer Tolbert et al., “Key Facts about the Uninsured Population,” Uninsured, KFF, December 13, 2019, https://www.kff.org/​uninsured/​issue-brief/​key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population; “Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity (2018),” State Health Facts, KFF, https://www.kff.org/​other/​state-indicator/​poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity.

more likely to be in debt Tamara Draut and Javier Silva, “Borrowing to Make Ends Meet: The Growth of Credit Card Debt in the ’90s,” Demos, September 1, 2013, https://www.demos.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​borrowing_exec2.pdf.

legislation to limit credit card rates and fees Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, 15 U.S.C , § 1601 (2009).

Legislators passed a bankruptcy reform bill Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, 109th U.S. Cong., § 256 (2005).

ever to escape their debts The bankruptcy reform bill raised the cost of filing for bankruptcy, implemented a means test, and made the path to a total “fresh start” Chapter Seven bankruptcy narrower. A 2010 study of the impact of the law noted, “Since BAPCPA’s enactment, median family incomes have declined, basic expenses have risen, debt loads have multiplied, and the number of foreclosures and loan defaults has increased. Yet, fewer families have taken advantage of the bankruptcy debt relief system.” Lois R. Lupica, “The Costs of BAPCPA: Report of the Pilot Study of Consumer Bankruptcy Cases,” American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review 18 (2010): 51, https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/​faculty-publications/​39. It also made private student loans as difficult (nearly impossible) to discharge under bankruptcy as federally guaranteed student loans. See “No Recourse: Putting an End to Bankruptcy’s Student Loan Exception,” Demos, 2015, https://www.demos.org/​research/​no-recourse-putting-end-bankruptcys-student-loan-exception.

About how quick so many white people In a 2010 survey, 70 percent of white people agreed that “Irish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors,” and 56 percent agreed that “it’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.” Christopher Parker, “2010 Multi-state Survey on Race and Politics,” University of Washington Institute for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Sexuality, http://depts.washington.edu/​uwiser/​mssrp_table.pdf.

cultural organizing of white grievance Various studies found that racial grievance was important to organizing the Tea Party. Kristin Haltinner, “Individual Responsibility, Culture, or State Organized Enslavement? How Tea Party Activists Frame Racial Inequality,” Sociological Perspectives 59, no. 2 (2016): 395–418.

The majority of white Americans Fifty-four percent of white voters voted for Donald Trump in 2016, and preliminary exit polls from November 3, 2020, show that 57 percent of white voters voted for him in 2020. While Trump’s vote share appears to have grown by about 3 percentage points among Black, Latinx, and Asian American voters, white voters remained the only racial group to give majority support to Trump. “An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters,” U.S. Politics and Policy, Pew Research Center, August 9, 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/​politics/​2018/​08/​09/​an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters; Edison Research November 2020 Exit Polls for National Election Pool, November 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2020/​11/​03/​us/​elections/​exit-polls-president.html.

Psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson, “On the Precipice of a ‘Majority-Minority’ America: Perceived Status Threat from the Racial Demographic Shift Affects White Americans’ Political Ideology,” Psychological Science 25, no. 6 (2014): 1191, 1189, https://doi.org/​10.1177/​0956797614527113; Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson, “Information About the US Racial Demographic Shift Triggers Concerns About Anti-White Discrimination Among the Prospective White ‘Minority,’ ” PLoS ONE 12, no. 9 (2017), https://doi.org/​10.1371/​journal.pone.0185389. See also Brenda Major, Alison Blodorn, and Gregory Major Blascovich, “The Threat of Increasing Diversity: Why Many White Americans Support Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election,” Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 21, no. 6 (Sept. 2018): 931–40, https://doi.org/​10.1177/​1368430216677304, finding that “Reminding White Americans high in ethnic identification that non-White racial groups will outnumber Whites in the United States by 2042 caused them to become more concerned about the declining status and influence of White Americans as a group (i.e., experience group status threat), and caused them to report increased support for Trump and anti-immigrant policies, as well as greater opposition to political correctness.” Additionally, see H. Robert Outten, et al., “Majority Group Members’ Negative Reactions to Future Demographic Shifts Depend on the Perceived Legitimacy of Their Status: Findings from the United States and Portugal,” Frontiers in Psychology 9, no.79 (Feb 2018), https://doi.org/​10.3389/​fpsyg.2018.00079. According to this study, “White Americans who perceived their status to be highly legitimate expressed greater intergroup threat, and negative feelings (anger and fear) toward minorities after exposure to projections with a large decline in the relative size of the White American population.”

Latinx factory worker is paid less “Since 2000, the wage gap between Hispanic workers and their peers has remained practically unchanged: Hispanic men working full time made 14.9 percent less in hourly wages in 2016 compared to white men (compared to 17.8 percent in 2000), and Hispanic women made 33.1 percent less than white counterparts (compared to 35.1 percent in 2000).” Kari Paul, “Hispanic Workers Continue to Make Significantly Less than White Workers,” MarketWatch, July 3, 2018, https://www.marketwatch.com/​story/​hispanic-workers-continue-to-make-significantly-less-than-white-workers-2018-07-03.

rates are near thirty-year lows Jonnelle Marte, “ ‘We Haven’t Made Any Progress’: Black Homeownership Is Stuck Near 30-Year Lows,” Washington Post, July 6, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​business/​economy/​the-black-white-employment-gap-has-closed-but-the-homeownership-gap-has-not-heres-why/​2018/​07/​06/​1c6943dc-7ef6-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html.

African Americans just don’t buy that “Our research also suggests that among whites, there’s a lingering view that the American Dream is a ‘fixed pie,’ such that the advancement of one group of citizens must come at the expense of all the other groups. Whites told us they see things as a zero-sum game: Any improvements for black Americans, they believe, are likely to come at a direct cost to whites. Black respondents in our surveys, meanwhile, report believing that outcomes for blacks can improve without affecting outcomes for white Americans.” Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, “White People Think Racism Is Getting Worse. Against White People,” Washington Post, July 21, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​posteverything/​wp/​2016/​07/​21/​white-people-think-racism-is-getting-worse-against-white-people/. Based on Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game that They Are Now Losing,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 3 (May 2011): 215–18.

ended up being a boon Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013).

racial inequality topping the list Edison Research November 2020 Exit Polls.

lied to Americans Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, “Trump Is Averaging More than 50 False or Misleading Claims A Day,” Washington Post, October 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​2020/​10/​22/​president-trump-is-averaging-more-than-50-false-or-misleading-claims-day/.

white supremacist terror groups See, for example, Cassie Miller and Howard Graves, “When the Alt-Right Hits the Streets: Far-Right Political Rallies in the Trump Era,” Southern Poverty Law Center, August 10, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/​20200810/​when-alt-right-hit-streets-far-right-political-rallies-trump-era.

mismanaged and downplayed See, for example, Whitney Shefte and Jorge Ribas, “America’s Pandemic,” Washington Post, October 27, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​graphics/​2020/​national/​administrations-pandemic-documentary/.

Chapter One: An Old Story: The Zero-Sum Hierarchy

“the fragile middle class” Teresa A. Sullivan et al., The Fragile Middle Class: Americans in Debt (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). See also Maura Cheeks, “American Wealth Is Broken,” The Atlantic, July 31, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/​family/​archive/​2019/​07/​the-wealth-gap-taints-americas-success-stories/​593719.

notorious Robert Taylor public housing projects Built in 1959 as the world’s largest public housing project, the Taylor homes were soon subject to disinvestment by Chicago and fell into serious disrepair. By the 1980s, these projects were the site of drug and gang wars. Aaron Modica, “Robert R. Taylor Homes, Chicago, Illinois (1959–2005),” BlackPast, December 19, 2009, https://www.blackpast.org/​african-american-history/​robert-taylor-homes-chicago-illinois-1959-2005. See also “Robert Taylor Homes,” Chicago Gang History, https://chicagoganghistory.com/​housing-project/​robert-taylor-homes.

so many people sleeping “Nationally between 1973 and 1993, 2.2 million low-rent units disappeared from the housing market while demand increased by 4.7 million units. Chicago has lost 11,500 units, with 117,000 households unable to find affordable housing. At present, Chicago faces losing 18,000 public housing units, which would displace 42,000 people.” In Dr. John Hobbs, “Homelessness Is a Complex Issue,” Chicago Tribune, February 14, 1999, https://www.chicagotribune.com/​news/​ct-xpm-1999-02-14-9902140071-story.html. The flight of working- and middle-class whites to the suburbs in the 1970s and ’80s, along with investments in spaces such as the Magnificent Mile and Navy Pier, meant to attract wealthy taxpayers, contributed to and intensified the production of homelessness in Chicago. Police in Chicago conducted regular “sweeps” of Lower Wacker Drive every few weeks in the early 1990s in order to disperse the homeless who gathered there, with sanitation workers stealing their shelter and belongings. See Talmadge Wright, Out of Place: Homeless Mobilizations, Subcities, and Contested Landscapes (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 124, 192.

40 percent of adults Breno Braga et al., “Working to Make Ends Meet During Good Economic Times,” Urban Institute, February 2019, https://www.urban.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publication/​99772/​working_to_make_ends_meet_during_good_economic_times.pdf.

Only about two out of three About two-thirds of workers in the private sector have access to a retirement plan, overwhelmingly defined-contribution, not defined-benefit. “Data on Workers’ Access to Retirement Plans and Take Up Rates,” Pension Rights Center, 2019, http://www.pensionrights.org/​node/​3015; 47 percent of private employers offered health insurance benefits in 2019. “Percent of Private Sector Establishments that Offer Health Insurance to Employees (2019),” State Health Facts, KFF, n.d., https://www.kff.org/​other/​state-indicator/​percent-of-firms-offering-coverage/​?currentTimeframe=0&selectedRows=%7B%22wrapups%22:%7B%22united-states%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D; 75 percent of private sector employees had access to paid sick days, and 21 percent had access to paid family leave. “Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2020,” US Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 2020, https://www.bls.gov/​news.release/​ebs2.nr0.htm.

Upward mobility Someone born to less-educated parents has a better chance of ending up in the top quarter of educational attainment in all but three of the United States’ wealthy peer countries. “Fair Progress? Economic Mobility Across Generations Around the World,” The World Bank, May 9, 2018, https://www.worldbank.org/​en/​topic/​poverty/​publication/​fair-progress-economic-mobility-across-generations-around-the-world.

the 350 biggest corporations Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, “CEO Compensation Has Grown 940% Since 1978,” Economic Policy Institute, August 14, 2019, https://www.epi.org/​publication/​ceo-compensation-2018.

CEO-to-worker pay gaps Sahid Fawaz, “In 1965, the CEO–Worker Pay Ratio Was 20 to 1,” Labor 411 (blog), February 17, 2020, http://labor411.org/​411-blog/​in-1965-the-ceo-worker-pay-ratio-was-25-to-1-in-2020-these-19-companies-pay-ceos-over-1000-to-1.

The richest 1 percent Alexandre Tanzi and Michael Sasso, “Richest 1% of Americans Close to Surpassing Wealth of the Middle Class,” Bloomberg, November 9, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/​news/​articles/​2019-11-09/​one-percenters-close-to-surpassing-wealth-of-u-s-middle-class.

a study by two Boston-based scholars Michael I. Norton and Samuel R. Sommers, “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game that They Are Now Losing,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 3 (May 2011): 215–18.

Harvard Business School James B. Stewart, “How Harvard Business School Has Reshaped American Capitalism,” review of The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite, by Duff McDonald, New York Times Book Review, April 24, 2017.

white Tea Party movement Of the 18 percent of Americans who identified as Tea Party supporters in a 2012 poll, 89 percent were white. Brian Montopoli, “Tea Party Supporters: Who They Are and What They Believe,” CBS News, December 14, 2012, https://www.cbsnews.com/​news/​tea-party-supporters-who-they-are-and-what-they-believe.

from corporations Phil Wahba, “The Number of Black CEOs in the Fortune 500 Remains Very Low,” Fortune, June 1, 2020, https://fortune.com/​2020/​06/​01/​black-ceos-fortune-500-2020-african-american-business-leaders.

90 percent A comprehensive research project from the Women Donors Network showed that “white men hold 65% of elected seats, although they are only 31% of the population—effectively constituting a ‘veto-proof minority’ in our political system.” See “2014–15 Demographics of Power,” Who Leads Us? Women Donors Network, https://wholeads.us/​wp-content/​uploads/​2018/​09/​wholeads2014.pdf.

it changed the amount of carbon Alexander Koch et al., “Earth System Impacts of the European Arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492,” Quaternary Science Reviews 207 (March 2019): 13–36, https://doi.org/​10.1016/​j.quascirev.2018.12.004.

ill-gotten land for free The Homestead Act of 1862 benefited more than 1.5 million white families. By the time it ended in 1934, “more than 270 million acres of western land had been transferred to individuals, almost all of whom were white. Nearly 10 percent of all the land in the entire U.S. was given to homesteaders for little more than a filing fee.” Keri Leigh Merritt, “Land and the Roots of African-American Poverty,” Aeon, March 11, 2016, https://aeon.co/​ideas/​land-and-the-roots-of-african-american-poverty.

Colonial slavery The United States perfected chattel slavery, but it did not invent it. Rulers and elites in ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome had slaves, usually captives from conquests, and in medieval western Europe, eastern Europeans (“slavs”) were actually the most common slaves. However, while slavery existed in ancient and medieval times, people in those eras didn’t believe that humans deserved to be enslaved because of some unchangeable “racial” status, a hallmark of slavery in the United States. See, for example, Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).

“Thomas Jefferson described” Caitlin Rosenthal, “Slavery’s Scientific Management: Accounting for Mastery,” in Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, ed. Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 86.

“less than they needed” Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 309. Even clothing costs could be skimmed: Carter’s uncle made his enslaved workers partially pay for their clothes by selling from their cabin gardens (p. 310). Black people were also left to provide for their own medical needs, from childbirth to illness (and often forced to share their craft of midwifery or medicine with owners and local white people).

life insurance on their slaves Rachel L. Swarns, “Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated Past,” New York Times, December 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/​2016/​12/​18/​us/​insurance-policies-on-slaves-new-york-lifes-complicated-past.html.

many northern corporations Zoe Thomas, “The Hidden Links Between Slavery and Wall Street,” BBC News, August 29, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/​news/​business-49476247.

all the way up to 1846 Rather than emancipating slaves within the state, this act turned them into “apprentices for life.” When the Civil War began, New Jersey slaveholders owned eighteen such apprentices for life. Geneva Smith, “Legislating Slavery in New Jersey,” Princeton and Slavery, https://slavery.princeton.edu/​stories/​legislating-slavery-in-new-jersey.

port cities in Rhode Island Rhode Island’s eighteenth-century economy was heavily dependent on the slave trade, both in human captives and the material goods of the “Triangle Trade,” molasses and rum. Christy Clark-Pujara finds that 60 percent of all the slave ships that left North America came from Rhode Island. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island (New York: NYU Press, 2016). See also Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade, 1700–1807 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1981).

filled the Massachusetts textile mills See, for example, Ronald Bailey, “The Other Side of Slavery: Black Labor, Cotton, and Textile Industrialization in Great Britain and the United States,” Agricultural History 68, no. 2 (1994): 35–50, http://www.jstor.org/​stable/​3744401.

capitalized the future Wall Street banks Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, “America’s First Bond Market Was Backed by Enslaved Human Beings,” Forbes, September 1, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/​sites/​pedrodacosta/​2019/​09/​01/​americas-first-bond-market-was-backed-by-enslaved-human-beings/​#2b55fc4a1888; David Teather, “Bank Admits It Owned Slaves,” Guardian, January 21, 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/​world/​2005/​jan/​22/​usa.davidteather.

market value of $3 billion Roger L. Ransom, “The Economics of the Civil War,” Economic History Association, EH.net, https://eh.net/​encyclopedia/​the-economics-of-the-civil-war.

New York merchants had gotten so rich Peter Moskowitz, “New York City’s Surprising Role Funding Slavery and Profiting Off the Civil War,” Vice, August 6, 2016, https://www.vice.com/​en_us/​article/​mvkgay/​city-of-seditiion-new-york-citys-surprising-role-in-funding-slavery-and-the-civil-war.

advocated that his city secede John Lockwood and Charles Lockwood, “First South Carolina. Then New York?” Opinionator (blog), New York Times, January 6, 2011, https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/​2011/​01/​06/​first-south-carolina-then-new-york.

“At a time when most men” Greg Grandin, The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World (New York: Metropolitan, 2014), 7.

people at the bottom Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (New York: Viking, 2016), 17–21.

Bacon’s Rebellion Heather McGhee, “Bacon’s Rebellion, 1674–1679” in 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619–2019 (New York: One World, 2021).

“basically uncivil” Morgan, American Slavery, 329.

“profits to the poor” Morgan, American Slavery, 333.

A 1669 Virginia colony law Morgan, American Slavery, 312, from William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, vol. 2 (New York: R. & W. & G. Bartow, 1823), 270.

posted on church doors Morgan, American Slavery, 312.

ads of Black people seeking relatives A collaboration between Villanova University’s graduate history program and Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia has created a digital library of such ads, “Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery,” http://informationwanted.org.

economic stake that white women In an interview, Jones-Rogers notes, “Some of my preliminary data show that white women constituted approximately 40% of all the slave owners in my data sets. This is a figure that also holds in data collected by Catherine Hall at the University College London,” in “Unmasked: Many White Women Were Southern Slave Owners, Too,” Berkeley News, UC Berkeley, October 25, 2019, https://news.berkeley.edu/​2019/​10/​25/​white-women-slaveholders-q-a.

independent of their husbands’ estates Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), xiv.

white mother rocking her chair Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property, 11.

“To a large degree” Morgan, American Slavery, 5.

people from European communities For example, Thomas Paine writes in Common Sense (1776), “Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.” Common Sense and Other Writings (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 21.

Ten out of the eleven passages David Waldstreicher, “How the Constitution Was Indeed Pro-Slavery,” The Atlantic, September 19, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2015/​09/​how-the-constitution-was-indeed-pro-slavery/​406288.

three-fifths of their enslaved Article, 1 Section 2, of the U.S. Constitution reads, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

nearly one-fifth of the population According to the 1790 Census, the total population was 3,929,214, and the total Black population was 757,208, which is 19.2 percent. “1790 Census: Return of the Whole Number of Persons Within the Several Districts of the United States,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/​library/​publications/​1793/​dec/​number-of-persons.html.

“if Lincoln is elected” Lockwood and Lockwood, “First South Carolina. Then New York?”

The idea of affirmative action W. Carson Byrd, “Most White Americans Will Never Be Affected by Affirmative Action. So Why Do They Hate It So Much?” Washington Post, October 18, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​nation/​2018/​10/​19/​most-white-americans-will-never-experience-affirmative-action-so-why-do-they-hate-it-so-much.

Some white people even believe Ashley C. Ford, “PSA: Black People Do Not Go to College for Free,” Refinery29, August 2, 2017, https://www.refinery29.com/​en-us/​2017/​08/​166293/​no-free-college-for-black-people.

wind up paying more for college Judith Scott-Clayton and Jing Li, “Black-White Disparity in Student Loan Debt More than Triples After Graduation,” Brookings Institution, October 20, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/​research/​black-white-disparity-in-student-loan-debt-more-than-triples-after-graduation.

competing with another white person “Using 1989 data from a representative sample of selective schools, former university presidents William Bowen and Derek Bok showed in their 1998 book, The Shape of the River, that eliminating racial preferences would have increased the likelihood of admission for white undergraduate applicants from 25 percent to only 26.5 percent.” Goodwin Liu, “The Myth and Math of Affirmative Action,” Washington Post, April 14, 2002, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​archive/​opinions/​2002/​04/​14/​the-myth-and-math-of-affirmative-action/​60096413-672b-4a4f-8dd1-8d38a7f282e9.

billionaire Rupert Murdoch See David McKnight, Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power (Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2012); Jane Mayer, “The Making of the Fox News White House,” New Yorker, March 4, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/​magazine/​2019/​03/​11/​the-making-of-the-fox-news-white-house.

Chapter Two: Racism Drained the Pool

near the bottom of the list General Government Spending (graph), OECD, https://data.oecd.org/​gga/​general-government-spending.htm.

roads, bridges, and water systems get a D+ 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, American Society of Civil Engineers, https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org.

The project encouraged advocates “How to Talk About Government: A FrameWorks Message Memo,” FrameWorks Institute, March 1, 2006, pp. 9, 13, https://www.frameworksinstitute.org/​publication/​how-to-talk-about-government-a-frameworks-message-memo.

count how many schools, libraries See Tables XXXVI–XXXIX in Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It (New York: Burdick Brothers, 1857), 288–89, https://docsouth.unc.edu/​nc/​helper/​helper.html.

The slave economy was a system “In 1860, the states and counties with the largest proportion of slaves in their population also had the most unequal distribution of land holdings.” Nathan Nunn, “Slavery, Inequality, and Economic Development in the Americas: An Examination of the Engerman-Sokoloff Hypothesis” (October 2007): 28, https://scholar.harvard.edu/​files/​nunn/​files/​domestic_slavery.pdf.

“Notwithstanding the fact” Helper, Impending Crisis, 19. In Georgia, for example, in 1850 and 1860, more than two-thirds of all state legislators were slaveholders, although they accounted for less than a third of the free white population. See Jeffrey Robert Young, “Slavery in Antebellum Georgia,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, October 20, 2003, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/​articles/​history-archaeology/​slavery-antebellum-georgia.

at three hundred dollars per enslaved person “The District of Columbia Emancipation Act,” Online Exhibits, National Archives, last modified April 5, 2019, https://www.archives.gov/​exhibits/​featured-documents/​dc-emancipation-act.

The value of northern land Helper, Impending Crisis, 59.

nine of the ten poorest states 2018 Poverty Statistics, U.S. Census Bureau, s.v. “poverty by states.”

states with the least educational attainment 2010 American Community Survey, s.v. “Educational Attainment,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://data.census.gov/​cedsci/​table?q=educational%20attainment&t=Educational%20Attainment&g=0100000US.04000.001&tid=ACSST1Y2010.S1501&hidePreview=true.

In 2007, economist Nathan Nunn Nunn, “Slavery, Inequality.”

“societies that began” Stanley L. Engerman and Kenneth L. Sokoloff, Economic Development in the Americas Since 1500: Endowments and Institutions (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 36.

The Homestead Act of 1862 Robert B. Williams, The Privileges of Wealth: Rising Inequality and the Growing Racial Divide (New York: Routledge, 2017), 71.

Fewer than six thousand Black families Trina Williams Shanks, “The Homestead Act: A Major Asset-Building Policy in American History,” in Inclusion in the American Dream: Assets, Poverty, and Public Policy, ed. Michael Sherraden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 36.

an estimated 46 million people Shanks, “Homestead Act,” 36.

the American government told banks Depression-era mortgage policy innovations included higher loan-to-value ratios reducing down payments from over 50 percent of purchase price to just 20 percent and fixed-rate, fully-amortizing mortgages. Dennis J. Ventry Jr., “The Accidental Deduction: A History and Critique of the Tax Subsidy for Mortgage Interest,” Law and Contemporary Problems 73, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 247, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/​lcp/​vol73/​iss1/​9.

red “Do Not Lend” lines See chapter 3, “Racial Zoning,” in Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (New York: Liveright, 2017), 39–57.

excluded the job categories Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York: W. W. Norton, 2005), 22.

few Black veterans benefited Shannon Luders-Manuel, “The Inequality Hidden Within the Race-Neutral G.I. Bill,” JSTOR Daily, September 18, 2017, https://daily.jstor.org/​the-inequality-hidden-within-the-race-neutral-g-i-bill. Edward Humes, “How the GI Bill Shunted Blacks into Vocational Training,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 53 (2006): 92–104.

mortgage benefit in the GI Bill Humes, “How the GI Bill.”

The federal government created suburbs Alana Semuels, “The Role of Highways in American Poverty,” The Atlantic, March 18, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2016/​03/​role-of-highways-in-american-poverty/​474282.

exclusions of job categories: Katznelson, When Affirmative Action, 22.

“Let’s build bigger” Jeff Wiltse, Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 103.

In 1953, a thirteen-year-old Wiltse, Contested Waters, 154.

white children stopped going Fern Shen, “Once Baltimore’s Only City Pool for Blacks, Pool #2 Endures as Art,” Baltimore Brew, May 2, 2017, https://baltimorebrew.com/​2017/​05/​02/​once-baltimores-only-city-pool-for-blacks-pool-2-endures-as-art.

The town of Warren, Ohio Wiltse, Contested Waters, 159.

town of Montgomery, West Virginia Wiltse, Contested Waters, 162.

In Montgomery, Alabama A photograph of the Oak Park pool can be seen at the Alabama Department of Archives and History website, https://digital.archives.alabama.gov/​digital/​collection/​photo/​id/​21497.

“It was miserable” Rose Hackman, “Swimming While Black: The Legacy of Segregated Public Pools Lives On,” Guardian, August 4, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/​world/​2015/​aug/​04/​black-children-swimming-drownings-segregation.

The entire public park system Rebecca Retzlaff, “Desegregation of City Parks and the Civil Rights Movement: The Case of Oak Park in Montgomery, Alabama,” Journal of Urban History, October 3, 2019, https://journals.sagepub.com/​doi/​10.1177/​0096144219877636.

New Orleans closed Eli A. Haddow, “The Integration of Audubon Park’s Pool and the Committee that Made It Happen,” The Historic New Orleans Collection, June 4, 2019, https://www.hnoc.org/​publications/​first-draft/​integration-audubon-park%E2%80%99s-pool-and-committee-made-it-happen.

In Winona, Mississippi P. Caleb Smith, “Reflections in the Water: Society and Recreational Facilities, a Case Study of Public Swimming Pools in Mississippi,” Southeastern Geographer 52, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 39–54.

in nearby Stonewall Adam Nossiter, “Unearthing a Town Pool, and Not for Whites Only,” New York Times, September 18, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/​2006/​09/​18/​us/​18pool.html.

the Fairground Park pool Wiltse, Contested Waters, 79.

“bats, clubs, bricks and knives” Wiltse, Contested Waters, 169.

a white mob Phillip O’Connor, “Pool Riot Pivotal in Race Relations,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 2009, https://www.stltoday.com/​news/​pool-riot-pivotal-in-race-relations-citys-decision-in-49-to-integrate-swimming-pools-sparked/​article_914ec52e-4be8-5b09-ac98-e71da7160cc6.html.

logged just 10,000 Wiltse, Contested Waters, 178–79.

The city closed the pool In Pittsburgh, a similar scene played out around Sully’s Pool, where white attendance plummeted after orders to integrate it were handed down. It was closed in 1977, then filled in and paved over. No memorial marks the spot. Linda Wilson Fuoco, “Black History Month: Local Activists, Black and White, Worked to Integrate Sully’s Pool in South Park,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 21, 2001, https://old.post-gazette.com/​neigh_south/​20010221spool2.asp.

blessing of the U.S. Supreme Court Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971).

“There was no evidence” Quoted in U.S. Reports: Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971), 217–18.

“Petitioners’ contention” Palmer v. Thompson, 403 U.S. 217 (1971), 224–26.

“Beginning in the mid-1950s” Wiltse, Contested Waters, 180.

In Washington, D.C. Wiltse, Contested Waters, 193.

two-hundred-dollar membership fees and annual dues Wiltse, Contested Waters, 194.

According to the authoritative American National Elections Studies Sean McElwee and Sarah Merchant data analysis for the author, April 2017, updated September 2020.

group of mostly Black activists demanding The March’s wage demand of $2.00 in 1963 would be $16.85 in 2020 dollars, more than twice the current minimum wage. See “What We Demand” in the March on Washington’s program at https://www.crmvet.org/​docs/​mowprog.pdf.

biological racism waned Donald R. Kinder and Lynn Sanders, Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (University of Chicago Press, 1996), 97.

“today, we say, prejudice” Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, 115.

They measured racial resentment Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, 106–8.

“although whites’ support” Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, 92.

opposed racial public policies Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, 117.

The researchers couldn’t explain Kinder and Sanders, Divided by Color, 116.

there was a sixty-point difference Sean McElwee, data analysis for the author, April 2017, updated September 2020.

when President Johnson accurately predicted President Johnson reportedly said to Bill Moyers upon signing the Civil Rights Act, ‘‘I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come.’’ While the Democrats still won some southern states in the following election, 1964, the regional realignment did happen. Even more consequentially, the majority of white Americans voted against the Democratic presidential nominee from then on. See Michael Oreskes, “Civil Rights Act Leaves Deep Mark on the American Political Landscape,” New York Times, July 2, 1989, https://www.nytimes.com/​1989/​07/​02/​us/​civil-rights-act-leaves-deep-mark-on-the-american-political-landscape.html.

hit their peak as a percentage In 1969, total U.S. tax revenues as a share of the economy were similar to those in Europe; today, they are lower than those in thirty out of the thirty-six OECD countries. See “Table 3.2. Total Tax Revenue as % of GDP, 1965–2014” downloadable chart at “Tax Policy Analysis, Revenue Statistics—Tax ratio Changes Between 1965 and 2014,” Tax Policy Analysis, OECD, oecd.org/​ctp/​tax-policy/​revenue-statistics-ratio-change-all-years.htm.

larger share of their incomes See, for example, Andrew Van Dam, “Black Families Pay Significantly Higher Property Taxes than White Families, New Analysis Shows,” Washington Post, July 2, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​business/​2020/​07/​02/​black-property-tax; Eric Bronson, “Why Black Women Are Paying More in Taxes than Washington’s Billionaires,” Firesteel (blog), YWCA, March 3, 2020, https://www.ywcaworks.org/​blogs/​firesteel/​tue-03032020-0910/​why-black-women-are-paying-more-taxes-washingtons-billionaires; “Racial Disparities and the Income Tax System,” Tax Policy Center, Urban Institute, January 30, 2020, https://apps.urban.org/​features/​race-and-taxes.

“You start out in 1954” Rick Perlstein, “Exclusive: Lee Atwater’s Infamous 1981 Interview on the Southern Strategy,” The Nation, November 13, 2012, https://www.thenation.com/​article/​archive/​exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy.

harping on the issue of welfare Ian Haney López documents Reagan and the Republicans’ anti-welfare messaging extensively in Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014) and Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (New York: The New Press, 2019).

An emblematic line Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Welfare Reform,” February 15, 1986, https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/​archives/​speech/​radio-address-nation-welfare-reform.

tapped into an old stereotype See David Pilgrim, “The Coon Caricature,” Jim Crow Museum, Ferris University, https://www.ferris.edu/​jimcrow/​coon, and Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Viking, 1973); and Micki McElya, Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

white Americans constitute the majority Isaac Shapiro, Danilo Trisi, and Raheem Chaudhry, “Poverty Reduction Programs Help Adults Lacking College Degrees the Most,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, February 16, 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/​research/​poverty-and-inequality/​poverty-reduction-programs-help-adults-lacking-college-degrees-the.

“47 percent” version from millionaire Mitt Romney Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney was recorded saying that 47 percent of the country would vote for Obama, and he described that percentage of the electorate as those who paid no income tax and were dependent on government. Although he did not mention race, obviously Romney knew that the majority of Black people was voting for Obama in 2012. As Ezra Klein pointed out, however, “For what it’s worth, this division of ‘makers’ and ‘takers’ isn’t true. Among the Americans who paid no federal income taxes in 2011, 61 percent paid payroll taxes—which means they have jobs and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid. Another 22 percent were elderly.” Ezra Klein, “Romney’s Theory of the ‘Taker Class’ and Why It Matters,” Washington Post, September 17, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2012/​09/​17/​romneys-theory-of-the-taker-class-and-why-it-matters.

racially explicit Fox News version See “ ‘The Makers and the Takers’: How Fox News Forges a Working-Class/Business-Class Political Alliance,” chapter 4 in Reece Peck, Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 155–84.

In 2016, the majority Peter Moore, “Racial Attitudes Differ More on Ideology than Class,” YouGov, January 29, 2016, https://today.yougov.com/​topics/​politics/​articles-reports/​2016/​01/​29/​racial-attitudes-differ-ideology-class.

one out of six children “The State of America’s Children 2020: Child Poverty,” Children’s Defense Fund, https://www.childrensdefense.org/​policy/​resources/​soac-2020-child-poverty.

We could eliminate all poverty Rachel West, “For the Cost of the Tax Bill, the U.S. Could Eliminate Child Poverty. Twice,” talk poverty, December 12, 2017, https://talkpoverty.org/​2017/​12/​12/​u-s-eliminate-child-poverty-cost-senate-tax-bill/.

The media’s inaccurate portrayal of poverty See Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare: Race, Media, and the Politics of Antipoverty Policy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999). In another study, in 474 print news stories about poverty published between 1992 and 2010, editors chose to use photographs or illustrations of Black people more than half the time, even though Black people were only about a quarter of those in poverty during the studied period. See Bas W. van Doorn, “Pre- and Post-Welfare Reform Media Portrayals of Poverty in the United States: The Continuing Importance of Race and Ethnicity,” Politics & Policy 43, no. 1 (February 2015): 142–62.

Reagan cut taxes on the wealthy The 1981 and 1986 tax cuts lowered the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, and the 1986 reform raised the lowest bracket from 11 percent to 15 percent. See Federal Individual Income Tax Rates History, Nominal Dollars Income Years 1913–2013 (table), Tax Foundation, https://files.taxfoundation.org/​legacy/​docs/​fed_individual_rate_history_nominal.pdf. The 1983 Social Security reform package raised payroll tax rates and required self-employed people to pay both sides of the payroll tax, a change that has grown more costly to lower-income workers, who are increasingly likely to be contingent, independent contractors today. The 1986 reform expanded interest deductions for homeowners and ended it for credit card debt. While there were some tax increases over Reagan’s term that impacted the wealthy (various deductions were eliminated to “broaden the base,” and the capital gains and top income tax rates were equalized), the net effect was a lower tax bill for the wealthy. See Thomas L. Hungerford, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945, Congressional Research Service, September 14, 2012, http://graphics8.nytimes.com/​news/​business/​0915taxesandeconomy.pdf and https://www.nytimes.com/​2017/​12/​26/​business/​economy/​tax-cuts-incomes.html.

slashed domestic spending For example, among other changes, Reagan reduced child nutrition subsidies, raised Medicare deductibles, cut back Amtrak subsidies, and tightened income eligibility rules for food stamps. See David Kotz and Michelle Harlan, “Major Deficit-Reduction Measures Enacted in Recent Years,” CRS Report for Congress, September 8, 1994, pp. 4–5, Congressional Research Service, https://www.everycrsreport.com/​files/​19940908_94-719_eee13a7d0e01ed5a9a29c619c719b722a1092623.pdf.

with the overwhelming support Asma Khalid, “Republicans’ White Working-Class Trap: A Growing Reliance,” NPR, January 18, 2016, https://www.npr.org/​2016/​01/​18/​462027861/​republicans-white-working-class-trap-a-growing-reliance.

That message is See the 2020 Republican Party platform, “Restoring the American Dream,” https://gop.com/​platform/​restoring-the-american-dream, and “Health Care,” https://gop.com/​issue/​health-care.

46 percent of Republicans Daniel Villarreal, “69 Percent of Americans Want Medicare for All, Including 46 Percent of Republicans, New Poll Says,” Newsweek, April 24, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/​69-percent-americans-want-medicare-all-including-46-percent-republicans-new-poll-says-1500187.

nearly half of Republican voters Sean McElwee, Data for Progress, data analysis for the author, April 24, 2019.

“The press and elites” Stanley B. Greenberg et al., “The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans: Why Republican Leaders Will Have Trouble Speaking to the Rest of America,” October 16, 2009, p. 1, https://democracycorps.com/​wp-content/​uploads/​2009/​10/​TheVerySeparateWorldofConservativeRepublicans101609.pdf.

“They are actively rooting” Greenberg et al., “Very Separate World,” 5.

“People may fail to report” Eric D. Knowles et al., “Racial Prejudice Predicts Opposition to Obama and His Health Care Reform Plan,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 46, no. 2 (March 2010): 420.

“Obama has a plan” Mike Burns and Andy Newbold, “Rush Limbaugh Opens 2012 with More Race-Baiting Attacks,” Media Matters for America, January 1, 2012, https://www.mediamatters.org/​rush-limbaugh/​rush-limbaugh-opens-2012-more-race-baiting-attacks.

“Have we suddenly transported” Glenn Beck was referring to the case of Shirley Sherrod, a veteran civil rights activist and employee at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, whom President Obama’s USDA secretary fired after Breitbart.com published a selectively edited video of Sherrod that suggested she had discriminated against a white farmer facing foreclosure. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people had lost their farm land,” she says in the video. “And here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land.” In fact, she did help the white farmer, who credited her with having helped save his farm. Secretary Vilsack apologized. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Shaila Dewan, and Brian Stelter, “With Apology, Fired Official Is Offered a New Job,” New York Times, July 21, 2020. For Beck’s commentary, see Christine Schwen, “Despite Claim that ‘Context Matters,’ Beck Played Heavily Edited Sherrod Clip on Radio,” Media Matters for America, July 21, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/​fox-nation/​despite-claim-context-matters-beck-played-heavily-edited-sherrod-clip-radio.

“I think Mr. Obama allows” See “Bill O’Reilly: ‘Historical Grievances’ Like Slavery Shape Obama’s Economic Thinking,” Media Matters for America, July 19, 2012, https://www.mediamatters.org/​bill-oreilly/​bill-oreilly-historical-grievances-slavery-shape-obamas-economic-thinking.

policies Obama was pushing O’Reilly was responding to Obama’s comments in a 2012 campaign speech: “If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the internet so that all the companies could make money off the internet.”

less than 1 percent annual income growth “Average household earnings for the lowest-earning 90 percent of the income distribution from 1979 to 2017 was 0.6 percent; annual wage growth was three times as high, between 1947–1979.” From John Schmitt, Elise Gould, and Josh Bivens, “America’s Slow-Motion Wage Crisis,” Economic Policy Institute, September 13, 2018, https://www.epi.org/​publication/​americas-slow-motion-wage-crisis-four-decades-of-slow-and-unequal-growth-2/.

“Absent race as an issue” The authors also set out to ask how, after a fifty-year period of stasis in tax rates before 1980, politicians could continue decreasing tax rates on the rich amid rising inequality post-1980. “Our analysis offers an answer to this question: the existence of a non-economic dimension, such as race, changes the alignment of voters in a significantly different way from that predicted by unidimensional models” (p. 1049). “The effect of racism on redistribution in the United States is large. We predict that the Republican Party would have proposed a marginal tax rate of 40% in 1984–1988, absent racism. Due to the existence of racism, however, the Republican Party was able to propose a tax rate of 23.9% in this period; thus the effect of racism on the tax rate is about 16.5% in 1984–1988 for the Republican Party. The effect of racism on the tax rate of the Democratic Party is also large. Absent racism, we predict party D would have proposed a marginal tax rate of 49.9%; due to the existence of racism, it proposed 37%. The fact that the total effect of racism appears to be large for both parties implies that voter racism pushes both parties in the United States significantly to the right on the economic issue” (p. 1044). Woojin Lee and John E. Roemer, “Racism and Redistribution in the United States: A Solution to the Problem of American Exceptionalism,” Journal of Public Economics 90 (2006): 1027–52.

Chapter Three: Going Without

land taken from Indigenous people “High Country News reconstructed approximately 10.7 million acres taken from nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities through over 160 violence-backed land cessions, a legal term for the giving up of territory.” Robert Lee, “Morrill Act of 1862 Indigenous Land Parcels Database,” High Country News, March 2020, https://www.landgrabu.org. In 1890, Congress passed another Morrill Act to allow for segregated land grant colleges, creating nineteen Black colleges in southern and border states. These public Historically Black Colleges and Universities were essential in the education of Black Americans for the next century, though they were chronically underfunded by state legislatures. See Katherine I. E. Wheatle, “Neither Just Nor Equitable: Race in the Congressional Debate of the Second Morrill Act of 1890,” American Educational History Journal 46, no. 2 (2019): 1–20.

veterans made up 50 percent “In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of college admissions.” “About GI Bill: History and Timeline,” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, modified November 21, 2013, https://www.benefits.va.gov/​gibill/​history.asp.

largely excluded from these opportunities “The availability of benefits to black veterans had a substantial and positive impact on the educational attainment of those likely to have access to colleges and universities outside the South. Unfortunately, for those more likely to be limited to the South in their collegiate choices, the G.I. Bill exacerbated rather than narrowed the economic and educational differences between blacks and whites.” Sarah E. Turner and John Bound, “Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans,” Journal of Economic History 63, no. 1 (March 2003): 172.

six out of every ten dollars Thomas G. Mortenson, “State Funding: A Race to the Bottom,” Presidency 15, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 26.

a federal Pell Grant In the 1970s and ’80s, Pell recipients had the majority of costs covered. Pell covered not only tuition, but also a substantial amount of living costs. See “Pell Grant Funding History (1976 to 2010),” ACE Fact Sheet on Higher Education, American Council on Education, https://www.acenet.edu/​Documents/​FactSheet-Pell-Grant-Funding-History-1976-2010.pdf.

public colleges were tuition-free The City University of New York waived tuition until 1976, and the University of California system was created in 1868 with the mandate that “admission and tuition shall be free to all residents of the state.” In California, public budget cuts prompted an educational fee of $150 in 1970, and tuition and fees have climbed since. See Michael Stone, “What Happened When American States Tried Providing Tuition-Free College,” Time, April 4, 2016, https://time.com/​4276222/​free-college. Also see Table 320, “Average undergraduate tuition and fees and room and board rates…,” Digest of Education Statistics, National Center for Education Statistics, https://nces.ed.gov/​programs/​digest/​d07/​tables/​dt07_320.asp.

a return of three to four dollars Michael Hout, “Social and Economic Returns to College Education in the United States,” Annual Review of Sociology 38, no. 1 (2012): 379–400.

Students of color comprised Mark Huelsman, “The Unaffordable Era: A 50-State Look at Rising College Prices and the New American Student,” Demos, February 22, 2018, p. 7, https://www.demos.org/​research/​unaffordable-era-50-state-look-rising-college-prices-and-new-american-student.

State legislatures began to drastically cut “While state spending on higher education increased by $10.5 billion in absolute terms from 1990 to 2010, in relative terms, state funding of higher education declined. Real funding per public FTE dropped by 26.1 percent from 1990–1991 to 2009–2010. After controlling for inflation, states collectively invested $6.12 per $1,000 in personal income in 2010–2011, down from $8.75 in 1990–1991, despite the fact that personal income increased by 66.2 percent over that period.” John Quinterno, “The Great Cost Shift: How Higher Education Cuts Are Undermining the Future Middle Class,” Demos, March 2012, p. 2, https://www.demos.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​TheGreatCostShift_Demos_0.pdf.

has nearly tripled since 1991 “Average tuition at public 4-year colleges across the country is $9,970 a year in 2017, which is…two-and-a-half times as high as the average ($3,790) in 1991.” Huelsman, “The Unaffordable Era,” 11.

$1.5 trillion in 2020 “Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit, Q2 2020,” Center for Microeconomic Data, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, August 2020, https://www.newyorkfed.org/​medialibrary/​interactives/​householdcredit/​data/​pdf/​HHDC_2020Q2.pdf.

at least 33 percent more Author calculation of average four-year public college student loan debt in 2018 of $26,946 under the Standard Repayment Plan over ten years with no deferments, missed payments, or extensions, with an APR of 6 percent, subsidized.

double-digit interest on private loans See “Interest Rates on Student Loans,” Debt.org, n.d., https://www.debt.org/​students/​financial-aid-process/​interest-rates.

Eight out of ten Black graduates Mark Huelsman, “The Debt Divide: The Racial and Class Bias Behind the ‘New Normal’ of Student Borrowing,” Demos, May 19, 2015, p. 1, https://www.demos.org/​research/​debt-divide-racial-and-class-bias-behind-new-normal-student-borrowing. Between the lack of wealth and the wage gap, managing student debt is a financial catastrophe for Black borrowers. An astonishing 55 percent of Black men default on a loan within twelve years of starting college, and Black women borrowers owe 113 percent of their original loan balance twelve years after starting school (compared to 56 percent for white male borrowers). Over 20 percent of Black college graduates default, a rate five times as high as white bachelor’s recipients. See also Mark Huelsman, “Debt to Society: The Case for Bold, Equitable Student Loan Cancellation and Reform,” Demos, June 6, 2019, pp. 5–15, https://www.demos.org/​research/​debt-to-society.

white high school dropouts The average household wealth of a white person without a high school diploma was $34,700; that of a Black person with a college degree was $23,400. Darrick Hamilton, William Darity Jr., Anne E. Price, Vishnu Sridharan, Rebecca Tippett, “Umbrellas Don’t Make It Rain: Why Studying and Working Hard Isn’t Enough for Black Americans,” Insight Center for Community Economic Development, p. 5.

it has now reached 63 percent Huelsman, “The Debt Divide,” 2.

student debt payments are stopping us Alvaro Mezza et al., “Can Student Loan Debt Explain Low Homeownership Rates for Young Adults?” Consumer & Community Context 1, no. 1 (January 2019), https://www.federalreserve.gov/​publications/​files/​consumer-community-context-201901.pdf.

even contributing to delays in marriage Summer and Student Debt Crisis, “Buried in Debt: A National Survey Report on the State of Student Loan Borrowers in 2018,” November 1, 2018, https://www.meetsummer.org/​share/​Summer-Student-Debt-Crisis-Buried-in-Debt-Report-Nov-2018.pdf.

half the retirement savings Matthew S. Rutledge, “Do Young Adults with Student Debt Save Less for Retirement?” Issue in Brief, No. 18–13 (June 2018), Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, https://crr.bc.edu/​wp-content/​uploads/​2018/​06/​IB_18-13.pdf.

A third of developed countries Figure is annual tuition price. See “Indicator C5. How Much Do Tertiary Students Pay and What Public Support Do They Receive?” Education at a Glance 2019, OECD, p. 316, https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/​education/​education-at-a-glance-2019_f8d7880d-en#page316.

older, college-educated (white) Republicans 85 percent of over-sixty-five college graduate Republicans oppose free college. See Hannah Hartig, “Democrats Overwhelmingly Favor Free College Tuition, While Republicans Are Divided by Age, Education,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, February 21, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2020/​02/​21/​democrats-overwhelmingly-favor-free-college-tuition-while-republicans-are-divided-by-age-education.

began voting for ballot initiatives “Proposition 14…aimed to roll back recently enacted civil rights laws forbidding racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing….The most infamous include Proposition 187, the so-called ‘Save Our State’ referendum…that sought to ban undocumented immigrants from schools, hospitals, and public assistance. Also infamous is Proposition 209, the cynically titled California Civil Rights Initiative successfully promoted by Ward Connerly in 1996 to end affirmative action in California in schools and universities, contracting, and state hiring….[O]thers include Proposition 21 (1972), seeking to block school integration; Proposition 1 (1979), ending busing to promote school integration; Proposition 63 (1986), declaring English the official language of California; Proposition 165 (1992), seeking to slash welfare benefits, particularly to mothers; Proposition 184 (1994), adopting a three-strikes provision in criminal sentencing; Proposition 227 (1998) curtailing bilingual education; and Proposition 54 (2003), which sought to end the collection of racial data.” Ian Haney López, “California Dog Whistling,” University of California Othering and Belonging Institute, April 18, 2018, https://belonging.berkeley.edu/​california-dog-whistling.

Proposition 13 drastically limited “When adjusted for inflation, California spent about $7,400 per pupil in 1977, about $1,000 above the national average, according to data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics….[In 2016] California [ranked] 41st in the nation in per pupil spending, when taking into account cost of living in each state….California would need to boost K–12 funding by 32 percent, or about $22 billion, in order for the state to meet its education targets.” Vanessa Rancaño, “How Proposition 13 Transformed Neighborhood Public Schools Throughout California,” KQED, October 5, 2018, https://www.kqed.org/​news/​11701044/​how-proposition-13-transformed-neighborhood-public-schools-throughout-california.

Between 1979 and 2019 Amy Rose, “The Cost of College, Then and Now,” California Budget & Policy Center, April 30, 2019, https://calbudgetcenter.org/​blog/​the-cost-of-college-then-and-now/. Fortunately, California passed a law in 2017 offering two years of tuition-free community college, excluding the four-year institutions of the California State University and University of California systems. See Cecilia Rios-Aguilar and Austin Lyke, “The California College Promise,” Policy Analysis for California Education, March 2020, https://edpolicyinca.org/​publications/​california-college-promise.

Dog whistling was ever-present Haney López, “California Dog Whistling.”

Conservative columnist William Safire William Safire, “Taxpayers’ Revolt,” New York Times, February 27, 1978, https://www.nytimes.com/​1978/​02/​27/​archives/​taxpayers-revolt-essay.html?searchResultPosition=2.

a constitutional amendment severely limiting taxes TABOR has wreaked havoc on Colorado’s state and local governments, requiring complex workarounds to maintain adequate services. Voters passed an amendment to suspend it for five years in 2005. See “Policy Basics: Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR),” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated November 5, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/​research/​state-budget-and-tax/​policy-basics-taxpayer-bill-of-rights-tabor; Iris J. Lav and Erica Williams, “A Formula for Decline: Lessons from Colorado for States Considering TABOR,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, updated March 15, 2010, https://www.cbpp.org/​research/​a-formula-for-decline-lessons-from-colorado-for-states-considering-tabor.

forty-seventh place in higher education investments Colorado is forty-seventh in state higher education funding, as measured against the state’s ability to pay as reflected in personal income. “State Higher Education Finance: FY 2018,” State Higher Education Executive Officers Association, p. 44, https://sheeomain.wpengine.com/​wp-content/​uploads/​2019/​04/​SHEEO_SHEF_FY18_Report.pdf.

tripling their expenditures “Police and Corrections Expenditures,” State and Local Finance Initiative, Urban Institute, https://www.urban.org/​policy-centers/​cross-center-initiatives/​state-and-local-finance-initiative/​state-and-local-backgrounders/​police-and-corrections-expenditures#Question3Police.

spending more on jails and prisons Christopher Ingraham, “The States that Spend More Money on Prisoners than College Students,” Washington Post, July 7, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2016/​07/​07/​the-states-that-spend-more-money-on-prisoners-than-college-students.

federal government cut back massively The Housing and Urban Development budget authority went from 1.41 percent of GDP to just 0.25 percent of GDP from 1978 to 2018. See “Budget Trends,” Federal Budget & Spending, National Low Income Housing Coalition, https://nlihc.org/​federal-budget-and-spending.

exceeded the total number of arrests Christopher Ingraham, “More People Were Arrested Last Year over Pot than for Murder, Rape, Aggravated Assault, and Robbery Combined,” Washington Post, September 26, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2017/​09/​26/​more-people-were-arrested-last-year-over-pot-than-for-murder-rape-aggravated-assault-and-robbery-combined.

six times as likely Betsy Pearl, “Ending the War on Drugs: By the Numbers,” Center for American Progress, June 27, 2018, p. 1, https://www.americanprogress.org/​issues/​criminal-justice/​reports/​2018/​06/​27/​452819/​ending-war-drugs-numbers.

about one hundred to one Deborah J. Vagins and Jesselyn McCurdy, “Cracks in the System: Twenty Years of the Unjust Federal Crack Cocaine Law,” American Civil Liberties Union, October 2006, https://www.aclu.org/​other/​cracks-system-20-years-unjust-federal-crack-cocaine-law. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the disparity to eighteen to one. See “Fair Sentencing Act,” ACLU, https://www.aclu.org/​issues/​criminal-law-reform/​drug-law-reform/​fair-sentencing-act.

more common among white people “From 2000 to 2009, the black imprisonment rate for drug offenses fell by 16 percent. For white people, it climbed by nearly 27 percent, according to BJS….Starting around 2000, whites started going to prison more often for property offenses: robbery, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft, forgery, counterfeiting and selling or buying stolen property, often categorized as crimes of poverty. From 2000 to 2009, black incarceration for those crimes dropped nine percent, the BJS numbers show. It went up by 21 percent for whites.” Eli Hager, “A Mass Incarceration Mystery,” Justice Lab, The Marshall Project, December 15, 2017, https://www.themarshallproject.org/​2017/​12/​15/​a-mass-incarceration-mystery. See also John Gramlich, “The Gap Between the Number of Blacks and Whites in Prison Is Shrinking,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, April 30, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2019/​04/​30/​shrinking-gap-between-number-of-blacks-and-whites-in-prison.

“Mostly white and politically conservative counties” Josh Keller and Adam Pearce, “A Small Indiana County Sends More People to Prison than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., Combined. Why?” The Upshot, New York Times, September 2, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/​2016/​09/​02/​upshot/​new-geography-of-prisons.html.

By 2018, an estimated 130 “What Is the U.S. Opioid Epidemic?,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, modified on September 4, 2019, https://www.hhs.gov/​opioids/​about-the-epidemic/​index.html.

“We recently polled” “New Data Shows COVID-19 and Economic Downturn Crushing Student Loan Borrowers,” Student Debt Crisis, https://studentdebtcrisis.org/​student-debt-covid-survey; and email conversation between Natalia Abrams and author, September 1, 2020.

“I’m watching everyone” Josh Frost testimonial, “Real Student Debt Stories,” Student Debt Crisis, July 11, 2018, https://studentdebtcrisis.org/​read-student-debt-stories.

“This is madness” Emilie Scott testimonial, “Real Student Debt Stories,” Student Debt Crisis, May 20, 2018, https://studentdebtcrisis.org/​read-student-debt-stories.

senior citizens who still owe Kelly McLaughlin, “3 Million Senior Citizens in the U.S. Are Still Paying Off Their Student Loans,” Insider, May 3, 2019, https://www.insider.com/​americans-over-60-paying-student-loans-2019-5?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar; data on impact of debt on medical care and Social Security garnishment in “Snapshot of Older Consumers and Student Loan Debt,” Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, January 2017, https://files.consumerfinance.gov/​f/documents/​201701_cfpb_OA-Student-Loan-Snapshot.pdf.

still being sued for $60,000 It’s not possible for Settle to discharge the $60,000 despite his insolvency, because of the bankruptcy reform bill that Demos opposed in 2005.

“I want the entire country” Robert C. Settle Jr. testimonial, “Real Student Debt Stories,” Student Debt Crisis, March 4, 2016, https://studentdebtcrisis.org/​read-student-debt-stories.

more affordable, less complex, more secure See Figure 1 at “Public Opinion on Single-Payer, National Health Plans, and Expanding Access to Medicare Coverage,” KFF, Henry Kaiser Family Foundation, May 27, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​slideshow/​public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage.

pay more individually “Slaying the ‘Fee-for-Service Monster’ of American Healthcare,” Hidden Brain, NPR, September 7, 2020, https://www.npr.org/​transcripts/​908728981. And on the idea that Medicare for All saves money, see Diane Archer, “22 Studies Agree: ‘Medicare for All’ Saves Money,” The Hill, February 24, 2020, https://thehill.com/​blogs/​congress-blog/​healthcare/​484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money.

and as a nation “U.S. health care spending in 2016 totaled 17.2 percent of GDP, compared to just 8.9 percent for the OECD median. Not only does the U.S outspend other OECD countries, on the whole it has less access to many health care resources.” See “U.S. Health Care Spending Highest Among Developed Countries,” Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, January 7, 2019, https://www.jhsph.edu/​news/​news-releases/​2019/​us-health-care-spending-highest-among-developed-countries.html#:~:text=U.S.%20health%20care%20spending%20in,to%20many%20health%20care%20resources.

have worse health outcomes “The U.S. spends more on health care as a share of the economy—nearly twice as much as the average OECD country—yet has the lowest life expectancy and highest suicide rates among the 11 nations. The U.S. has the highest chronic disease burden and an obesity rate that is two times higher than the OECD average. Compared to peer nations, the U.S. has among the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes and the highest rate of avoidable deaths.” Roosa Tikkanen and Melinda K. Abrams, “U.S. Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes?,” The Commonwealth Fund, January 30, 2020, https://www.commonwealthfund.org/​publications/​issue-briefs/​2020/​jan/​us-health-care-global-perspective-2019.

all of whom have some version “Universal Health Coverage and Health Outcomes: Final Report,” OECD, July 22, 2016, p. 9, https://www.oecd.org/​els/​health-systems/​Universal-Health-Coverage-and-Health-Outcomes-OECD-G7-Health-Ministerial-2016.pdf. See also “America Is a Health-Care Outlier in the Developed World,” The Economist, April 26, 2018, https://www.economist.com/​special-report/​2018/​04/​26/​america-is-a-health-care-outlier-in-the-developed-world.

successful economically “America’s Public Medicare Program Costs Less and Is More Efficient than Private Health Insurance,” Scholars Strategy Network, February 8, 2017, https://scholars.org/​contribution/​americas-public-medicare-program-costs-less-and-more-efficient-private-health. See also Bill Brody, “Is Medicare Cost Effective?,” Crossroads, Johns Hopkins Medicine, June 13, 2003, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/​about/​Crossroads/​06_13_03.html. Glenn Kessler complicates this a little more in “Medicare, Private Insurance and Administrative Costs: A Democratic Talking Point,” Fact Checker, Washington Post, September 19, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​fact-checker/​wp/​2017/​09/​19/​medicare-private-insurance-and-administrative-costs-a-democratic-talking-point.

popular with its beneficiaries Seventy-five percent of seniors are satisfied with Medicare. Les Masterson, “Seniors Love Medicare, but Are Pessimistic about Its Long-term Future,” HealthcareDive, February 20, 2019, https://www.healthcaredive.com/​news/​seniors-love-medicare-but-are-pessimistic-about-its-long-term-future/​548721/.

polled with majority support See survey toplines in Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, March 2012, p. 9, https://www.kff.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2013/​01/​8285-t.pdf.

“a farm boy” Jill Quadagno, One Nation, Uninsured (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 29.

The accusation of socialism See, for example, Jeff Woods, Black Struggle, Red Scare: Segregation and Anti-Communism in the South, 1948–1968 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004); and Yasuhiro Katagiri, Black Freedom, White Resistance, and Red Menace: Civil Rights and Anticommunism in the Jim Crow South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2014).

“a front and tool” Katagiri, Black Freedom, 101.

“collected every photo” Quadagno, One Nation, Uninsured, 42.

by more than sixty thousand votes See Howell Raines, “Legendary Campaign: Pepper vs. Smathers in ’50,” New York Times, February 24, 1983, https://www.nytimes.com/​1983/​02/​24/​us/​legendary-campaign-pepper-vs-smathers-in-50.html.

Harry Truman could not get In fact, the segregationist caucus protested Truman’s 1948 Democratic convention, seceding into its own States’ Rights Democratic Party, whose platform railed against “centralized bureaucratic government.” See Platform of the States Rights Democratic Party (August 14, 1948), American Presidency Project, University of California at Santa Barbara, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/​node/​273454.

“If national health insurance” Quadagno, One Nation, Uninsured, 34.

Johnson’s Congress conceded Medicaid was built on Kerr-Mills, an American Medical Association–backed 1960 block grant program that Congress passed in part to blunt momentum on a universal medical benefit that was introduced by Rep. Aime Forand (D-RI) and opposed by southern Democrats. “By linking Medicaid eligibility to AFDC, the federal government left most decision-making power vested in the hands of states….The states set the terms of entry into Medicaid, allowing them to select the benefits that would be offered, decree how much health care providers would be compensated, and (discriminatorily) determine which groups would be covered.” Jamila Michener, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism, and Unequal Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 69–70.

all Americans living in poverty by 1970 Charles N. Oberg and Cynthia Longseth Polich, “Medicaid: Entering the Third Decade,” Health Affairs (Fall 1988): 91.

the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation estimated Oberg and Polich, “Medicaid,” 90. After growing in its first decade, the program suffered from deliberate cutbacks in the “period of retrenchment” from 1976 to 1985. Growing poverty rates, particularly among children, and tighter eligibility rules that varied across the states limited the program’s effectiveness. Reagan’s 1981 budget cuts made 442,000 working poor families ineligible for Medicaid. Oberg and Polich, “Medicaid,” 81.

number of uninsured skyrocketed The uninsured rate among the nonelderly population shot up from 12 to 17.2 percent over the course of the 1980s. “Uninsured Rate Among the Nonelderly Population, 1972–2018,” Charts & Slides, KFF, August 28, 2018, https://www.kff.org/​uninsured/​slide/​uninsured-rate-among-the-nonelderly-population-1972-2018. See also Katharine R. Levit, Gary L. Olin, and Suzanne W. Letsch, “Americans’ Health Insurance Coverage, 1980–91,” Health Care Financing Review 14, no. 1 (Fall 1992): 31–57, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​pmc/​articles/​PMC4193314.

record turnout among Black voters Two-thirds of eligible Black voters voted in 2008 and in 2012. President Obama won 80 percent of the votes of Americans of color and 39 percent of white voters in 2008. Paul Taylor, “The Growing Electoral Clout of Blacks Is Driven by Turnout, Not Demographics,” Pew Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, December 26, 2012, p. 2, https://www.pewresearch.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​sites/​3/2013/​01/​2012_Black_Voter_Project_revised_1-9.pdf.

federal subsidies for moderate- to middle-income purchasers “In 2020, the subsidy range in the continental U.S. is from $12,490 for an individual and $25,750 for a family of four at 100% FPL, to $49,960 for an individual and $103,000 for a family of four at 400% FPL.” “Explaining Health Care Reform: Questions About Health Insurance Subsidies,” Health Reform, KFF, January 16, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​health-reform/​issue-brief/​explaining-health-care-reform-questions-about-health.

a federal “public option” Robert Pear and Jackie Calmes, “Senators Reject Pair of Public Option Proposals,” New York Times, September 29, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/​2009/​09/​30/​health/​policy/​30health.html. A public option would offer people the choice of federal, not-for-profit insurance coverage, in competition with and at a lower price than private insurance options in the ACA marketplace. It would be a voluntary public plan aimed at demonstrating through market choice the advantages of public insurance, rather than a single-payer plan such as Medicare for All, which would replace the private insurance market. See Helen A. Halpin and Peter Harbage, “The Origins and Demise of the Public Option,” Health Affairs 29, no. 6 (June 2010), https://doi.org/​10.1377/​hlthaff.2010.0363.

collective bargaining to lower Brett Norman and Sarah Karlin-Smith, “The One that Got Away: Obamacare and the Drug Industry,” Politico, July 13, 2016, https://www.politico.com/​story/​2016/​07/​obamacare-prescription-drugs-pharma-225444.

insurer never made it to a vote The public option continued to be a large part of the debate through the fall of 2009: “Senate Democrats were engaged in a highly contentious debate throughout the fall of 2009, and the political life of the public option changed almost daily. The debate reached a critical impasse in November 2009, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), who usually caucuses with the Democrats, threatened to filibuster the Senate bill if it included a public option.” Halpin and Harbage, “The Origins and Demise.” See also Max Fisher, “Why Obama Dropped the Public Option,” The Atlantic, February 24, 2010, https://www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2010/​02/​why-obama-dropped-the-public-option/​346546. The Sanders bill on Medicare for All didn’t go further than being introduced. See American Health Security Act of 2009, 111th Cong., § 703 (2009–2010), https://www.congress.gov/​bill/​111th-congress/​senate-bill/​703. For more on the introduction of the bill and its contents, see “Sen. Bernie Sanders Introduces Single Payer Bill,” PNHP, March 26, 2009, https://pnhp.org/​news/​sen-bernie-sanders-introduces-single-payer-bill; also Bernie Sanders, “Floor Speech on Single-Payer Amendment,” December 16, 2009, https://www.sanders.senate.gov/​newsroom/​press-releases/​floor-speech-on-single-payer-amendment [inactive].

White support remained under 40 percent According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s regular ACA tracking poll, the Obama-era high point of white approval was soon after the bill became law, in July 2010; the low point was December 2013, at just 26 percent approval, and it did not climb to above 40 percent until after Obama left office. As of July 2020, it has never reached majority white support. “KFF Health Tracking Poll: The Public’s Views on the ACA,” Health Reform, KFF, September 10, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​interactive/​kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca/​#?total&response=Favorable&group=Race%2520%252F%2520Ethnicity::White.

racial resentment among white people spiked See Donald R. Kinder and Allison Dale-Riddle, The End of Race? Obama, 2008, and Racial Politics in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011); and Michael Tesler and David O. Sears, Obama’s Race: The 2008 Election and the Dream of a Post-Racial America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

“Racial attitudes” Deborah Baum, “Michael Tesler,” News from Brown, Brown University, https://news.brown.edu/​new-faculty/​social-sciences/​michael-tesler.

“The experiments” Other research has found that because Hillary Clinton was most strongly associated with President Clinton’s proposal, gendered attitudes played a role in public opinion in the 1990s. See Nicholas J. G. Winter, Dangerous Frames: How Ideas About Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

“In sum” Knowles et al., “Racial Prejudice Predicts,” 420.

“This is a civil rights bill” Kate Conway, “Limbaugh Declares Health Care Reform ‘a Civil Rights Bill’ and ‘Reparations,’ ” Media Matters for America, February 22, 2010, https://www.mediamatters.org/​rush-limbaugh/​limbaugh-declares-health-care-reform-civil-rights-bill-and-reparations. The “un-American” line of attack from the Truman days remained salient as well. Benjamin Knoll and Jordan Shewmaker also found that the healthcare reform battle activated “the perception that a traditional American culture and way of life needs to be protected against foreign influence.” The more nativist fears a person held, the greater the likelihood that he would oppose ensuring every American affordable health insurance. The reason? The authors blamed political elites who primed nativist thinking by referring to the proposal as “un-American” and “socialist.” They also noted that just as Obama being Black made Obamacare less popular with racially resentful whites, the misperception that Obama was foreign contributed to nativist whites rejecting his healthcare plan. Benjamin Knoll and Jordan Shewmaker, “Research Suggests Nativism Drives Opposition to Health Care Reform,” HuffPost Politics, February 19, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/​entry/​research-suggests-nativis_b_4804267?utm_source=feedburner.

120 rural hospitals have closed The Chartis Center for Rural Health, “The Rural Health Safety Net Under Pressure: Rural Hospital Vulnerability,” February 2020, p. 1, https://www.chartis.com/​forum/​insight/​the-rural-health-safety-net-under-pressure-rural-hospital-vulnerability/ [inactive].

One thing that all of the states Chartis Center, “Rural Health Safety Net,” 2.

The state has half the hospitals “Twenty-Five Things to Know About Texas Rural Hospitals,” PDF, Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH), February 2017, https://capitol.texas.gov/​tlodocs/​85R/​handouts/​C2102017030910301/​be43111d-e0d4-4de3-bc7d-935d111daced.pdf.

In 2013, an eighteen-month-old died “Loss of East Texas Town’s Hospital Hits Home After Toddler Chokes, Dies,” Dallas Morning News, September 28, 2013, https://www.dallasnews.com/​news/​investigations/​2013/​09/​29/​loss-of-east-texas-towns-hospital-hits-home-after-toddler-chokes-dies.

1.5 million Texas citizens The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that expansion would reach 1.5 million Texans, or 30 percent of the currently estimated nonelderly uninsured. “Who Could Medicaid Reach with Expansion in Texas,” fact sheet, KFF, n.d., http://files.kff.org/​attachment/​fact-sheet-medicaid-expansion-TX.

mostly white and male “In a state where people of color are in the majority, almost two out of every three lawmakers are white. And not even a quarter of them are women.” Only 4 percent of Republicans in both chambers identify as nonwhite. Alexa Ura and Darla Cameron, “In Increasingly Diverse Texas, the Legislature Remains Mostly White and Male,” Texas Tribune, January 10, 2019, https://apps.texastribune.org/​features/​2019/​texas-lawmakers-legislature-demographics.

the state provides their health insurance See “Health Benefits for Active Employees,” Employees Retirement System of Texas, n.d., https://ers.texas.gov/​Active-Employees/​Health-Benefits.

don’t offer coverage Forty percent of firms with “many” low-wage workers, measured as below $22,000 annually, offered healthcare benefits to employees in the 2008 KFF survey. This may have overrepresented how many low-wage workers were offered benefits, given that many are contractors and not employees at all. See Employer Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey, Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research & Educational Trust, 2008, https://www.kff.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2013/​04/​7790.pdf.

an average of $4,000 a year “Health Care Costs and Election 2008,” Health Costs, KFF, October 14, 2008, https://www.kff.org/​health-costs/​issue-brief/​health-care-costs-and-election-2008/​#back4.

$8,532 for a family of three Rachel Garfield, Kendal Orgera, and Anthony Damico, “The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid,” Medicaid, KFF, January 14, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​medicaid/​issue-brief/​the-coverage-gap-uninsured-poor-adults-in-states-that-do-not-expand-medicaid.

these are the paltry annual amounts These states cap eligibility for parents at between 17 percent (Texas, though it uses a specific formula based on monthly dollar amounts) and 35 percent (Georgia) of the federal poverty level for a parent in a family of three, which is $21,270 in 2020. There are higher thresholds for pregnant women as required by federal law. See “Medicaid Income Eligibility Limits for Adults as a Percent of the Federal Poverty Level,” State Health Facts, KFF, January 1, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​health-reform/​state-indicator/​medicaid-income-eligibility-limits-for-adults-as-a-percent-of-the-federal-poverty.

adults without children Garfield et al., “The Coverage Gap.”

almost all the states of the former Confederacy See “Status of State Action on the Medicaid Expansion Decision,” State Health Facts, KFF, August 17, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​health-reform/​state-indicator/​state-activity-around-expanding-medicaid-under-the-affordable-care-act/​?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D. See also Samantha Artiga, Anthony Damico, and Rachel Garfield, “The Impact of the Coverage Gap for Adults in States Not Expanding Medicaid by Race and Ethnicity,” Racial Equity and Health Policy, KFF, October 26, 2015, https://www.kff.org/​disparities-policy/​issue-brief/​the-impact-of-the-coverage-gap-in-states-not-expanding-medicaid-by-race-and-ethnicity.

still the largest share Artiga, Damico, and Garfield, “The Impact of the Coverage Gap.”

4.4 million working Americans “Who Could Get Covered Under Medicaid Expansion? State Fact Sheets,” Medicaid, KFF, January 23, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​medicaid/​fact-sheet/​uninsured-adults-in-states-that-did-not-expand-who-would-become-eligible-for-medicaid-under-expansion.

“What we’ve experienced” Noam N. Levey, “Racial Gaps in Healthcare Still Cost Black Lives, Though Obamacare Narrowed Them,” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2020, https://www.latimes.com/​politics/​story/​2020-05-11/​obamacare-impact-on-civil-rights.

polled higher than Obamacare In February 2020, 61 percent of people in states that had not expanded Medicaid supported expansion, for example, whereas ACA popularity has never topped 55 percent and was less than 50 percent until 2017. See, respectively, Figure 4 in “Data Note: 5 Charts About Public Opinion on Medicaid,” Polling, KFF, February 28, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​medicaid/​poll-finding/​data-note-5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-medicaid; and “KFF Health Tracking Poll: The Public’s Views on the ACA,” Health Reform, KFF, updated September 10, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​interactive/​kff-health-tracking-poll-the-publics-views-on-the-aca.

Medicaid expansion had robust support Colleen M. Grogan and Sunggeun (Ethan) Park, “The Racial Divide in State Medicaid Expansions,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 42, no. 3 (June 2017): 542.

Across the country, state-level support Grogan and Park, “The Racial Divide,” p. 552.

“as the percent” Grogan and Park, “The Racial Divide,” p. 553.

majority-people-of-color state “Quick Facts: Texas,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/​quickfacts/​TX.

two-thirds white and three-quarters male Ura and Cameron, “In Increasingly Diverse Texas.”

one out of every five “Health Insurance Coverage of Nonelderly 0-64 (2018),” State Health Facts, KFF, n.d., https://www.kff.org/​other/​state-indicator/​nonelderly-0-64/​?currentTimeframe=0&selectedRows=%7B%22states%22:%7B%22texas%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D.

highest uninsured rate for families John S. Kiernan, “2020’s State Uninsured Rates,” Wallet (blog), WalletHub, October 10, 2019, https://wallethub.com/​edu/​uninsured-rates-by-state/​4800.

Texans without any healthcare coverage “Distribution of the Nonelderly Uninsured by Race/Ethnicity (2018),” State Health Facts, KFF, n.d., https://www.kff.org/​uninsured/​state-indicator/​distribution-by-raceethnicity-2/​?dataView=1&currentTimeframe=0&selectedRows=%7B%22states%22:%7B%22texas%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D.

“And he would just say” On Abbott’s strategy, see Dan Frosch and Jacob Gershman, “Abbott’s Strategy in Texas: 44 Lawsuits, One Opponent: Obama Administration,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/​articles/​abbotts-strategy-in-texas-44-lawsuits-one-opponent-obama-administration-1466778976.

He founded the country’s premier See “Our History” and “WIC (Women, Infants and Children),” Food Research & Action Center (FRAC), n.d., https://frac.org/​about/​our-history and https://frac.org/​programs/​wic-women-infants-children.

Once a northern Tea Party hotbed The rural areas of Minnesota were home to many Tea Party members, and one of its leaders, Michele Bachmann, also hailed from the state. See MPR News Staff, “Reflecting on the Tea Party’s Legacy in Minnesota,” MPR News, December 8, 2016, https://www.mprnews.org/​story/​2016/​12/​08/​reflecting-on-the-tea-partys-legacy-in-mn.

growing Latinx and African Muslim population Capitol Preservation Commission Subcommittee on Art, “Minnesota Now, Then, When…An Overview of Demographic Change,” Minnesota State Demographic Center, April 2015, https://mn.gov/​admin/​assets/​2015-04-06-overview-MN-demographic-changes_tcm36-74549.pdf.

adopted the Greater Than Fear messaging Jacob Swenson-Lengyel, “Building Narrative Infrastructure in Minnesota,” Narrative Initiative, August 2019, https://narrativeinitiative.org/​resource/​building-narrative-infrastructure-in-minnesota.

“honest investments” Rep. Melissa Hortman, “Minnesota House DFL Releases Framework for Minnesota Values Budget,” Legislative News and Views, Minnesota House of Representatives website, March 25, 2019, https://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/​members/​profile/​news/​12266/​24930.

Chapter Four: Ignoring the Canary

class-action predatory lending lawsuit Tomlin v. Dylan Mortgage, Inc., 2000 NCBC 9, https://www.nccourts.gov/​assets/​documents/​opinions/​2000%20NCBC%209.pdf?BFsAGywldLKzDs2foGqANXYmy6hbwgZr. Details in the pages come from the complaint, on file with the author, and the opinion.

the majority of subprime loans The 2007 analysis of the $2.5 trillion in subprime loans since 2000 showed that in 2000, the share of subprime loan holders with prime credit scores was 41 percent; by 2005, 55 percent; by 2006, 61 percent. Rick Brooks and Ruth Simon, “Subprime Debacle Traps Even Very Credit-Worthy; As Housing Boomed, Industry Pushed Loans to a Broader Market,” Wall Street Journal, December 3, 2007, https://www.wsj.com/​articles/​SB119662974358911035.

The public policy justification See, e.g., U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Subprime Markets, the Role of GSEs, and Risk-Based Pricing, March 2002, “Section 2: What Is Subprime Lending and Who Does it Serve,” p. 4, https://www.huduser.gov/​publications/​pdf/​subprime.pdf.

marketed to existing homeowners “Roughly two-thirds of subprime loans in the early 2000s were made not to new home purchasers but to individuals who already owned their homes and were refinancing them,” Justin P. Steil, Len Albright, Jacob S. Rugh, and Douglas S. Massey, “The Social Structure of Mortgage Discrimination,” Housing Studies 33, no. 5 (2018): 759–76, https://doi.org/​10.1080/​02673037.2017.1390076.

loans issued in majority-Black neighborhoods Randall M. Scheessele, “Black and White Disparities in Subprime Mortgage Refinance Lending,” U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, p. 3, https://www.huduser.gov/​Publications/​pdf/​workpapr14.pdf.

three times as likely as whites Algernon Austin, “A Good Credit Score Did Not Protect Latino and Black Borrowers,” Economic Policy Institute, January 19, 2012, http://www.epi.org/​publication/​latino-black-borrowers-high-rate-subprime-mortgages. See also Jacob W. Faber, “Racial Dynamics of Subprime Mortgage Lending at the Peak,” Housing Policy Debate, 2013, 23:2, 328–49, https://doi.org/​10.1080/​10511482.2013.771788; William P. Apgar Jr., Christopher E. Herbert, and Priti Mathur, “Risk or Race: An Assessment of Subprime Lending Patterns in Nine Metropolitan Areas,” Office of Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, August 2009, p. 2, https://www.huduser.gov/​portal/​publications/​pdf/​risk_race_2011.pdf.

A 2014 review of the pre-crash mortgage market Patrick Bayer, Fernando Ferreira, and Stephen L. Ross, “What Drives Racial and Ethnic Differences in High-Cost Mortgages? The Role of High-Risk Lenders,” The Review of Financial Studies 31, no. 1 (January 1, 2018): 175–205, https://doi.org/​10.1093/​rfs/​hhx035.

$19.2 trillion in lost household “The Financial Crisis Response in Charts,” U.S. Department of the Treasury, April 2012, https://www.treasury.gov/​resource-center/​data-chart-center/​Documents/​20120413_FinancialCrisisResponse.pdf.

four hundred thousand fewer homeowners Alana Semuels, “The Never-Ending Foreclosure,” The Atlantic, December 1, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2017/​12/​the-neverending-foreclosure/​547181.

shrinking from 69 percent “Homeownership Rates for the United States (2017),” U.S. Census Bureau, at Economic Research, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, September 21, 2020, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/​series/​USHOWN.

typical family in their prime years William R. Emmons et al., “A Lost Generation? Long-lasting Wealth Impacts of the Great Recession on Young Families,” in the Demographics of Wealth: 2018 Series, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, May 2018, pp. 6–17, https://www.stlouisfed.org/​~/media/​Files/​PDFs/​HFS/​essays/​HFS_essay_2_2018.pdf?la=en.

5.6 million foreclosed homes “United States Residential Foreclosure Rates: Ten Years Later,” CoreLogic, March 2017, https://www.corelogic.com/​research/​foreclosure-report/​national-foreclosure-report-10-year.pdf.

an estimated $2.2 trillion “2013 Update: The Spillover Effects of Foreclosures,” Center for Responsible Lending, August 19, 2013, https://www.responsiblelending.org/​research-publication/​2013-spillover-costs-foreclosure.

in Detroit, a surge Corey Williams and Mike Householder, “Home Demolitions in Detroit May Create New Problem: Lead-Tainted Dust,” Detroit Free Press, July 20, 2018, https://www.freep.com/​story/​news/​local/​michigan/​detroit/​2018/​07/​20/​detroit-home-demolitions-lead-dust/​805770002.

One study identified home foreclosures Jason N. Houle and Michael T. Light, “The Home Foreclosure Crisis and Rising Suicide Rates, 2005 to 2010,” American Journal of Public Health 104, no. 6 (June 2014), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​pmc/​articles/​PMC4062039.

another found that the Great Recession Claire Margerison-Zilko et al., “Health Impacts of the Great Recession: A Critical Review,” Current Epidemiology Reports 3, no. 1 (February 2016): 81–91, https://doi.org/​10.1007/​s40471-016-0068-6.

In 2017, an examination Kenneth Shores and Matthew Steinberg, “The Impact of the Great Recession on Student Achievement: Evidence from Population Data,” August 31, 2017, https://dx.doi.org/​10.2139/​ssrn.3026151.

8.7 million jobs were destroyed “Chart Book: The Legacy of the Great Recession,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, June 6, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/​research/​economy/​chart-book-the-legacy-of-the-great-recession.

679,923 Americans to experience foreclosure “United States Residential Foreclosure Rates,” CoreLogic.

The exclusion of free people of color Lisa Rice, “An Examination of Civil Rights Issues with Respect to the Mortgage Crisis: The Effects of Predatory Lending on the Mortgage Crisis,” U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Public Briefing, March 20, 2009, http://nationalfairhousing.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2017/​04/​US-Commission-on-Civil-Rights-Statement-of-LR-on-Predatory-Lending-Final…-1.pdf.

the birth of redlining See “Introduction,” Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, https://dsl.richmond.edu/​panorama/​redlining/​#loc=8/​35.648/​-66.984&text=intro. See also Rothstein, The Color of Law, 63–65, 97, 108, 113. Assessment quotation from “Chicago, IL: D1 Description and Characteristics of Area,” Mapping Inequality, https://dsl.richmond.edu/​panorama/​redlining/​#loc=9/​41.946/​-88.385&city=chicago-il&area=D1. The assessments incorporated judgments of Jewish, “Asiatic,” and European immigrant residents’ impact on neighborhood quality, as well. (“This is a very mixed district of congested appearance and changing character. The population is largely lower class Jewish, but there is at the present time a moderate infiltration of Polish families. The favorable influence of this population shift is minimized by threatening negro infiltration along the eastern edge.”) “Chicago, IL: D28 Description and Characteristics of Area,” Mapping Inequality, https://dsl.richmond.edu/​panorama/​redlining/​#loc=9/​41.946/​-88.385&city=chicago-il&area=D28.

typical white family in America had Author analysis of Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), Federal Reserve, 2016, https://www.federalreserve.gov/​econres/​scfindex.htm.

vast increase in home ownership Historical Census of Housing Tables, U.S. Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/​housing/​census/​data/​ownerchar.html.

fewer than 2 percent Rice, “Examination of Civil Rights Issues,” 6. The 1.2 million Black World War II veterans were largely excluded from the GI Bill’s benefits as well. Erin Blakemore, “How the GI Bill’s Promise Was Denied to a Million Black WWII Veterans,” History Channel, June 21, 2019, https://www.history.com/​news/​gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits.

it would take another twenty-four years Richard Rothstein, “A Comment on Bank of America/Countrywide’s Discriminatory Mortgage Lending and Its Implications for Racial Segregation,” Economic Policy Institute, January 23, 2012, https://www.epi.org/​publication/​bp335-boa-countrywide-discriminatory-lending.

they owned nothing Richard Rothstein, “How Government Policies Cemented the Racism that Reigns in Baltimore,” The American Prospect, April 29, 2015, http://prospect.org/​article/​how-government-policies-cemented-racism-reigns-baltimore.

These local groups were backed “CRA: Community Reinvestment Act and the Financial Modernization Movement,” Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and Leadership Conference Education Fund, p. 20, http://www.protectcivilrights.org/​pdf/​reports/​healthy_communities/​cra_report_chapters.pdf.

For example, a 1974 survey “CRA: Community Reinvestment Act,” 20.

In 1978, two of the earliest The complaint in Brooklyn convinced the FDIC to issue its first bank branch denial under the CRA and resulted in an agreement between the delinquent bank and local community groups for a $25 million investment in loans. “Building Healthy Communities,” Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, p. 34, http://www.protectcivilrights.org/​pdf/​reports/​healthy_communities/​cra_report_chapters.pdf; “Enforcing Anti-Redlining Policy Under the Community Reinvestment Act,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, 1982, https://www.frbsf.org/​economic-research/​files/​82-2_19-34.pdf.

Congress declined to amend the law Marquette National Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp., 439 U.S. 299 (1978). The ensuing wave of deregulation included revoking protections against exorbitant mortgage interest rates and government control over variable interest rates and “balloon” payments (mortgage bills that dramatically increase after a set period of time). Rice, “Examination of Civil Rights Issues,” 7.

produced the most profits, supplanting manufacturing Heather McGhee and Tamara Draut, “Why We Need an Independent Consumer Protection Agency Now,” Demos, n.d., http://www.demos.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​BRIEF_WhyWeNeed_CFPA_Demos.pdf.

became the biggest spender in politics Author calculations using Center for Responsive Politics Data 1990–1998. See generally “Financial/Insurance/Real Estate” Sector Profile, OpenSecrets, https://www.opensecrets.org/​industries/​indus.php?Ind=F.

there was no single regulator This was the insight that led Professor Elizabeth Warren to design the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created as part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Law of 2010.

Doris Dancy became a witness All quotes from Memphis employees come from their declarations in the U.S. District Court case City of Memphis and Shelby County v. Wells Fargo Bank et al., No. 09-2857-STA (W.D. Tenn. 2011), http://www.relmanlaw.com/​docs/​Declarations-Memphis.pdf [inactive].

“My pay was based on commissions” All quotes from Baltimore employees come from their declarations in the U.S. District Court case Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Wells Fargo Bank et al., Civil Case No. JFM-08-62 (D. Md. 2011), http://www.relmanlaw.com/​docs/​Baltimore-Declarations.pdf [inactive].

Countrywide Financial Corporation agreed “Justice Department Reaches $335 Million Settlement to Resolve Allegations of Lending Discrimination by Countrywide Financial Corporation,” press release, U.S. Department of Justice, December 21, 2011, https://www.justice.gov/​opa/​pr/​justice-department-reaches-335-million-settlement-resolve-allegations-lending-discrimination.

According to an analysis “Justice Department Reaches $335 Million Settlement.”

eight times more likely Jordan Weissmann, “Countrywide’s Racist Lending Practices Were Fueled by Greed,” The Atlantic, December 23, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2011/​12/​countrywides-racist-lending-practices-were-fueled-by-greed/​250424.

shrank the wealth of the median Rothstein, “A Comment.”

officials took more than nine thousand McGhee and Draut, “Why We Need.”

“the one entity” National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 9.

took no action at all McGhee and Draut, “Why We Need.”

there was a blindness In a 2005 speech, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan praised the lending industry’s ability to “quite efficiently judge the risk posed by individual applicants and to price that risk appropriately.” Federal Reserve Board, “Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan,” April 8, 2005, https://www.federalreserve.gov/​boarddocs/​speeches/​2005/​20050408/​default.htm; see also Kat Aaron, “Predatory Lending: A Decade of Warnings,” Center for Public Integrity, updated May 19, 2014, https://publicintegrity.org/​inequality-poverty-opportunity/​predatory-lending-a-decade-of-warnings.

From 1998 to 2006, the majority NCRC, “CRA Myth and Fact,” National Community Reinvestment Coalition, September 24, 2008, https://ncrc.org/​cra-myth-and-fact-2.

They Gave Your Mortgage Ann Coulter, “They Gave Your Mortgage to a Less Qualified Minority,” September 24, 2008, http://www.anncoulter.com/​columns/​2008-09-24.html.

“What does it mean when” Jeff Jacoby, “Frank’s Fingerprints Are All Over the Financial Crisis,” Boston Globe, September 28, 2008, http://archive.boston.com/​bostonglobe/​editorial_opinion/​oped/​articles/​2008/​09/​28/​franks_fingerprints_are_all_over_the_financial_fiasco.

“a no-win situation” Jeff Jacoby, “How Government Makes Things Worse,” Boston Globe, March 9, 2008, http://archive.boston.com/​bostonglobe/​editorial_opinion/​oped/​articles/​2008/​03/​09/​how_government_makes_things_worse.

Michael Bloomberg told a Georgetown University audience Matt Stevens, “Bloomberg Once Linked 2008 Crisis to End of Redlining Bias in Home Loans,” New York Times, February 13, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​02/​13/​us/​politics/​michael-bloomberg-redlining.html. For video and full transcript, see “Urban Economics,” C-SPAN, September 17, 2008, at 18:30, https://www.c-span.org/​video/​?281174-1/​urban-economics.

conservatives were quick to blame “Conservative critics have argued that the need to meet CRA requirements pushed lenders to loosen their lending standards leading up to the housing crisis, effectively incentivizing the extension of credit to undeserved borrowers and fueling an unsustainable housing bubble. Yet, the evidence does not support this narrative.” Colin McArthur and Sarah Edelman, “Don’t Blame Federal Housing Programs for Wall Street’s Recklessness,” Center for American Progress, April 13, 2017, https://www.americanprogress.org/​issues/​economy/​reports/​2017/​04/​13/​430424/​2008-housing-crisis/.

“some portion of the problem” Ronald Utt, “The Subprime Mortgage Market Collapse: A Primer on the Causes and Possible Solutions,” Heritage Foundation, April 22, 2008, https://www.aei.org/​articles/​a-crisis-caused-by-housing-policies-not-lack-of-regulation/.

Calling that conclusion Peter J. Wallison, “A Crisis Caused by Housing Policies, Not Lack of Regulation,” American Enterprise Institute, October 30, 2017, http://www.aei.org/​publication/​a-crisis-caused-by-housing-policies-not-lack-of-regulation.

And so many pundits blamed National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 219–21, xxvii.

a man named Roland Arnall Bethany McLean, “The Man that Got Away,” Slate, June 29, 2011, https://slate.com/​business/​2011/​06/​subprime-prosecutions-why-the-government-hunts-small-game.html.

“the recovery that we got” “Median net worth fell about 30 percent for all groups during the Great Recession. However, for black and Hispanic families, net worth continued to fall an additional 20 percent in the 2010–13 period, while white families’ net worth was essentially unchanged.” Lisa J. Dettling, Joanne W. Hsu, Lindsay Jacobs, Kevin B. Moore, and Jeffrey P. Thompson, “Recent Trends in Wealth-Holding by Race and Ethnicity: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve Board of Governors, September 27, 2017, https://www.federalreserve.gov/​econres/​notes/​feds-notes/​recent-trends-in-wealth-holding-by-race-and-ethnicity-evidence-from-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20170927.htm; for a critical assessment of the Obama Administration foreclosure prevention policies, see David Dayden, “Obama Failed to Mitigate America’s Foreclosure Crisis,” The Atlantic, December 14, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2016/​12/​obamas-failure-to-mitigate-americas-foreclosure-crisis/​510485/.

In a study conducted Matthew D. Luttig, Christopher M. Federico, and Howard Levine, “Supporters and Opponents of Donald Trump Respond Differently to Racial Cues: An Experimental Analysis,” Research and Politics (October–December 2017): 1–8, https://doi.org/​10.1177/​2053168017737411.

the secret was mortgage securitization Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey, “Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis,” American Sociological Review 75, no. 5 (October 2010): 630, https://doi.org/​10.1177/​0003122410380868; and James Lardner, “Beyond the Mortgage Meltdown: Addressing the Current Crisis, Avoiding a Future Catastrophe,” Demos, 2008, p. 19, https://www.demos.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​Beyond%20the%20Mortgage%20Meltdown.pdf.

a lighthearted acronym National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 8.

The average FICO credit score National Commission on the Causes of the Financial and Economic Crisis in the United States, Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, 107.

More than half of the $2.5 trillion Brooks and Simon, “Subprime Debacle Traps Even Very Credit-Worthy.”

more than 20 percent Mara der Hovanesian, “Nightmare Mortgages,” Bloomberg News, September 11, 2006, https://www.bloomberg.com/​news/​articles/​2006-09-10/​nightmare-mortgages.

fall by over 30 percent Michele Lerner, “10 Years Later: How the Housing Market Has Changed Since the Crash,” Washington Post, October 4, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​business/​wp/​2018/​10/​04/​feature/​10-years-later-how-the-housing-market-has-changed-since-the-crash/​?utm_term=.b5da5edc779a.

over two-thirds will probably never own Laura Kusisto, “Many Who Lost Homes to Foreclosure in Last Decade Won’t Return,” Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/​articles/​many-who-lost-homes-to-foreclosure-in-last-decade-wont-return-nar-1429548640.

the brothers Lehman, slave owners Joseph Wechsberg, The Merchant Bankers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 297–300.

would not have existed without it Dozens of other U.S. financial companies, some extinct but others still operating, had roots in the slave trade. New York Life, for example, sold life insurance for enslaved people: to benefit not the slaves’ families, but their owners. A few companies, like JPMorgan Chase, Aetna, and Wachovia (a predecessor to Wells Fargo), have apologized for their role. Others, like AIG subsidiary US Life, refuse to address their historic ties to slavery. Rachel L. Swarns, “Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated Past,” New York Times, December 18, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/​2016/​12/​18/​us/​insurance-policies-on-slaves-new-york-lifes-complicated-past.html.

the highest returns in its history Nick L. Lioudis, “The Collapse of Lehman Brothers: A Case Study,” Investopedia, updated November 26, 2019, https://www.investopedia.com/​articles/​economics/​09/​lehman-brothers-collapse.asp.

Lehman’s CFO asserted boldly Lioudis, “The Collapse of Lehman Brothers.”

underwrite more mortgage-backed securities Lioudis, “The Collapse of Lehman Brothers.”

more borrowers had their just resolution The Tomlins’ subprime loan came early in the development of the nonbank lender market, and Chase (later HomeGold) failed to do what most subprime lenders would learn to do—structure the loan to avoid the triggers of the 1994 HOEPA antipredatory lending law. According to Mal Maynard, because the class action included many loans that were illegal under HOEPA, there was a greater chance of prevailing in court. HOEPA was unable to prevent the predatory mortgage crisis of the mid-1990s and 2000s because of numerous loopholes. For more on HOEPA’s limitations, see Elizabeth Renuart, “Testimony Before the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Regarding Home Equity Lending and HOEPA,” August 4, 2000, https://www.nclc.org/​images/​pdf/​foreclosure_mortgage/​archive/​hoepa_f1.pdf.

Chapter Five: No One Fights Alone

I have chosen to change the names of Nissan workers at the worker center for their protection. Chip Wells’s story has been made public in the media, so his name appears unchanged.

On August 4, 2017, a group of workers Noam Scheiber, “Racially Charged Nissan Vote Is a Test for U.A.W. in the South,” New York Times, August 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/​2017/​08/​02/​business/​economy/​nissan-united-auto-workers-mississippi.html; Noam Scheiber, “Nissan Workers in Mississippi Reject Union Bid by U.A.W.,” New York Times, August 5, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/​2017/​08/​05/​business/​nissan-united-auto-workers-union.html.

full-time “temps” for more than five years Jeff Amy, “Former Contract Workers Key in Canton Nissan Union Vote,” Clarion Ledger, July 25, 2017, http://www.clarionledger.com/​story/​business/​2017/​07/​25/​former-contract-workers-key-canton-nissan-union-vote/​507770001. See also Scott Tong, “How Temp Workers Became the Norm in America,” Marketplace, November 25, 2018, https://www.marketplace.org/​2018/​11/​15/​how-great-recession-helped-normalize-use-temp-workers.

as high as 40 percent “When an Election Is Neither Free Nor Fair: Nissan and the 2017 Union Election in Mississippi,” UAW Briefing Paper, October 25, 2017, p. 2, https://uaw.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2017/​09/​Nissan-Report-3.pdf.

as threats to their livelihood See, for example, Jacqueline Jones, American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998).

stratification only helped the employer David Roediger writes, “As late as 1907 the pioneering labor economist John R. Commons regarded not scientific management but ‘playing one race against the other’ as the only ‘symptom of originality’ in US management.” Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 72–73.

questionable categories of “bankers, land speculators” “Such men (the gender was assumed) either preyed on human weaknesses or made a lucrative income without having to work very hard for it. Certainly no sweat begrimed their well-fed countenances.” Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 35.

“Why should working men” Journal of United Labor, Washington, D.C., August 15, 1880.

journalist in 1886 Charleston Philip S. Foner, “The Knights of Labor,” The Journal of Negro History 53, no. 1 (January 1968): 70.

“When everything else” John Swinton’s Paper, May 16, 1886, quoted in Foner, “The Knights of Labor,” 70.

“It is generally considered” “Colored Knight Ferrell, Race Prejudice Aroused in Richmond; The Knights Condemned for Abusing Southern Hospitality,” New York Times, October 7, 1886.

estimated one-third to one-half Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973 (New York: Picador, 1974), 49.

reign lasted only a decade Alana Semuels, “ ‘Segregation Had to Be Invented,’ ” The Atlantic, February 17, 2017.

essentially militarized “But after 1877 American labor relations were the most violent in the Western world with the exception of Russia. It is one of those superficial paradoxes of history that the most democratic and the most despotic countries in the Western world would have the most violent labor clashes. The strongly held American belief in the right of business owners to have complete control over their property, along with business dominance of both political parties and a history of violence in dealing with Native Americans and slaves, not to mention the horrendous casualty rate in the Civil War, made the pitched labor battles seem as normal and expectable to most Americans as they were to Russians with their totally different history. Between 1877 and 1900, American presidents sent the U.S. Army into 11 strikes, governors mobilized the National Guard in somewhere between 118 and 160 labor disputes,” G. William Domhoff, “The Rise and Fall of Labor Unions in the U.S.: From the 1830s until 2012,” Power in America, Who Rules America?, http://whorulesamerica.net/​power/​history_of_labor_unions.html.

to exclude Black workers For decades, craft unions had excluded Black workers despite the official policy of both the National Labor Union and the AFL being of nondiscrimination. Isaac Myers, a ship caulker from Baltimore, created an alternative to the National Labor Union, the Colored National Labor Union. Frederick Douglass became the president of the CNLU in 1872. See Jones, American Work, 295; and “A House Divided: African American Workers Struggle Against Segregation,” Unions Making History in America, University of Maryland Libraries, https://www.lib.umd.edu/​unions/​social/​african-americans-rights.

In the 1920s, the leaders See Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness, 78–82.

as synonymous with strike breakers Warren C. Whatley, “African-American Strikebreaking from the Civil War to the New Deal,” Social Science History 17, no. 4 (1993): 525–58.

explicit commitment to interracial unity Robert H. Zieger, The CIO, 1935–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 83–84.

“Probably the greatest” W.E.B. Du Bois, “Race Relations in the United States, 1917–1947,” Phylon IX (Third Quarter 1948): 234–47, quoted in Michael Goldfield, “Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s,” International Labor and Working-Class History 44 (Fall 1993): 1–32. Du Bois also wrote, however, of the realities of white racial programming, even among union workers: “The white laborer has been trained to dislike and fear black labor; to regard the Negro as an unfair competitor, able and willing to degrade the price of labor; and even if the Negro prove a good union man, his treatment as an equal would involve equal status, which the white laborer through his long cultural training bitterly resents as a degradation of his own status. Under these circumstances the American Negro faces in the current labor movement, especially in the A F of L and also even in the CIO, the current racial patterns of America.” Dusk of Dawn (1940; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 104.

reaching a high-water mark Josh Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions Help Working People,” Economic Policy Institute, August 24, 2017, https://www.epi.org/​publication/​how-todays-unions-help-working-people-giving-workers-the-power-to-improve-their-jobs-and-unrig-the-economy.

one out of every three workers Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 72.

classified as “low-wage” “More than 53 million people—44% of all workers aged 18–64—are low-wage workers by our criteria. They earn median hourly wages of $10.22 and median annual earnings of $17,950.” Martha Ross and Nicole Bateman, “Meet the Low-Wage Workforce,” Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, November 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/​wp-content/​uploads/​2019/​11/​201911_Brookings-Metro_low-wage-workforce_Ross-Bateman.pdf.

Less than half “Percent of Private Sector Establishments that Offer Health Insurance to Employees (2019),” State Health Facts, KFF, n.d., https://www.kff.org/​other/​state-indicator/​percent-of-firms-offering-coverage/​?currentTimeframe=0&selectedRows=%7B%22wrapups%22:%7B%22united-states%22:%7B%7D%7D%7D&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D.

Only 12 percent “How Many Workers Participate in Workplace Retirement Plans?” Pension Rights Center, July 15, 2019, http://www.pensionrights.org/​publications/​statistic/​how-many-american-workers-participate-workplace-retirement-plans.

1950s peak See Figure 1 in David Madland and Malkie Wall, “The Middle Class Continues to Struggle as Union Density Remains Low,” Center for American Progress Action Fund, September 10, 2019, https://www.americanprogressaction.org/​issues/​economy/​news/​2019/​09/​10/​175024/​middle-class-continues-struggle-union-density-remains-low.

one out of every sixteen Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members—2019,” news release, U.S. Department of Labor, January 22, 2020, https://www.bls.gov/​news.release/​pdf/​union2.pdf. See Table 3: The union membership rate of public-sector workers (33.6 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.2 percent).

has directly tracked the share Henry Farber et al., “Unions and Inequality Over the Twentieth Century: New Evidence from Survey Data,” Working Paper 24587, National Bureau of Economic Research, May 2018, http://www.nber.org/​papers/​w24587.

to the richest Americans Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Ruth Igielnik, and Rakesh Kochhar, “Trends in Income and Wealth Inequality,” Pew Research Center, January 9, 2020, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/​2020/​01/​09/​trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality.

increased in step “As Unions Decline, Inequality Becomes More Extreme,” chart, in “Income Inequality in the United States,” Inequality.Org, Institute for Policy Studies, n.d., https://inequality.org/​facts/​income-inequality/​#ceo-worker-pay-gaps.

over 13 percent higher wages Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 29n20.

In Houston in 2006 Steven Greenhouse, “Janitors’ Union, Recently Organized, Strikes in Houston,” New York Times, November 3, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/​2006/​11/​03/​us/​03labor.html; Steven Greenhouse, “Cleaning Companies in Accord with Striking Houston Janitors,” New York Times, November 3, 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/​2006/​11/​21/​us/​21janitor.html.

In Las Vegas Steven Greenhouse, “ORGANIZED; Local 226, ‘the Culinary,’ Makes Las Vegas the Land of the Living Wage,” New York Times, June 3, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/​2004/​06/​03/​us/​organized-local-226-the-culinary-makes-las-vegas-the-land-of-the-living-wage.html.

earned four dollars more per hour See Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 33n60.

and more benefits Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 29n26.

thanks to union bargaining Fiona Simmons, “Las Vegas Unions Agree on Health Benefits for Casino Employees,” Gambling News, September 2, 2020, https://www.gamblingnews.com/​news/​las-vegas-unions-agree-on-health-benefits-for-casino-employees.

Economists have calculated “When union density is high, nonunion workers benefit from higher wages. When the share of workers who are union members is relatively high, as it was in 1979, wages of nonunion workers are higher. For example, had union density remained at its 1979 level, weekly wages of nonunion men in the private sector would be 5 percent higher (that’s an additional $2,704 in earnings for year-round workers), while wages for nonunion men in the private sector without a college education would be 8 percent, or $3,016 per year, higher. (These estimates look at what wages would have been in 2013 had union density remained at its 1979 levels).” Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 9–10.

risen by 190 percent Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 29n19.

suffer from infighting Steven Greenhouse, “Infighting Distracts Unions at Crucial Time,” New York Times, July 9, 2009, https://www.nytimes.com/​2009/​07/​09/​business/​09labor.html.

misusing corporate and union funds Neal E. Boudette, “Ex-Fiat Chrysler Executive Accused of Siphoning Millions with Union Leader,” New York Times, July 26, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/​2017/​07/​26/​business/​ex-fiat-chrysler-executive-accused-of-siphoning-millions-with-union-leader.html; most recently, see Neal E. Boudette and Noam Scheiber, “Dennis Williams, Former U.A.W. Leader, Is Accused of Conspiracy,” New York Times, August 27, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​08/​27/​business/​uaw-dennis-williams.html.

strike of 1981 “1981 Strike Leaves Legacy for American Workers,” Morning Edition, NPR News, August 3, 2006, https://www.npr.org/​2006/​08/​03/​5604656/​1981-strike-leaves-legacy-for-american-workers.

eleven thousand striking controllers Joseph A. McCartin, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

chairman Paul Volcker’s Bill Medley, “Volcker’s Announcement of Anti-Inflation Measures,” Federal Reserve History, September 2013, https://www.federalreservehistory.org/​essays/​anti_inflation_measures.

labor’s breaking point Kimberly Phillips-Fein, “How Employers Broke Unions by Creating a Culture of Fear,” Washington Post, August 2, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​in-theory/​wp/​2016/​08/​02/​how-employers-broke-unions-by-creating-a-culture-of-fear.

illegally fired workers for union activity Celine McNicholas et al., “Unlawful,” Economic Policy Institute, December 11, 2019, https://www.epi.org/​publication/​unlawful-employer-opposition-to-union-election-campaigns.

despite federal protections Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 34n81.

the majority of businesses Bivens et al., “How Today’s Unions,” 35n84.

The Nissan employees attested Beginning in mid-July, Nissan supervisors pressured employees with antiunion messages in group and one-on-one meetings. The company broadcast antiunion videos inside the plant instructing workers to “Vote no” and launched a sizable antiunion cable-television buy in the central Mississippi media market. Nissan made implied threats to close the Canton plant if workers unionized and threatened employees with layoffs if they unionized—similar to the unfair labor practices previously alleged by the NLRB. See “Nissan Threats, Intimidation Tilt Outcome of Union Election in Mississippi,” news release, UAW, August 4, 2017, https://uaw.org/​nissan-threats-intimidation-tilt-outcome-union-election-mississippi [inactive].

National Labor Relations Board issued See Scheiber, “Racially Charged Nissan Vote,” and “NLRB Issues New Unfair Labor Practice Complaint Against Nissan,” news release, UAW, July 31, 2017, https://uaw.org/​nlrb-issues-new-unfair-labor-practice-complaint-nissan.

42,400 factories in just eight years Richard McCormack, “The Plight of American Manufacturing,” American Prospect, December 21, 2009, https://prospect.org/​article/​plight-american-manufacturing.

total value of our exports Grant Suneson, “These Are the 25 Richest Countries in the World,” USA Today, July 8, 2019, https://www.usatoday.com/​story/​money/​2019/​07/​07/​richest-countries-in-the-world/​39630693.

But other countries Niall McCarthy, “Which Countries Have the Highest Levels of Union Membership?” Forbes, June 20, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/​sites/​niallmccarthy/​2017/​06/​20/​which-countries-have-the-highest-levels-of-labor-union-membership-infographic/​#fbb85a233c04; Dylan Matthews, “Europe Could Have the Secret to Saving America’s Unions,” Vox, April 17, 2017, https://www.vox.com/​policy-and-politics/​2017/​4/17/​15290674/​union-labor-movement-europe-bargaining-fight-15-ghent.

According to Gallup In 1959, the approval rate was at 73 percent. It hovered right around 70 percent until 1965, when it began to decline. Jeff Jones and Lydia Saad, “Gallup Poll Social Series: Work and Education,” Gallup, August 2–6, 2017, http://www.gallup.com/​file/​poll/​217334/​Labor%20Unions%20(Trends).pdf.

supporting the March on Washington Ross Eisenbrey, “Key Goals of 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Are Still Unmet,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, August 28, 2012, https://www.epi.org/​blog/​key-goals-1963-march-washington-jobs-freedom/​1347049061000; Michael Kazin, “The White Man Whose ‘March on Washington’ Speech You Should Remember Too,” New Republic, August 21, 2013, https://newrepublic.com/​article/​114408/​march-washington-50th-anniversary-walter-reuthers-speech.

unionized capital of American manufacturing Mike Smith, “ ‘Let’s Make Detroit a Union Town’: The History of Labor and the Working Class in the Motor City,” Michigan Historical Review 27, no. 2 (Fall 2001): 157–73.

epicenter of Black cultural and economic power See Herb Boyd, Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination (New York: HarperCollins, 2017).

white people were abandoning Ross Eisenbrey, “Detroit’s Bankruptcy Reflects a History of Racism,” Working Economics Blog, Economic Policy Institute, February 25, 2014, https://www.epi.org/​blog/​detroits-bankruptcy-reflects-history-racism.

White men began to leave Marilyn Salenger, “White Flight and Detroit’s Decline,” Washington Post, July 21, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​opinions/​marilyn-salenger-white-flight-and-detroits-decline/​2013/​07/​21/​7903e888-f24a-11e2-bdae-0d1f78989e8a_story.html; Michael Jackman, “White Flight Did Not Begin in 1967,” Detroit Metro Times, July 19, 2017, https://www.metrotimes.com/​detroit/​white-flight-did-not-begin-in-1967/​Content?oid=4618876.

Over time, a slightly higher share Natalie Spievack, “Can Labor Unions Help Close the Black-White Wage Gap?” Urban Wire (blog), Urban Institute, February 1, 2019, https://www.urban.org/​urban-wire/​can-labor-unions-help-close-black-white-wage-gap; Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members—2019.”

government neutrality in union drives Between 1955 and 1984, almost all states passed laws about public-sector bargaining, and most of those were pro-bargaining, requiring governments to meet with or negotiate with unions. See Henry S. Farber, “The Evolution of Public Sector Bargaining Laws,” in When Public Sector Workers Unionize, eds. Richard B. Freeman and Casey Ichniowski (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 132–33, http://www.nber.org/​chapters/​c7906.

more than five times higher The union membership rate of public-sector workers (34.4 percent) is more than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.5 percent). See Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Union Members—2019.”

all-time lowest approval of unions Jones and Saad, “Gallup Poll Social Series: Work and Education.”

White approval of unions “Our analysis of the February 2010 Pew Survey showed that support for unions fell dramatically among Americans of all races, though respondents of color continued to have more favorable views of unions than whites. Support among Blacks fell 11 points between 2007 and 2010, from 80 percent to 69 percent. Among Hispanics, it fell 22 points, from 82 percent to 60 percent. And support among whites fell by 15 points, from 60 percent to 45 percent.” David Madland and Karla Walter, “Why Is the Public Suddenly Down on Unions?” Center for American Progress Action Fund, July 20, 2010, https://www.americanprogressaction.org/​issues/​economy/​reports/​2010/​07/​20/​8046/​why-is-the-public-suddenly-down-on-unions. As research has demonstrated, the suspicion that a Black president would tilt government toward Black people at the expense of whites was prevalent during the Obama administration; racial resentment tinged white opinion on issues like foreclosure assistance, taxes, the Recovery Act’s food stamps and unemployment insurance, and healthcare.

“[Obama] doesn’t see himself” Mike Burns and Andy Newbold, “Rush Limbaugh Opens 2012 with More Race-Baiting Attacks,” Media Matters for America, January 12, 2012, https://www.mediamatters.org/​rush-limbaugh/​rush-limbaugh-opens-2012-more-race-baiting-attacks.

began to consider unions the enemy Steven Greenhouse, “When Republicans and Unions Got Along,” New York Times, September 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​09/​06/​opinion/​labor-unions-republicans.html. White approval of unions has rebounded in the Trump era, to 64 percent in August 2020, though Republican support for unions is still underwater, at 45 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving. See “Gallup Poll Social Series: Work and Education,” Gallup, July 30–August 12, 2020, https://news.gallup.com/​file/​poll/​319058/​200903Unions.pdf.

fight song, “Solidarity Forever” The lyrics for the song can be found at “Solidarity Forever,” Industrial Workers of the World, https://archive.iww.org/​history/​icons/​solidarity_forever.

After World War II, the CIO See chapter 3, “The ‘Holy Crusade,’ ” in Barbara S. Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), 22–45.

Operation Dixie failed spectacularly, and racism See “Organizational History,” Operation Dixie: The CIO Organizing Committee Papers on Microfilm, Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library, https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/​EAD/​htmldocs/​KCL05747mf.html.

“there was no Negro problem” Zieger, The CIO, 234.

CIO unofficially admitted defeat Zieger, The CIO, 238.

even lower than the federal one See “Georgia,” State Minimum Wage Laws, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor, updated September 1, 2020, https://www.dol.gov/​agencies/​whd/​minimum-wage/​state#ga.

and in the U.S. South By region, those living in the South are less likely than those living elsewhere in the country to hold favorable views of unions: 41 percent of southerners view labor unions favorably, while 42 percent hold an unfavorable view. In the three other regions of the country, more hold favorable than unfavorable views of unions. “Mixed Views of Impact of Long-Term Decline in Union Membership,” Pew Research Center, April 27, 2015, https://www.pewresearch.org/​politics/​2015/​04/​27/​mixed-views-of-impact-of-long-term-decline-in-union-membership.

grew by 13.5 percent Howard Schneider, “U.S. South, Not Just Mexico, Stands in Way of Rust Belt Jobs Revival,” Reuters, April 7, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/​article/​us-usa-trump-south-insight/​u-s-south-not-just-mexico-stands-in-way-of-rust-belt-jobs-revival-idUSKBN1790HO.

primarily in the nonunionized South The South with a few exceptions: see “Operations by State,” Toyota, https://www.toyota.com/​usa/​operations/​map.html.

South for the low wages Kim Hill and Emilio Brahmst, “The Auto Industry Moving South: An Examination of Trends,” Center for Automotive Research, December 15, 2003, https://www.cargroup.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2017/​02/​The-Auto-Industry-Moving-South-An-Examination-of-Trends.pdf.

the worse it got Harold Meyerson, “How the American South Drives the Low-Wage Economy,” American Prospect, July 6, 2015, https://prospect.org/​article/​how-american-south-drives-low-wage-economy.

largest private employer by far Walmart employs 1.5 million Americans. See “Company Facts,” Walmart, https://corporate.walmart.com/​newsroom/​company-facts.

local wages and benefits tumbled Wages in a county after a Walmart had been operating for eight years were lower across the board by almost 5 percent, according to David Neumark, Junfu Zhang, and Stephen Ciccarella Jr., “The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets,” Working Papers 060711, Department of Economics, University of California–Irvine, https://ideas.repec.org/​p/irv/​wpaper/​060711.html. Wages and health coverage declined for retail workers upon the opening of Walmarts, according to Arindrajit Dube, T. William Lester, and Barry Eidlin, “Firm Entry and Wages: Impact of Wal-Mart Growth on Earnings Throughout the Retail Sector,” Institute of Industrial Relations Working Paper No. iirwps-126-05, August 7, 2007, https://ssrn.com/​abstract=841684. Responding to massive worker organizing, tighter labor markets, and public pressure in the past half decade, Walmart has begun to raise pay and promote career ladders and promotions for hourly workers, though it remains unorganized and low-wage. Meyerson, “How the American South.”

slashed the regional difference in half See Moody’s Analytics data cited in Meyerson, “How the American South.”

“the South today shares” Meyerson, “How the American South.”

“There probably are not today” W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America (1935; New York: Free Press, 1998), 700.

One of the most influential Irish David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness (New York: Verso, 1991), 134–38; Frederick Douglass quoted an O’Connell speech in Ireland, “I have been assailed for attacking the American institution, as it is called,—Negro slavery. I am not ashamed of that attack. I do not shrink from it. I am the advocate of civil and religious liberty, all over the globe, and wherever tyranny exists, I am the foe of the tyrant; wherever oppression shows itself, I am the foe of the oppressor; wherever slavery rears its head, I am the enemy of the system, or the institution, call it by what name you will.” Letter from Frederick Douglass to William Lloyd Garrison, October 24, 1845, in Frederick Douglass in Ireland, in His Own Words, ed. Christine Kinealy (New York: Routledge, 2018).

“Irish attacks on blacks” Michael Miller Topp, “Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States, 1837–1877,” in The Columbia Documentary History of Race and Ethnicity in America, ed. Ronald H. Bayor (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 277.

decreased by 20 percent afterward Albon P. Man Jr., “Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863,” The Journal of Negro History 36, no. 4 (October 1951): 375–405.

“Herrenvolk republicanism” Roediger, Wages of Whiteness, 60.

Norton and his colleagues Ilyana Kuziemko et al., “ ‘Last-Place Aversion’: Evidence and Redistributive Implications,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 129, no. 1 (2014): 105–49.

“and thus those most likely” Kuziemko et al., “ ‘Last-Place Aversion,’ ” 107.

“Last-place aversion suggests” Kuziemko et al., “ ‘Last-Place Aversion,’ ” 107.

Workers heard this messaging Chris Brooks, “Why Did Nissan Workers Vote No?” Labor Notes, August 11, 2017, https://www.labornotes.org/​2017/​08/​why-did-nissan-workers-vote-no.

favors Nissan got in the statehouse The workers referenced a recent set of tax breaks and incentives for a Nissan supplier moving to the county, which totaled more than $1 million. Dennis Moore, “Japanese Company Adds 100 Jobs to Madison County Operation,” Mississippi Today, July 17, 2017, https://mississippitoday.org/​2017/​07/​17/​japanese-company-adds-100-jobs-to-madison-county-operation/; Overall, Good Jobs First calculated over $1 billion in incentives from the state to Nissan. “A Good Deal for Mississippi?,” Good Jobs First, May 2013, http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/​sites/​default/​files/​docs/​pdf/​nissan_report.pdf.

slogans like “One-two-three-four” “New York Fast Food Workers in Historic Strike for $15 an Hour,” Real News Network, November 30, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=kW9Ak00ejPU.

had gone precisely nowhere See, for example, “State Minimum Wage Rates,” Labor Law Center, https://www.laborlawcenter.com/​state-minimum-wage-rates. The first “state” to pass the ten-dollar threshold was the District of Columbia, three years later in 2015.

had spread across the country Wendi C. Thomas, “How New York’s ‘Fight for $15’ Launched a Nationwide Movement,” American Prospect, January 4, 2016, https://prospect.org/​economy/​new-york-s-fight-15-launched-nationwide-movement.

a $15-an-hour victory David Rolf, The Fight for Fifteen: The Right Wage for a Working America (New York: New Press, 2016), 110.

poverty wage for the Seattle area Rolf, The Fight for Fifteen, 102.

streets of sixty cities teemed Alanna Petroff and James O’Toole, “Wave of Fast Food Strikes Hits 60 Cities,” CNN Money, August 29, 2013, https://money.cnn.com/​2013/​08/​29/​news/​fast-food-strikes/​index.html.

first American city to raise Rolf, The Fight for Fifteen, 159.

raised him on a Hardee’s paycheck Steven Greenhouse, “Strong Voice in ‘Fight for 15’ Fast-Food Wage Campaign,” New York Times, December 4, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/​2014/​12/​05/​business/​in-fast-food-workers-fight-for-15-an-hour-a-strong-voice-in-terrance-wise.html.

testifying before the U.S. Congress See Fight for $15, “#FightFor15 Leader Terrence Wise Testifies on Raise the Wage Act,” Facebook, February 8, 2019, https://www.facebook.com/​watch/​?v=531773327344136.

chapters cross-organized with Black Lives Matter Justin Miller, “Fight for 15 and Black Lives Matter Join Forces on Anniversary of MLK’s Death,” American Prospect, April 4, 2017, https://prospect.org/​article/​anniversary-mlk-death-fight-15-and-black-lives-matter-join-forces.

The advocates sued John Blake, “The Fight for $15 Takes on the ‘Jim Crow’ Economy,” CNN, April 13, 2018, https://edition.cnn.com/​2018/​04/​13/​us/​fight-for-15-birmingham/​index.html.

the twenty-one states State Minimum Wage Laws, Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor, updated September 1, 2020, https://www.dol.gov/​agencies/​whd/​minimum-wage/​state.

largest African American populations Sonya Rastogi et al., “The Black Population: 2010,” 2010 Census Briefs, C2010BR-06, September 2011, https://www.census.gov/​prod/​cen2010/​briefs/​c2010br-06.pdf.

largest group to benefit Laura Huizar and Tsedeye Gebreselassie, “What a $15 Minimum Wage Means for Women and Workers of Color,” National Employment Law Project, December 2016, p. 2, https://www.nelp.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​Policy-Brief-15-Minimum-Wage-Women-Workers-of-Color.pdf.

win the support of whites Leslie Davis and Hannah Hartig, “Two-Thirds of Americans Favor Raising Federal Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, July 30, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2019/​07/​30/​two-thirds-of-americans-favor-raising-federal-minimum-wage-to-15-an-hour. In 2019, 60 percent of white Americans supported raising the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars.

they won a statewide $15 minimum wage “New York State’s Minimum Wage,” New York State, https://www.ny.gov/​new-york-states-minimum-wage/​new-york-states-minimum-wage.

So, too, did workers in states including See, for example, Ovetta Wiggins and Rachel Chason, “Maryland Adopts $15 Minimum Wage by 2025 as Lawmakers Reject Hogan’s Veto,” Washington Post, March 28, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​md-politics/​maryland-house-rejects-hogan-veto-of-15-minimum-wage-senate-to-vote-next/​2019/​03/​28/​88c240e0-5152-11e9-a3f7-78b7525a8d5f_story.html; “454 CMR 27.00: Minimum Wage,” Mass.Gov, December 16, 2016, https://www.mass.gov/​regulations/​454-CMR-2700-minimum-wage.

$68 billion more Yannet Lathrop, “Impact of the Fight for $15: $68 Billion in Raises, 22 Million Workers,” National Employment Law Project, November 29, 2018, https://www.nelp.org/​publication/​impact-fight-for-15-2018.

all the terms of business You get identical customer experiences at McDonald’s restaurants across the country, and that’s because the corporate parent controls the scripts that workers use and how they dress and monitor in real time how much they work and sell. Patricia Smith, “McDonald’s Cannot Dodge Its Illegal Treatment of Franchise Workers,” National Employment Law Project, December 27, 2017, https://www.nelp.org/​commentary/​mcdonalds-cannot-dodge-its-illegal-treatment-of-franchise-workers.

Chapter Six: Never a Real Democracy

“I believe if you can’t have” ACLU Videos, “Larry’s Fight to Vote Goes to the Supreme Court,” YouTube, 2:27, January 8, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=BVIiRNLHgfM.

political scientist Larry M. Bartels found “I find that substantial numbers of Republicans endorse statements contemplating violations of key democratic norms, including respect for the law and for the outcomes of elections and eschewing the use of force in pursuit of political ends. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism—especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The strong tendency of ethnocentric Republicans to countenance violence and lawlessness, even prospectively and hypothetically, underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.” Larry M. Bartels, “Ethnic Antagonism Erodes Republicans’ Commitment to Democracy,” PNAS 117, no. 37 (August 2020): 22752–59, https://doi.org/​10.1073/​pnas.2007747117.

majority of white men were excluded See for example “Voting Rights: A Short History,” Carnegie Corporation of New York, November 18, 2019, https://www.carnegie.org/​topics/​topic-articles/​voting-rights/​voting-rights-timeline.

original thirteen states limited the franchise “The Founders and the Vote,” Elections, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., https://www.loc.gov/​classroom-materials/​elections/​right-to-vote/​the-founders-and-the-vote. See also “Table A.2: Property and Taxpaying Requirements for Suffrage: 1970–1855,” in Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States (New York: Basic Books, 2009), 308.

equality and democracy It has become popular on the right to reject the aspiration to democracy altogether in the face of demographic change and equalization of the franchise. The right asserts instead that we are a republic, given that we do not have direct democracy; however, democracies can and usually do function through elected representatives.

the Three-fifths Compromise Article I, Sec. 2 of the U.S. Constitution reads, “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.”

give those states an advantage “The remaining mode was an election by the people or rather by the qualified part of them, at large: With all its imperfections he liked this best.” However, “the second difficulty arose from the disproportion of qualified voters in the N. & S. States, and the disadvantages which this mode would throw on the latter.” James Madison, Madison Debates, July 25, 1787, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/​18th_century/​debates_725.asp.

region had thirteen extra electors Sean Illing, “The Real Reason We Have an Electoral College: To Protect Slave States,” Vox, November 12, 2016, https://www.vox.com/​policy-and-politics/​2016/​11/​12/​13598316/​donald-trump-electoral-college-slavery-akhil-reed-amar.

white people who live in larger “While votes are roughly proportionately distributed, since even the smallest states are guaranteed three votes, the people in these states end up being overrepresented in the Electoral College. For example, in Wyoming, there is an electoral vote for every 195,000 residents, in North Dakota there is one for every 252,000, and in Rhode Island one for every 264,000. On the other hand, in California there is an electoral vote for every 711,000 residents, in Florida one for every 699,000, and in Texas one for every 723,000. The states that are overrepresented in the Electoral College also happen to be less diverse than the country as a whole.” Lara Merling and Dean Baker, “In the Electoral College White Votes Matter More,” Center for Economic and Policy Research, November 14, 2016, https://www.cepr.net/​in-the-electoral-college-white-votes-matter-more.

reconsider the property limitations The developing manufacturing economy, led by cotton and textiles, meant that there were millions more men without property but with money, toiling in the class between servant and landowner, earning wages in factories and working jobs as mechanics, merchants, blacksmiths, and the like. The pressure built during the War of 1812 as many of these men fought for a government in which they had no voice.

tenuous voting rights of free Black citizens In addition, almost all northern states denied free Black citizens the other crucial mark of citizenship in a democracy: the right to be jurors or witnesses. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (1955; New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 20.

only 6 percent Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 308.

They just needed to be white By giving the vote to all white men while disenfranchising free Black men, states deemed the voice of the poorest white man worthier than that of the wealthiest man of color. New York eliminated its property requirement for white men in 1821 but kept it for free men of color, who couldn’t vote unless they were wealthy, possessing property worth $250. Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 308.

white-skinned immigrants didn’t even need “From the early 19th century until the 1920s, non-citizens could vote in many states, where voting rights were extended to immigrants who had resided in the United States for three years and declared their intent to become citizens.” Alexander Keyssar, “What Struggles over the Right to Vote Reveal About American Democracy,” Scholars Strategy Network, May 1, 2012, https://scholars.org/​contribution/​what-struggles-over-right-vote-reveal-about-american-democracy. It’s worth noting that, at the time, the only immigrants who could naturalize as citizens were “free white persons.”

John Wilkes Booth Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 728.

registering seven hundred thousand recently freed Ari Berman, Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 16.

In Colfax, Louisiana In November 1872, a pro-Reconstructionist Republican candidate supported by Black voters, William Pitt Kellogg, won a gubernatorial race that was so fiercely disputed that both candidates claimed victory, and President Grant had to send federal troops to support Kellogg. (Henry Louis Gates Jr., “What Was the Colfax Massacre?” The Root, July 29, 2013, https://www.theroot.com/​what-was-the-colfax-massacre-1790897517.) The following spring, Kellogg’s opponents formed a paramilitary group called the White League, which, like the Ku Klux Klan, used violence to terrorize Black citizens and their white Republican supporters. (Danny Lewis, “The 1873 Colfax Massacre Crippled the Reconstruction Era,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 13, 2016, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/​smart-news/​1873-colfax-massacre-crippled-reconstruction-180958746.) In early April, intermittent fighting broke out in Colfax Parish between Kellogg’s white opponents and Black supporters over control of the courthouse, the seat of civic life and the repository where the election results were held (in Lewis, “The 1873 Colfax Massacre”). More than a hundred Black residents began to camp out in the courthouse to protect it. On April 13, members of the White League, armed with guns, knives, and a cannon, went to war against the Black defenders of the courthouse, in what one white leader called “a struggle for white supremacy” (in Gates, “What Was the Colfax Massacre?”). Outnumbered and outgunned, the defenders fought back but were forced to yield when the opponents set fire to the courthouse. The White League then slaughtered every Black person they found, even those waving white cloths of surrender. Historians are not sure of the number, but somewhere between 60 and 150 Black men and 3 white men were killed in what came to be known as the Colfax Massacre, one of the most violent episodes of the Reconstruction era. Nine members of the white mob were tried, but the charges were dropped by the U.S. Supreme Court in its infamous 1876 decision in United States v. Cruikshank, which held that the federal government had no role in protecting citizens from racist attacks by individuals or groups—only by the state. See Adam Serwer, “The Supreme Court Is Headed Back to the 19th Century,” The Atlantic, September 14, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/​ideas/​archive/​2018/​09/​redemption-court/​566963.

Indigenous Americans See Laughlin McDonald, American Indians and the Fight for Equal Voting Rights (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014). Native American voting rights are still under attack. See James T. Tucker et al., Obstacles at Every Turn: Barriers to Political Participation Faced by Native American Voters, Native American Voting Rights Coalition, June 2020, https://vote.narf.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2020/​06/​obstacles_at_every_turn.pdf.

alliances sometimes known as “Fusion” Helen G. Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics in North Carolina, 1894–1901 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 220.

violent intimidation to those who didn’t See, for example, the racial terror organization the Red Shirts in North Carolina, in Edmonds, The Negro and Fusion Politics, 163–64.

Mississippi implemented Lawrence Goldstone, “America’s Relentless Suppression of Black Voters,” New Republic, October 24, 2018, https://newrepublic.com/​article/​151858/​americas-relentless-suppression-black-voters.

In some places, grandfather clauses Tova Wang, The Politics of Voter Suppression (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 18.

a scant 18 percent Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018), 10. (The Twenty-fourth Amendment prohibited poll taxes in federal elections in 1964, and court decisions struck down the remaining state poll taxes by 1966.)

The requirement that we register Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 52.

“voter registration has thus been” Daniel P. Tokaji, “Voter Registration and Election Reform,” William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal 17, no. 2 (December 2008): 461.

nearly 20 percent of eligible voters Laura Williamson et al., “Toward a More Representative Electorate: The Progress and Potential of Voter Registration Through Public Assistance Agencies,” Demos, December 18, 2018, https://www.demos.org/​publication/​toward-more-representative-electorate-progress-and-potential-voter-registration-through-.

Over six million Americans are prohibited Christopher Uggen et al., “6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016,” The Sentencing Project, October 6, 2016, https://www.sentencingproject.org/​publications/​6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016. See also Jacey Fortin, “Can Felons Vote? It Depends on the State,” New York Times, April 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​04/​21/​us/​felony-voting-rights-law.html.

“Some crimes were specifically defined” Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2012), 192.

These included petty theft Tim Elfrink, “The Long, Racist History of Florida’s Now-Repealed Ban on Felons Voting,” Washington Post, November 7, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​nation/​2018/​11/​07/​long-racist-history-floridas-now-repealed-ban-felons-voting/​?utm_term=.1653b54f0e20.

Mississippi designated crimes During the 1870s–1880s, an estimated 95 percent of people in Florida prison camps were Black men. A captain in one of the camps at that time noted, “It was possible to send a negro to prison on almost any pretext, but difficult to get a white man there.” The 1868 law was reaffirmed in 1968 against a backdrop of heightened racial conflict and repression during the civil rights movement. “History of Florida’s Felony Disenfranchisement Provision,” Brennan Center for Justice and Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, March 2006, https://www.brennancenter.org/​sites/​default/​files/​legacy/​d/download_file_38222.pdf.

one in fifty-six non-Black voters is impacted “Felony Disenfranchisement,” The Sentencing Project, https://www.sentencingproject.org/​issues/​felony-disenfranchisement [inactive].

In Florida, voters in 2018 overturned Philip Bump, “Allowing Felons to Vote Likely Would Have Changed the Result in Florida’s Senate Race,” Washington Post, November 8, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​2018/​11/​08/​allowing-felons-vote-would-likely-have-changed-result-floridas-senate-race/​?utm_term=.92afab953729; Kevin Morris, “A Transformative Step for Democracy in Florida,” Brennan Center for Justice, November 6, 2018, https://www.brennancenter.org/​blog/​transformative-step-democracy-florida.

passed with 65 percent Samantha J. Gross, “Florida Voters Approve Amendment 4 on Restoring Felons’ Voting Rights,” Miami Herald, November 6, 2018, https://www.miamiherald.com/​news/​politics-government/​election/​article220678880.html.

nearly impossible for returning citizens Amy Gardner and Lori Rozsa, “In Florida, Felons Must Pay Court Debts Before They Can Vote,” Washington Post, May 13, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​in-florida-felons-must-pay-court-debts-before-they-can-vote-but-with-no-system-to-do-so-many-have-found-it-impossible/​2020/​05/​13/​08ed05be-906f-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html.

“there is no database” Kelvin Leon Jones v. Governor of Florida, 20-12003 (11th Cir. 2020), p. 109, https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/​opinions/​pub/​files/​202012003.enb.pdf.

paid up before they can vote Lori Rozsa, “Federal Appeals Court Blocks Hundreds of Thousands of Felons in Florida Who Still Owe Fines and Fees from Voting,” Washington Post, September 11, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​florida-felon-voting/​2020/​09/​11/​9a6b5d3a-f45e-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html.

nearly 97 percent of Australians Tacey Rychter, “How Compulsory Voting Works: Australians Explain,” New York Times, October 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​10/​22/​world/​australia/​compulsory-voting.html.

compared to about 70 percent “Reported Voting and Registration, by Race, Hispanic Origin, Sex, and Age, for the United States: November 2016,” U.S. Census Bureau, https://www2.census.gov/​programs-surveys/​cps/​tables/​p20/​580/​table02_1.xlsx.

about 93 and 91 percent, respectively Alexis Chemblette, “These Countries with Nearly 100 Percent Voter Participation Put the US to Shame,” Vice, October 25, 2017, https://impact.vice.com/​en_us/​article/​ne3n9b/​these-countries-with-nearly-100-percent-voter-participation-put-the-us-to-shame.

deeply uncertain Robert P. Jones et al., “American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge, Participation, and Polarization,” PRRI, July 17, 2018, https://www.prri.org/​research/​American-democracy-in-crisis-voters-midterms-trump-election-2018.

Oregon, for example, was judged Quan Li et al., “Cost of Voting in the American States,” Election Law Journal (September 2018): 234–47, https://doi.org/​10.1089/​elj.2017.0478. Oregon is less than 3 percent Black.

add eligible voters to the rolls Sixteen states and Washington, D.C., now use this technology. “Automatic Voter Registration, a Summary,” Brennan Center for Justice, July 10, 2019, https://www.brennancenter.org/​our-work/​research-reports/​automatic-voter-registration-summary.

highest percentage of Black citizens The District of Columbia is actually the jurisdiction with the highest percentage of African Americans, but (not unrelatedly), statehood for D.C. has failed to pass the U.S. Congress.

dead last of the fifty states Quan Li et al., “Cost of Voting.” Mississippi has no open early voting period; no online registration; narrow absentee ballot permissions, which the state broadened only slightly to account for the COVID-19 pandemic; lifetime felony conviction bans unless you’re pardoned or have your voting rights restored by either the governor or a two-thirds vote of the legislature, and strict ID requirements for registration and voting.

Shelby County v. Holder Meagan Hatcher-Mays, “NY Times Misses Link Between Anti-Civil Rights Zealot and Right-Wing’s ‘Dark Money ATM,’ ” Media Matters for America, April 8, 2014, https://www.mediamatters.org/​new-york-times/​ny-times-misses-link-between-anti-civil-rights-zealot-and-right-wings-dark-money-atm.

“target[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision” N.C. State Conference of the NAACP v. McCrory, 831 F.3d 204 (4th Cir. 2016), https://casetext.com/​case/​nc-state-conference-of-the-naacp-v-mccrory-4.

Texas introduced a voter ID law “Written Testimony of Chiraag Bains to the House On H.R. 1, the For the People Act,” Demos, February 14, 2019, https://www.demos.org/​publication/​written-testimony-chiraag-bains-house-hr-1-people-act.

Alabama demanded photo IDs Maggie Astor, “Seven Ways Alabama Has Made It Harder to Vote,” New York Times, June 23, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​06/​23/​us/​politics/​voting-rights-alabama.html.

twenty-three states raised new barriers Eric Badner, “Discriminatory Voter Laws Have Surged in Last 5 Years, Federal Commission Finds,” CNN Politics, September 12, 2018, https://www.cnn.com/​2018/​09/​12/​politics/​voting-rights-federal-commission-election/​index.html.

Although about 11 percent Keesha Gaskins and Sundeep Iyer, “The Challenge of Obtaining Voter Identification,” Brennan Center for Justice, July 18, 2012, https://www.brennancenter.org/​publication/​challenge-obtaining-voter-identification; Sari Horwitz, “Getting a Photo ID So You Can Vote Is Easy. Unless You’re Poor, Black, Latino or Elderly,” Washington Post, May 23, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​politics/​courts_law/​getting-a-photo-id-so-you-can-vote-is-easy-unless-youre-poor-black-latino-or-elderly/​2016/​05/​23/​8d5474ec-20f0-11e6-8690-f14ca9de2972_story.html?utm_term=.9911008ca3b1.

by 2020, six states “Voter Identification Requirements—Voter ID Laws,” National Conference of State Legislatures, August 25, 2020, http://www.ncsl.org/​research/​elections-and-campaigns/​voter-id.aspx.

about 5 percent of white people Vanessa M. Perez, “Americans with Photo ID: A Breakdown of Demographic Characteristics,” Project Vote, February 2015, http://www.projectvote.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2015/​06/​AMERICANS-WITH-PHOTO-ID-Research-Memo-February-2015.pdf.

“Why would I want to vote” Wade Goodwyn, “Texas’ Voter ID Law Creates a Problem for Some Women,” All Things Considered, NPR, October 30, 2013, https://www.npr.org/​2013/​10/​30/​241891800/​texas-voter-id-law-creates-a-problem-for-some-women; Aviva Shen, “Texas Judge Almost Blocked from Voting Because of New Voter ID Law,” Think Progress, October 23, 2013, https://archive.thinkprogress.org/​texas-judge-almost-blocked-from-voting-because-of-new-voter-id-law-b533a451f312/.

fellow Texan Anthony Settles See Horwitz, “Getting a Photo ID So You Can Vote Is Easy.”

Hargie Randell Horwitz, “Getting a Photo ID So You Can Vote Is Easy.” Randell’s lawyer was finally able to prove to a DPS supervisor that there was a clerical error.

to eliminate two hundred thousand registered Ohio voters Chris Bury, “Why Ohio Has Purged at Least 200,000 from the Voter Rolls,” PBS NewsHour, July 31, 2016, https://www.pbs.org/​newshour/​show/​inside-ohios-fight-voting-rules.

In 2012, Ohio went to the trouble Oral argument transcript in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), p. 47, https://www.supremecourt.gov/​oral_arguments/​argument_transcripts/​2017/​16-980_5426.pdf.

about three out of every one hundred Oral argument transcript in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), p. 73, https://www.supremecourt.gov/​oral_arguments/​argument_transcripts/​2017/​16-980_5426.pdf.

1.2 million never responded Phil Keisling, “A Better Path to Accurate Voter Rolls,” Governing the States and Localities, October 3, 2018, http://www.governing.com/​columns/​smart-mgmt/​col-better-path-more-accurate-voter-rolls-postcard.html.

Or perhaps the process was working Greg Palast, “The GOP’s Stealth War Against Voters,” Rolling Stone, August 24, 2016, https://www.rollingstone.com/​politics/​politics-features/​the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-247905.

“I’ve lived in Ohio” ACLU Videos, “Larry’s Fight to Vote Goes to the Supreme Court,” YouTube, 2:27, January 8, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=BVIiRNLHgfM.

“I thought, ‘Well, jeez’ ” Bury, “Why Ohio Has Purged.”

no other state initiated a purge Chiraag Bains, “You Have the Right to Vote. Use It or Lose It, the Supreme Court Says,” Washington Post, June 13, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​opinions/​vote-or-be-purged-thats-wrong/​2018/​06/​13/​5e9730d6-6f27-11e8-afd5-778aca903bbe_story.html.

“In the United States, if you don’t” Bains, “You Have the Right to Vote.”

an affirmative right to vote The Constitution’s voting rights amendments have prohibited states from using certain enumerated conditions such as race as bases for denying the vote, but an affirmative right would require states to meet a high bar of justification for any burden on citizens’ voting freedoms. See Laura Williamson and Brenda Wright, “Right to Vote: The Case for Expanding the Right to Vote in the U.S. Constitution,” Demos, August 26, 2020, https://www.demos.org/​policy-briefs/​right-vote-case-expanding-right-vote-us-constitution.

states purged almost 16 million voters Jonathan Brater et al., “Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote,” Brennan Center for Justice, July 20, 2018, https://www.brennancenter.org/​publication/​purges-growing-threat-right-vote.

Some 7 percent of Americans report Jones et al., “American Democracy in Crisis.” Black and Latino voters are about twice as likely (10 and 11 percent, respectively) as white voters (5 percent) to be purged.

“It appears as if what” Oral argument transcript in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), p. 18, https://www.supremecourt.gov/​oral_arguments/​argument_transcripts/​2017/​16-980_5426.pdf.

American Legislative Exchange Council More than half of the sixty-two anti-voting bills sponsored in 2011–12 were sponsored by ALEC conference attendees. See Ethan Magoc, “Flurry of Voter ID Laws Tied to Conservative Group ALEC,” NBC News, August 21, 2012, http://investigations.nbcnews.com/​_news/​2012/​08/​21/​13392560-flurry-of-voter-id-laws-tied-to-conservative-group-alec.

Project on Fair Representation Edward Blum, founder and director of the Project on Fair Representation, is the strategist behind attacks on affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. Morgan Smith, “One Man Standing Against Race-Based Laws,” New York Times, February 24, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/​2012/​02/​24/​us/​edward-blum-and-the-project-on-fair-representation-head-to-the-supreme-court-to-fight-race-based-laws.html.

Public Interest Legal Foundation “Public Interest Legal Foundation Drops Meritless Voter Purge Lawsuit Against Detroit,” Brennan Center for Justice, June 30, 2020, https://www.brennancenter.org/​our-work/​analysis-opinion/​public-interest-legal-foundation-drops-meritless-voter-purge-lawsuit; Amadou Diallo, “Who’s Funding Voter Suppression,” Al-Jazeera America, February 12, 2016, http://america.aljazeera.com/​articles/​2016/​2/12/​whos-funding-voter-suppression.html.

group of radical right-wing millionaires The Bradley Foundation supported the Project on Fair Representation’s crusades against affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act. Brendan Fischer, “For Bradley Foundation, Challenging Affirmative Action & Voting Rights Is Part of Long-Term Crusade,” PR Watch, The Center for Media and Democracy, June 27, 2013, https://www.prwatch.org/​news/​2013/​06/​12142/​bradley-foundation-challenging-affirmative-action-voting-rights-part-long-term-cr. DonorsTrust is a nondisclosed pooled fund that has been heavily funded by the Koch brothers. Andy Kroll, “Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement,” Mother Jones, February 5, 2013, https://www.motherjones.com/​politics/​2013/​02/​donors-trust-donor-capital-fund-dark-money-koch-bradley-devos. See also Eliza Newlin Carney, “The GOP’s Weapon of Suppression: Voter Purges,” American Prospect, December 15, 2017, https://prospect.org/​article/​gop%E2%80%99s-weapon-suppression-voter-purges. (There are also hundreds of organized wealthy donors to progressive causes, of course. I personally have raised money from wealthy individuals and foundations to fund the nonprofits at which I have played a leadership role; I have also volunteered on the boards of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Open Society Foundation U.S. Programs. The agenda of these progressive donors and foundations, however, includes reforms that would run against the narrow self-interest of the donors and wealthy people in general, including support for more regulation, higher taxation, and stricter campaign finance reform. The Koch network’s philanthropic interests generally further their financial interests, at great cost to the public interest and the planet.)

“the Koch brothers” For more about the Koch brothers, see Tim Dickinson, “Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire,” Rolling Stone, September 14, 2014, https://www.rollingstone.com/​politics/​politics-news/​inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-164403; and Jane Mayer, “ ‘Kochland’ Examines How the Koch Brothers Made Their Fortune and the Influence It Bought,” The New Yorker, August 13, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/​news/​daily-comment/​kochland-examines-how-the-koch-brothers-made-their-fortune-and-the-influence-it-bought.

That’s why the hundreds of millionaires Six hundred thirty-four donors attended the 2019 Koch Network convention, pledging a minimum of $100,000 each. Sally Ho, “Muted Political Tone at Largest Koch Donor Network Meeting,” Associated Press, January 26, 2019, https://apnews.com/​2930f1f88d4d4d60b3f3880e4be8dbf1.

spurred more than one hundred pieces “New Voting Restrictions in America,” Brennan Center for Justice, October 1, 2019, https://www.brennancenter.org/​our-work/​research-reports/​new-voting-restrictions-america.

launched dozens of lawsuits Hatcher-Mays, “NY Times Misses Link”; Lateshia Beachum, “Kochs Key Among Small Group Quietly Funding Legal Assault on Campaign Finance Regulation,” Center for Public Integrity, November 15, 2017, https://publicintegrity.org/​federal-politics/​kochs-key-among-small-group-quietly-funding-legal-assault-on-campaign-finance-regulation.

invested in technology Andy Kroll, “Meet the Fortune 500 Companies Funding the Political Resegregation of America,” Mother Jones, November 21, 2014, https://www.motherjones.com/​politics/​2014/​11/​rslc-redistricting-fortune-500-political-resegregation.

James Buchanan was awarded Robert D. McFadden, “James M. Buchanan, Economic Scholar and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 93,” New York Times, January 10, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/​2013/​01/​10/​business/​economy/​james-m-buchanan-economic-scholar-dies-at-93.html.

resist desegregating public schools Many economists in the libertarian school, often funded by and aligned with the Koch Network, have taken issue with Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains. The primary refutation relevant here is that Buchanan was not a segregationist. Buchanan was of the common “free association” school, which believed that whites and Blacks should associate with whomever they chose—a tidy equivalence that falls apart when Black people want to associate with white people or white institutions that refuse them. MacLean critics Art Carden (who admits that he is “as Koched up as they come”), Vincent Geloso, and Phillip W. Magness write, “[Buchanan’s] views on segregation emerged from the efficiency arguments of the mid-century Chicago School rather than any pro-segregation, pro-discrimination, or otherwise racially conservative southern source” (p. 18). I can’t imagine that this distinction would have made a difference to the thousands of Black schoolchildren in Virginia pushed out of closed schools during “Massive Resistance,” the policy the state of Virginia adopted in opposition to Brown. Buchanan later reversed his stance on school privatization, but the intellectual pairing of libertarian ideas and opposition to government action to promote civil rights endured. Another prominent libertarian economist has defended MacLean’s characterization of Buchanan’s antidemocratic antigovernment beliefs. See Michael Chwe, “The Beliefs of Economist James Buchanan Conflict with Basic Democratic Norms,” Washington Post, July 25, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​monkey-cage/​wp/​2017/​07/​25/​the-beliefs-of-economist-james-buchanan-conflict-with-basic-democratic-norms-heres-why/. He writes, “I do not know their intentions, but Buchanan and Nutter’s argument for school privatization gave intellectual validation to whites who wanted to exclude blacks from their schools.” The most complete account of Nutter and Buchanan’s segregationist view to date comes from Daniel Peter Kuehn, “Accommodation Within the Broad Structure of Voluntary Society: Buchanan and Nutter on School Segregation,” SSRN, December 30, 2018, p. 44, https://ssrn.com/​abstract=3308162.

Buchanan and his co-author G. Warren Nutter and James M. Buchanan, “Different School Systems Are Reviewed,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, April 12, 1959, https://delong.typepad.com/​nutter_buchanan_richmond1.pdf.

64 percent of Americans Howard Schneider and Chris Kahn, “Majority of Americans Favor Wealth Tax on Very Rich: Reuters/Ipsos Poll,” Reuters, January 10, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/​article/​us-usa-election-inequality-poll/​majority-of-americans-favor-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Z9141.

70 percent want Matthew Yglesias, “A Huge Boost in Infrastructure Spending Is Very Popular—If Rich People Pay for It,” Vox, May 21, 2020, https://www.vox.com/​2020/​5/21/​21262211/​infrastructure-spending-poll-stimulus.

56 percent support: “Public Opinion on Single-Payer National Health Plans and Expanding Access to Medicare Coverage,” Charts & Slides, KFF, May 27, 2020, https://www.kff.org/​slideshow/​public-opinion-on-single-payer-national-health-plans-and-expanding-access-to-medicare-coverage.

They used images Wealthy donors paid for 140 billboards in Black neighborhoods in Ohio and Wisconsin weeks before the 2012 election warning that voter fraud is a felony. Daniel Bice, “Bradley Foundation Helped Pay for 2010 Voter Fraud Signs,” Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, October 31, 2012, http://archive.jsonline.com/​blogs/​news/​176675811.html.

to be virtually nonexistent “Debunking the Voter Fraud Myth,” Brennan Center for Justice, January 31, 2017, https://www.brennancenter.org/​analysis/​debunking-voter-fraud-myth.

particularly among white Republicans Support for photo ID requirements to address voter fraud has become Republican party dogma; studies also show that support rises among white people with higher racial resentment, those who have strong implicit biases, and those who are primed with images of Black poll workers and Black voters. Paul Gronke, et al., “Voter ID Laws: A View from the Public,” Social Science Quarterly 100, no. 1 (February 2019): 219, https://doi.org/​10.1111/​ssqu.12541.

becomes more tolerable Sixty-seven percent of Americans believe that too few people voting is a problem, majorities in both parties. Jones et al., “American Democracy in Crisis.”

Paul Weyrich He cofounded the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council, among other conservative organizations, and is credited with coining the phrase “moral majority.” Bruce Weber, “Paul Weyrich, 66, a Conservative Strategist, Dies,” New York Times, December 18, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/​2008/​12/​19/​us/​politics/​19weyrich.html; Rachel Weiner, “How ALEC Became a Political Liability,” Washington Post, April 24, 2012, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​blogs/​the-fix/​post/​how-alec-became-a-political-liability/​2012/​04/​24/​gIQA3QnyeT_blog.html.

“I don’t want everybody to vote” Paul Weyrich, “I Don’t Want Everybody to Vote,” YouTube, 0:40, June 8, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw.

Name all the signers Doug Clark, “The ‘Literacy Test’ that Henry Frye Failed,” Greensboro News & Record, May 16, 2013, https://www.greensboro.com/​townnews/​politics/​the-literacy-test-that-henry-frye-failed/​article_8709f91e-be4b-11e2-bdc1-0019bb30f31a.html.

In 1962, only 36 percent “Voting Right Act of 1965,” North Carolina History Project, https://northcarolinahistory.org/​encyclopedia/​voting-rights-act-of-1965.

Throughout the South, about one million Anderson, One Person, No Vote, 27.

to become the chief justice “Henry Frye: First African-American on the N.C. Supreme Court,” North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, https://www.ncdcr.gov/​blog/​2017/​02/​03/​henry-frye-first-african-american-on-the-n-c-supreme-court.

participation of lower-income white voters Atiba Ellis, “The Cost of the Vote: Poll Taxes, Voter Identification Laws, and the Price of Democracy,” Denver University Law Review 86, no. 3 (2009): 1023–68, https://www.researchgate.net/​publication/​272023853_The_Cost_of_the_Vote_Poll_Taxes_Voter_Identification_Laws_and_the_Price_of_Democracy.

the poll tax requirement At the time leading up to the Twenty-fourth Amendment’s ratification, the poll tax prevented some four million people from voting in this country. See “White Only: Jim Crow in America,” Separate Is Not Equal: Brown v. Board of Education, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., https://americanhistory.si.edu/​brown/​history/​1-segregated/​white-only-1.html. The Twenty-fourth Amendment made poll taxes unconstitutional, though some have compellingly argued that current hurdles to voting for low-income people constitute a tax (not to mention the 2020 Florida criminal legal system fees requirement). See Valencia Richardson, “Voting While Poor: Reviving the 24th Amendment and Eliminating the Modern-Day Poll Tax,” Georgetown Journal on Poverty Law and Policy 27, no. 3 (Spring 2020): 451–68, https://www.law.georgetown.edu/​poverty-journal/​wp-content/​uploads/​sites/​25/​2020/​06/​05-Richardson_Final_Proof.pdf.

the courts upheld it Breedlove v. Suttles, 302 U.S. 277 (1937); Butler v. Thomson, 97 F. Supp. 17 (E.D. Va. 1951).

V. O. Key described in 1949 Wright, Sharing the Prize, 56, referring to V. O. Key’s Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949) at pp. 1–18.

they won investments Wright, Sharing the Prize, ebook, Chapter six, “The Economic Consequences of Voting Rights.”

This was the case Stephen G. Katsinas, “Albert Brewer Was a Workhorse for Education,” Advance Local Media, March 6, 2019, https://www.al.com/​opinion/​2017/​02/​albert_brewer_was_a_workhorse.html.

a Koch brothers–founded libertarian group The group, Americans for Prosperity, denied financial involvement in the 2009 Wake County school board elections. However, media outlets have reported the group’s involvement through “significant financial contributions as well as other support.” A Newsweek article reported that Americans for Prosperity was involved in volunteer work on the campaign, and voter education work. Additionally, Koch-allied Art Pope, a wealthy conservative businessman in the state with financial ties to Americans for Prosperity (who served on the organization’s board of directors), donated more than $15,000 to the Wake County GOP, which utilized the funds for conservative candidates’ school board campaigns in 2009. Trymaine Lee, “The Koch Brothers and the Battle Over Integration in Wake County’s Schools,” HuffPost, August 15, 2011, updated October 14, 2011, https://www.huffpost.com/​entry/​the-battle-for-wake-count_n_926799; Ben Adler, “Weak Tea Party Connection to Wake County, N.C. School Board,” Newsweek, January 21, 2011, https://www.newsweek.com/​weak-tea-party-connection-wake-county-nc-school-board-210530; Jane Mayer, “State for Sale,” New Yorker, October 3, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/​magazine/​2011/​10/​10/​state-for-sale.

to give more than $3.5 million The pre-decision limit was $132,000 in 2014. “What Is McCutcheon v. FEC?,” Demos, April 8, 2014, https://www.demos.org/​research/​what-mccutcheon-v-fec.

for corporations and unions to spend Liz Kennedy, “10 Ways Citizens United Endangers Democracy,” Demos, January 19, 2012, https://www.demos.org/​policy-briefs/​10-ways-citizens-united-endangers-democracy.

for secret money to sway elections “SpeechNow v. FEC—The Case that Created Super PACs, and Our Challenge,” Free Speech for Free People, January 27, 2018, https://freespeechforpeople.org/​speechnow-v-fec-case-created-super-pacs-challenge.

“Economic elites and organized groups” Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12, no. 3 (September 2014): 564–81, https://www.cambridge.org/​core/​journals/​perspectives-on-politics/​article/​testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/​62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B.

“senators’ [policy] preferences diverge” Michael J. Barber, “Representing the Preferences of Donors, Partisans, and Voters in the U.S. Senate,” Public Opinion Quarterly 80, no. 1 (March 2016): 225–49, https://doi.org/​10.1093/​poq/​nfw004.

“in the bottom one-third” Larry Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 285.

Since the early 1970s “Fundraising Wasn’t for the Forefathers,” Center for Responsive Politics, February 22, 2007, https://www.opensecrets.org/​news/​2007/​02/​fundraising-wasnt-for-the-fore; “Donor Demographics 2018,” Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets, https://www.opensecrets.org/​elections-overview/​donor-demographics?cycle=2018&display=G.

of donors who gave more Sean McElwee, “Whose Voice, Whose Choice? The Distorting Influence of the Political Donor Class in Our Big-Money Elections,” Demos, December 8, 2016, https://www.demos.org/​publication/​whose-voice-whose-choice-distorting-influence-political-donor-class-our-big-money-electi.

“They are overwhelmingly white” Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen, and Karen Yourish, “The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election,” New York Times, October 10, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2015/​10/​11/​us/​politics/​2016-presidential-election-super-pac-donors.html.

Two-thirds of Americans consider Jones et al., “American Democracy in Crisis,” 13.

After a history of high-profile corruption “Welcome to Corrupticut: A Look Back at the History of Corrupt Politics in Connecticut,” Hartford Courant, June 25, 2019, https://www.courant.com/​politics/​capitol-watch/​hc-pol-political-corruption-in-connecticut-20190625-ur5fnxn7ibamdnwjlhyny5elpe-story.html; “Connecticut’s Landmark Pay-to-Play Law,” Brennan Center for Justice, February 1, 2009, https://www.brennancenter.org/​our-work/​research-reports/​connecticuts-landmark-pay-play-law.

The Connecticut Citizens’ Election Program offered The reform included a ban on lobbyist contributions and a voluntary public financing program for campaigns. The limit has since been increased to $270. See “Welcome to the Citizens’ Election Program,” Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission, https://seec.ct.gov/​Portal/​CEP/​CEPLanding.

“I announced my reelection bid” J. Mijin Cha and Miles Rapoport, “Fresh Start: The Impact of Public Financing in Connecticut,” Demos, April 2013, p. 7, https://www.demos.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​FreshStart_PublicFinancingCT_0.pdf.

less sway over legislators’ The former Speaker of the Connecticut House, Chris Donovan, observed, “Newer legislators have a new attitude towards lobbyists. There is a different perception that lobbyists are not such big players. You are much less worried about a lobbyist amassing funds against you.” Cha and Rapoport, “Fresh Start,” 10.

“Public financing definitely made” Cha and Rapoport, “Fresh Start,” 13.

“the candidate who wasn’t supposed” Piper Fund, “Senator Gary Holder-Winfield on the Benefits of Public Financing in CT,” YouTube, 3:36, January 13, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/​watch?v=4RgElV5WAUI.

“I didn’t come from money” DeNora Getachew and Ava Mehta, eds., “Breaking Down Barriers: The Faces of Small Donor Public Financing,” Brennan Center for Justice, 2016, p. 12, https://www.brennancenter.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publications/​Faces_of_Public_Financing.pdf.

a raft of popular public-interest bills Cha and Rapoport, “Fresh Start,” 15–16.

Despite regular efforts to curtail it Karen Hobert Flynn, “The Citizens Election Program Is at Risk Again,” Connecticut Mirror, January 3, 2018, https://ctmirror.org/​category/​ct-viewpoints/​the-citizens-election-program-is-at-risk-again.

73 percent of whom opted into “Small Donor Solutions for Big Money: The 2014 Elections and Beyond,” Public Campaign, November 21, 2014, https://everyvoice.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2015/​04/​2014SmallDonorReportJan13.pdf.

has national popular support as well Seventy-two percent of likely voters in 2015 supported small-donor public financing of federal elections. Laura Friedenbach, “New Poll: Broad Support for Small-Donor Driven Solutions to Money in Politics,” Every Voice, December 17, 2015, https://everyvoice.org/​press-release/​new-poll-small-donor-driven-solutions.

“Yeah, we are using” Piper Fund, “Senator Gary Holder-Winfield.”

Chapter Seven: Living Apart

a suburb famous for its integration When I was in middle school, my father lived in Oak Park, Illinois, one of the more diverse and integrated suburbs in the nation. Emily Badger, “How Race Still Influences Where We Choose to Live,” Washington Post, July 17, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2015/​07/​17/​how-race-still-influences-where-we-chose-to-live/​?utm_term=.412391a8e90b.

four times as many Asian American students Berkeley Law School, Law School Numbers, http://berkeley.lawschoolnumbers.com.

most segregated people in America White people “are most likely to live in racially homogenous communities and least likely to come into contact with people unlike themselves. By this measure, whites are the most isolated of racial groups.” Thomas J. Sugrue, “Less Separate, Still Unequal: Diversity and Equality in ‘Post-Civil Rights’ America,” Our Compelling Interests: The Value of Diversity for Democracy and a Prosperous Society, ed. Earl Lewis and Nancy Cantor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). See also Aaron Williams and Armand Emamdjomeh, “America Is More Diverse than Ever—But Still Segregated,” Washington Post, May 10, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​graphics/​2018/​national/​segregation-us-cities/.

at least 75 percent white The typical African American, by contrast, lives in a 45 percent Black neighborhood. John R. Logan and Brian Stults, “The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis: New Findings from the 2010 Census,” US2010 Project, March 24, 2011, pp. 2–3, https://s4.ad.brown.edu/​Projects/​Diversity/​Data/​Report/​report2.pdf.

limited or barred free Black people Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, 19; Alana Semuels, “The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America,” The Atlantic, July 22, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2016/​07/​racist-history-portland/​492035.

In the North Of course, it was the racism that allowed white employers to pay Black people less, which enabled other white people to see them as wage-suppressing competition. For more on the job competition and status dynamics between the white and Black northern working classes, see David Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White (New York: Basic Books, 2005).

Civil Rights Act in 1875 The law provided “That all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, public conveyances on land or water, theaters, and other places of public amusement; subject only to the conditions and limitations established by law, and applicable alike to citizens of every race and color, regardless of any previous condition of servitude.”

“salt-and-pepper” integration Alana Semuels, “ ‘Segregation Had to Be Invented,’ ” The Atlantic, February 17, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2017/​02/​segregation-invented/​517158.

This time, they reasoned See Semuels, “ ‘Segregation Had to Be Invented.”

struck down America’s first Civil Rights Act Civil Rights Cases, 109 US 3 (1883). The 8–1 majority opinion reasoned that the Reconstruction amendments did not empower Congress to regulate “private” behavior, only state action. Justice Harlan’s dissent stressed the public function of private businesses such as railroads and invoked a still-dormant reading of the “Privileges and Immunities” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as a potential basis for broad federal action to guarantee equal rights.

“Jim Crow laws put” Woodward, Strange Career, 108.

Any white person was now deputized See Carol Anderson, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016).

For the next eighty years Todd Lewan and Dolores Barclay, “ ‘When They Steal Your Land, They Steal Your Future,’ ” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 2001, https://www.latimes.com/​archives/​la-xpm-2001-dec-02-mn-10514-story.html.

looked to America’s laws James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); George M. Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

federal government supported housing segregation Under the purportedly progressive New Deal, the federal government further cemented segregation as a nationwide rule, building thousands of units of public housing for workers on a segregated basis even in cities that previously had no segregation rules. Out of the Great Depression came the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, created to shore up the housing market by making mortgages affordable to the masses. The government deemed (with no empirical evidence) that Black and ethnic immigrant neighborhoods would be a poor credit risk, so created racial population neighborhood maps of 239 cities to designate those areas as “hazardous” (shading them red in a process known as “redlining”). See Rothstein, Color of Law. Surveyor assessments of the neighborhood’s racial and ethnic population, as well as amenities and current prices, led to a color-coding system that designated green for best, blue for “still desirable,” yellow for “definitely declining,” and red for “hazardous.” See Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America, https://dsl.richmond.edu/​panorama/​redlining/​#loc=5/​39.1/​-94.58.

Supreme Court ruled in 1948 Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948).

Planners for the Interstate Highway System See, for example, Kevin M. Cruse, “Traffic,” in The 1619 Project, New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2019, pp. 48–49, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2019/​08/​14/​magazine/​traffic-atlanta-segregation.html; Raymond A. Mohl, “The Interstates and the Cities: The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Freeway Revolt, 1966–1973,” Journal of Policy History 20, no. 2 (2008): 193–226, https://www.cambridge.org/​core/​journals/​journal-of-policy-history/​article/​interstates-and-the-cities-the-us-department-of-transportation-and-the-freeway-revolt-19661973/​4FE236EB30F98269D9931788AD7CCA47.

is responsible for as much as half “Indeed, looking across entire neighborhoods (not just across narrow boundaries), our findings suggest that the maps could account for between 15 and 30 percent of the D-C [the letter grades for quality ratings assigned to different neighborhoods] gap in share African-American and homeownership and 40 percent of the gap in house values over the 1950 to 1980 period. The maps account for roughly half of the homeownership and house value gaps along the C-B borders over the same period,” p. 4, in Daniel Aaronson et al., “The Effects of the 1930s HOLC ‘Redlining’ Maps,” Working Paper no. 2017-12, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, revised August 2020, https://www.chicagofed.org/​publications/​working-papers/​2017/​wp2017-12.

Supreme Court invalidated city ordinances Buchanan v. Warley, 245 US 60 (1917).

rushed to adopt “exclusionary zoning” laws “In 1916, only eight cities in the country had zoning ordinances. By 1936, 1,246 cities had put such ordinances on the books.” Elizabeth Winkler, “ ‘Snob Zoning’ Is Racial Housing Segregation by Another Name,” Washington Post, September 25, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​wonk/​wp/​2017/​09/​25/​snob-zoning-is-racial-housing-segregation-by-another-name/​?utm_term=.93b0a6ee215a.

laid across 75 percent A June 2019 New York Times Upshot analysis found that, for example, Minneapolis had detached single-family housing restrictions on 70 percent of its metro area land; San Jose restricted 94 percent; Portland, OR, 77 percent; and Charlotte, NC, 84 percent. Emily Badger and Quoctrung Bui, “Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House with a Yard on Every Lot,” New York Times, June 18, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2019/​06/​18/​upshot/​cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html. In December 2018, Minneapolis voted to end its single-family zoning restrictions, citing the racist history of intentional housing segregation. See Minneapolis 2040 urban plan, https://minneapolis2040.com/​goals/​affordable-and-accessible-housing.

Exclusionary zoning rules limit Elliott Anne Rigsby, “Understanding Exclusionary Zoning and Its Impact on Concentrated Poverty,” The Century Foundation, June 23, 2016, https://tcf.org/​content/​facts/​understanding-exclusionary-zoning-impact-concentrated-poverty.

In 1977, the Supreme Court failed Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp, 429 US 252 (1977).

when you bought on contract According to Richard Rothstein, in the 1960s “approximately 85 percent of all property purchased by African Americans in Chicago had been sold to them on contract,” in The Color of Law, 98.

Chicago is one Alana Semuels, “Chicago’s Awful Divide,” The Atlantic, March 28, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/​business/​archive/​2018/​03/​chicago-segregation-poverty/​556649.

1948 racial covenant Supreme Court decision Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 US 1 (1948).

80 percent of the city “Understanding Fair Housing,” U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1973, Washington, D.C., https://files.eric.ed.gov/​fulltext/​ED075565.pdf.

over 90 percent African American See “City of Chicago Community Areas, 1910–1990s,” http://i.imgur.com/​xZoKnTa.gif.

majority of white Americans said “Reactions to the Shooting in Ferguson, Mo., Have Sharp Racial Divides,” New York Times/CBS News Poll, New York Times, August 21, 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2014/​08/​21/​us/​ferguson-poll.html.

21 percent “seldom or never” interacted Maxine Najle and Robert P. Jones, “American Democracy in Crisis: The Fate of Pluralism in a Divided Nation,” PRRI, February 19, 2019, https://www.prri.org/​research/​american-democracy-in-crisis-the-fate-of-pluralism-in-a-divided-nation.

three-quarters of white people reported Daniel Cox et al., “IV. Racial Homogeneity of Whites’ Social Networks,” in “Race, Religion, and Political Affiliation of Americans’ Core Social Networks,” PRRI, August 3, 2016, https://www.prri.org/​research/​poll-race-religion-politics-americans-social-networks.

This white isolation continues Alvin Chang, “White America Is Quietly Self-Segregating,” Vox, July 31, 2018, https://www.vox.com/​2017/​1/18/​14296126/​white-segregated-suburb-neighborhood-cartoon.

“Approximately ninety-four percent of the cases” Linda R. Tropp, “Benefits of Contact Between Racial and Ethnic Groups: A Summary of Research Findings,” Testimony in Support of New York City School Diversity Bills, Hearing on Diversity in New York City Schools, December 11, 2014, http://school-diversity.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2014/​09/​Tropp-written-testimony-for-New-York-City-Schools-12-2014.pdf.

In their study, white people Accordingly, while Black and Latinx people search in neighborhoods that match their stated ethnic mix, they end up in neighborhoods with larger minority populations than they desired. See “Racial Residential Segregation and the Housing Search Process,” Research Spotlight: Maria Krysan (newsletter), Institute of Government and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, December 3, 2015, https://igpa.uillinois.edu/​sites/​igpa.uillinois.edu/​files/​reports/​Research-Spotlight-Krysan_Housing-Search.pdf.

“both the racially mixed” The experiment showed a range of social class cues, and higher-class-appearing neighborhoods were rated more highly by Black and white respondents. However, race impacted white respondents’ ratings even within each social class category. See Maria Krysan et al., “Does Race Matter in Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video Experiment,” American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 2 (September 2009): 527–59, doi:10.1086/599248.

White people are surely losing something Meanwhile, white avoidance of Black neighborhoods in a housing market still dominated by white wealth costs Black homeowners an average of $48,000 each, according to a Brookings Institution–Gallup study that looked at identical properties in majority-Black and all-white neighborhoods, with the effect of racial bias isolated from other rationales, “such as the structural characteristics of the buildings and access to good schools, good jobs and good stores.” As with all aspects of racism, the targeted communities bear the brunt—but you don’t have to look far to find the collateral damage to the rest of society. See Christopher Ingram, “How White Racism Destroys Black Wealth,” Washington Post, November 28, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​business/​2018/​11/​28/​how-white-racism-destroys-black-wealth; and Andre Perry et al., “The Devaluation of Assets in Black Neighborhoods: The Case of Residential Property,” Metropolitan Policy Program, Brookings Institution, November 2018, https://www.brookings.edu/​wp-content/​uploads/​2018/​11/​2018.11_Brookings-Metro_Devaluation-Assets-Black-Neighborhoods_final.pdf.

They analyzed quality-of-life indicators The Cost of Segregation calculated the degree of segregation in the country’s one hundred most populous cities or commuting zones and measured quality-of-life indicators that could be impacted by segregation (for example, income levels suppressed by greater distances between employees and jobs; educational attainment associated with segregated and/or resource-constrained schools; life expectancy flowing from inequitable healthcare access and pollution). The research team then controlled for factors besides segregation that could have contributed to the outcomes, from degree of inequality to population size. Finally, they accounted for city-specific variables across all one hundred locations. Gregory Acs et al., The Cost of Segregation: National Trends and the Case of Chicago, 1990–2010, Urban Institute and Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago, March 2017, pp. 9–11, https://www.urban.org/​sites/​default/​files/​publication/​89201/​the_cost_of_segregation_final_0.pdf.

segregation is correlated with billions See the Cost of Segregation website, Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago, https://www.metroplanning.org/​costofsegregation/​cost.aspx.

more likely to direct pollutants Paul Mohai and Robin Saha, “Which Came First, People or Pollution? Assessing the Disparate Siting and Post-Siting Demographic Change Hypotheses of Environmental Justice,” Environmental Research Letters 10, no. 11 (November 2015), https://doi.org/​10.1088/​1748-9326/​10/​11/​115008.

less able to band together Kendra Pierre-Louis, “Dr. King Said Segregation Harms Us All. Environmental Research Shows He Was Right,” New York Times, April 3, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​04/​03/​climate/​mlk-segregation-pollution.html.

“The way we talk about” Robin DiAngelo, What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy (New York: Counterpoints, 2016), 188.

schools are financed primarily K–12 public school revenue is about evenly split between local funds and state funds. “K–12 schools in every state rely heavily on state aid. On average, 47 percent of school revenues in the United States come from state funds. Local governments provide another 45 percent; the remaining 8 percent comes from the federal government.” Michael Leachman and Eric Figueroa, “K–12 School Funding Up in Most 2018 Teacher-Protest States, but Still Well Below Decade Ago,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 6, 2019, https://www.cbpp.org/​research/​state-budget-and-tax/​k-12-school-funding-up-in-most-2018-teacher-protest-states-but-still.

an average of $2,226 more “Nonwhite School Districts Get $23 Billion Less than White Districts Despite Serving the Same Number of Students,” EdBuild, February 2019, https://edbuild.org/​content/​23-billion.

are children of color “Indicator 6: Elementary and Secondary Enrollment,” Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups, National Center for Education Statistics, updated February 2019, https://nces.ed.gov/​programs/​raceindicators/​indicator_rbb.asp.

The boom in private schools “A History of Private Schools & Race in the American South,” Southern Education Foundation, https://www.southerneducation.org/​publications/​historyofprivateschools.

almost half of private school kids Emma Brown, “The Overwhelming Whiteness of U.S. Private Schools, in 6 Maps and Charts,” Washington Post, March 29, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​education/​wp/​2016/​03/​29/​the-overwhelming-whiteness-of-u-s-private-schools-in-six-maps-and-charts/​?utm_term=.de784181ce5a.

cost 58 percent more Michael Sklarz et al., “Housing Values & School Quality,” Collateral Analytics, April 17, 2018, https://collateralanalytics.com/​housing-values-school-quality.

77 percent more expensive The study looked at standardized test scores of elementary schools for zip codes in which at least one school had a score average at least 33 percent higher than the statewide average. “Home Values 77 Percent Higher in Zip Codes with Good Schools than in Zip Codes Without Good Schools,” Realtytrac, August 3, 2016, https://www.realtytrac.com/​news/​2016-schools-and-housing-report.

65 percent of the zip codes Lack of affordability is defined as “average wage earners would need to spend more than one-third of their income to buy a median-priced home.” “Homes Not Affordable for Average Wage Earners in 65 Percent of Zip Codes with Good Schools,” Realtytrac, November 18, 2015, https://www.realtytrac.com/​news/​realtytrac-2015-good-schools-and-affordable-homes/.

CNN covered that study Jeanne Sahadi, “You Probably Can’t Afford to Live Near Good Schools,” CNN Money, November 9, 2015, https://money.cnn.com/​2015/​11/​19/​real_estate/​neighborhoods-good-schools-affordable/​index.html.

“have gained $51,000 more” “Home Values 77 Percent Higher,” Realtytrac.

increasingly expensive, and segregated, communities As parents gain access to increasing amounts of data about school quality, affluent parents—who, given the wealth disparity in the United States, are predominantly white—use that information to seek out neighborhoods with schools that earn the highest ratings, thus increasing segregation and driving up housing prices even further. For instance, a recent study that examined 9,400 zip codes in nineteen states found that once school ratings were published online by a nonprofit called GreatSchools.org, the effect was, essentially, more segregation: “accelerated divergence in housing values, income distributions, education levels, as well as the racial and ethnic composition across communities.” (Ironically, this was the opposite of what the people behind GreatSchools.org had intended, which was to provide low-income parents with information that could help them choose schools for their kids.) Shariq Hasan and Anuj Kumar, “Digitization and Divergence: Online School Ratings and Segregation in America,” July 23, 2019, p. 1, SSRN, http://dx.doi.org/​10.2139/​ssrn.3265316. Another study found that once a school district receives an “A” grade, home values increase by 6.7 percent over a three-year period over areas with grade “B” schools. David N. Figlio and Cecilia Elena Rouse, “Do Accountability and Voucher Threats Improve Low-Performing Schools?” Journal of Public Economics 90, nos. 1–2 (January 2006): 239–55.

Compared to students Except where noted, data points in the paragraph are from Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, “How Non-Minority Students Also Benefit from Racially Diverse Schools,” Brief No. 8, October 2012, National Coalition on School Diversity, https://www.school-diversity.org/​pdf/​DiversityResearchBriefNo8.pdf.

spend about eight billion dollars a year “Focusing on What Works for Workplace Diversity,” McKinsey and Company, April 2017, https://www.mckinsey.com/​featured-insights/​gender-equality/​focusing-on-what-works-for-workplace-diversity.

can produce better citizens Siegel-Hawley, “How Non-Minority Students.”

Holoien cites several studies But there’s a caveat, she warns: while white students gain from the presence of even one student of color, people of color (and women) benefit the most when a diverse environment enables them to interact with others from their own group. When a college student finds herself the only person of color in a classroom, the need to steel herself against bias may prevent her from benefiting optimally from the class itself. Deborah Son Holoien, “Do Differences Make a Difference? The Effects of Diversity on Learning, Intergroup Outcomes, and Civic Engagement,” Princeton University, September 2013, https://inclusive.princeton.edu/​sites/​inclusive/​files/​pu-report-diversity-outcomes.pdf.

It was a strategy Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975); and Robert L. Carter, “Review: ‘The NAACP’s Legal Strategy Against Segregated Education, 1925–1950,’ by Mark Tushnet,” Michigan Law Review 86, no. 6 (May 1988): 1085, https://www.jstor.org/​stable/​1289155.

Thirty-two experts submitted an appendix “The Effects of Segregation and the Consequences of Desegregation: A Social Science Statement,” in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), http://www.naacpldf.org/​document/​social-scientists-appendix-petitioners-brief-brown-v-board-education.

“confusion, conflict, moral cynicism” “The Effects of Segregation,” 6.

“I believe that we must” Sherrilyn Ifill, “Brown Decision’s Legacy Should Include White Children,” CNN, May 17, 2016, https://edition.cnn.com/​2016/​05/​17/​opinions/​brown-v-board-anniv-sherrilyn-ifill/​index.html.

“No one is born hating” Barack Obama (@BarackObama), Twitter, August 12, 2017, https://twitter.com/​barackobama/​status/​896523232098078720?lang=en.

Instead, they’ll come up with See, for example, Rebecca A. Dore et al., “Children’s Racial Bias in Perceptions of Others’ Pain,” British Journal of Developmental Psychology 32, no. 2 (June 2014): 218–31, https://doi.org/​10.1111/​bjdp.12038; “How Kids Learn About Race,” EmbraceRace (blog), January 22, 2019, https://www.embracerace.org/​blog/​how-children-learn-about-race.

“The most profound message” DiAngelo, What Does It Mean to Be White?, 190.

“The 1928 Austin city plan segregated” “Austin’s ‘1928 Master Plan’ Unleashed Forces Which Still Shape Austin Today,” https://www.austintexas.gov/​sites/​default/​files/​files/​City-Council/​Houston/​CM_OH_1928_Op-Ed.pdf.

nearly 90 percent white Catholic school “Students at Our Lady of Lourdes High School,” Niche, n.d., https://www.niche.com/​k12/​our-lady-of-lourdes-high-school-poughkeepsie-ny/​students.

Spackenkill successfully sued Sue Books, “The Politics of School Districting: A Case Study in Upstate New York,” Educational Foundations 20, no. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 2006): 15–33, https://eric.ed.gov/​?id=EJ794730.

One can find similar stories “White districts enroll just over 1,500 students—half the size of the national average, and nonwhite districts serve over 10,000 students—three times more than that average,” in “23 Billion,” full report, EdBuild, February 2019, p. 3, https://edbuild.org/​content/​23-billion/​full-report.pdf.

Fiona, is now in college “Drexel University Undergraduate Ethnic Diversity Breakdown,” College Factual, n.d., https://www.collegefactual.com/​colleges/​drexel-university/​student-life/​diversity/​chart-ethnic-diversity.html.

Chapter Eight: The Same Sky

We Have 12 Years Jonathan Watts, “We Have 12 Years to Limit Climate Change Catastrophe, Warns UN,” Guardian, October 8, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/​environment/​2018/​oct/​08/​global-warming-must-not-exceed-15c-warns-landmark-un-report.

Climate change caused by manmade pollution For eight hundred thousand years of measurable time on Earth, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere fluctuated but never surpassed three hundred parts per million; since 1950, it has shot up to over four hundred. See graph at NASA, “Climate Change: How Do We Know?” Global Climate Change, n.d., https://climate.nasa.gov/​evidence.

Cold spells have decreased Sophie Lewis, “Sure, Winter Felt Chilly, but Australia Is Setting New Heat Records at 12 Times the Rate of Cold Ones,” The Conversation (blog), September 9, 2015, https://theconversation.com/​sure-winter-felt-chilly-but-australia-is-setting-new-heat-records-at-12-times-the-rate-of-cold-ones-35607.

droughts and wildfires Jason Daley, “Climate Change Has Made Droughts More Frequent Since 1900,” Smithsonian, May 2, 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/​smart-news/​climate-change-has-made-droughts-more-frequent-1900-180972087; Ellen Gray and Jessica Merzdorf, “Earth’s Freshwater Future: Extremes of Flood and Drought,” Global Climate Change (blog), NASA, June 13, 2019, https://climate.nasa.gov/​news/​2881/​earths-freshwater-future-extremes-of-flood-and-drought.

Sheets of ice are rapidly melting “Is Sea Level Rising?,” Ocean Facts, National Ocean Service, NOAA, updated October 19, 2019, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/​facts/​sealevel.html.

The impact on human life Daisy Dunne, “Impact of Climate Change on Health Is ‘the Major Threat of 21st Century,’ ” Carbon Brief, October 30, 2017, https://www.carbonbrief.org/​impact-climate-change-health-is-major-threat-21st-century.

declines in mental health Nick Obradovich et al., “Empirical Evidence of Mental Health Risks Posed by Climate Change,” PNAS, October 23, 2018, https://doi.org/​10.1073/​pnas.1801528115.

nearly half the average annual growth “The Economic Case for Climate Action in the US,” Universal Ecological Fund, September 2017, https://feu-us.org/​case-for-climate-action-us.

“habitat destruction, overhunting” Damian Carrington, “Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Event Under Way, Scientists Warn,” Guardian, July 10, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/​environment/​2017/​jul/​10/​earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn.

often cheaper than higher-pollution fuels James Ellsmoor, “Renewable Energy Is Now the Cheapest Option—Even Without Subsidies,” Forbes, June 15, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/​sites/​jamesellsmoor/​2019/​06/​15/​renewable-energy-is-now-the-cheapest-option-even-without-subsidies.

invented the solar cell Using sun for energy dates back to antiquity, but Bell Labs researchers produced the first practical silicon-based photovoltaic cell in 1954. See “April 25, 1954: Bell Labs Demonstrates the First Practical Silicon Solar Cell,” APS News 18, no. 4 (April 2009), https://www.aps.org/​publications/​apsnews/​200904/​physicshistory.cfm; “The History of Solar,” Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, https://www1.eere.energy.gov/​solar/​pdfs/​solar_timeline.pdf.

biggest carbon polluter in history The United States is responsible for 25 percent of cumulative carbon emissions; the current biggest annual emitter is China, but the cumulative impact from China has been just 13 percent. (Also, much of China’s emissions production comes from the role it plays manufacturing goods for multinational companies for Western markets and American companies.) The United States is also second in emissions per capita, behind Saudi Arabia. Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich, “The U.S. Is the Biggest Carbon Polluter in History. It Just Walked Away from the Paris Climate Deal,” New York Times, June 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2017/​06/​01/​climate/​us-biggest-carbon-polluter-in-history-will-it-walk-away-from-the-paris-climate-deal.html; and Jeff Toleffson, “The Hard Truths of Climate Change—By the Numbers,” Nature, September 18, 2019, https://www.nature.com/​immersive/​d41586-019-02711-4/​index.html.

In our peer countries Sondre Båtstrand, “More than Markets: A Comparative Study of Nine Conservative Parties on Climate Change,” Politics & Policy 43, no. 4 (August 2015): 538–61.

with very few exceptions Two Florida members of the U.S. House of Representatives launched a bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus (CSC) in 2016, with a Senate version in 2019. However, in 2018, only four of the House CSC members voted against H. Con. Res. 199, a nonbinding resolution that called pricing carbon detrimental, engendering skepticism about whether the CSC could meaningfully change the antiscience behavior even of the Republicans within it. See Roll Call 363, on H Res. 119, 115th Cong., 2nd sess., July 19, 2018, https://clerk.house.gov/​Votes/​2018363; “The Climate Solutions Caucus Just Failed to Vote for Our Climate Solutions,” Protect Our Winters, https://protectourwinters.org/​the-climate-solutions-caucus-just-failed-to-vote-for-climate-solutions.

the primary reason the United States There are also Democrats from fossil fuel industry–reliant states who have opposed some forms of climate change regulation; however, the near-universal rejection of climate policy from Republican lawmakers has made it impossible to legislate solutions that would address the problem.

“saddest day” “This Is the Saddest Day of My Legislative Life,” Portland Tribune, June 20, 2019, https://pamplinmedia.com/​pt/​431699-340535-this-is-the-saddest-day-of-my-legislative-life.

“Send bachelors” Sarah Zimmerman, “ ‘Send Bachelors and Come Heavily Armed’: GOP State Senator Responds to Gov. Brown’s Police Threat,” KGW, June 19, 2019, https://www.kgw.com/​article/​news/​local/​send-bachelors-and-come-heavily-armed-gop-state-senator-responds-to-gov-browns-police-threat/​283-a8ccf820-32e4-44df-b81c-2f8df92919ff.

logging is the state’s biggest source “Editorial: Republican Walkout Ignores Progress in Cap-and-Trade Bill,” Oregonian, March 1, 2020, https://www.oregonlive.com/​opinion/​2020/​03/​editorial-republican-walkout-ignores-progress-in-cap-and-trade-bill.html; Matthew Koehler, “Oregon Climate Bill Leaves Out Big Timber—State’s Largest Polluter—and Instead Rewards It with More Subsidies,” The Smokey Wire: National Forest News and Views, June 19, 2019, https://forestpolicypub.com/​2019/​06/​19/​oregon-climate-bill-leaves-out-big-timber-states-largest-polluter-and-instead-rewards-it-with-more-subsides.

Baertschiger Jr. simply disbelieves Jeff Mapes, “Oregon Senate GOP Leader Questions Whether Human Activity Is Causing Global Warming,” OPB, October 3, 2019, https://www.opb.org/​news/​article/​oregon-senate-gop-leader-carbon-emissions-climate-change-global-warming.

only three were passed Connor Radnovich, “2020 Oregon Legislature’s Final Tally: 3 Bills Passed, 255 Abandoned,” Register Guard, March 9, 2020, https://www.registerguard.com/​news/​20200309/​2020-oregon-legislatures-final-tally-3-bills-passed-255-abandoned.

According to the Yale Project Matthew Ballew et al., “Which Racial/Ethnic Groups Care Most About Climate Change?,” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, April 16, 2020, https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/​publications/​race-and-climate-change.

“and the patriarchy” Aaron M. McCright and Chenyang Xiao, “Gender and Environmental Concern: Insights from Recent Work and for Future Research,” Society & Natural Resources 27, no. 10 (2014): 1109–13, https://doi.org/​10.1080/​08941920.2014.918235.

more likely to be white, male Global Warming’s Six Americas 2009: An Audience Segmentation Analysis, Yale Project on Climate Change and George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/​wp-content/​uploads/​2016/​02/​2009_05_Global-Warmings-Six-Americas.pdf.

“made explicit associations to Obama” Salil D. Benegal, “The Spillover of Race and Racial Attitudes into Public Opinion About Climate,” Environmental Politics 27, no. 4 (2018): 738, https://doi.org/​10.1080/​09644016.2018.1457287.

covertly supported Jane Mayer, “Covert Operations,” The New Yorker, August 30, 2010, https://www.newyorker.com/​magazine/​2010/​08/​30/​covert-operations.

coal miner had become a symbol Thomas Blake Earle, “No White Man Left Behind,” Washington Post, October 27, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​made-by-history/​wp/​2017/​10/​27/​no-white-man-left-behind.

“a general orientation toward Blacks” Adam M. Enders and Jamil S. Scott, “The Increasing Racialization of American Electoral Politics, 1988–2016,” American Politics Research 47, no. 2 (2019): 276, https://doi.org/​10.1177/​1532673X18755654.

“Asking respondents if they agree” Enders and Scott, “Increasing Racialization,” 748.

white men were much more likely Aaron M. McCright and Riley E. Dunlap, “Cool Dudes: The Denial of Climate Change Among Conservative White Males in the United States,” Global Environmental Change 21, no. 4 (October 2011): 1163–72, https://doi.org/​10.1016/​j.gloenvcha.2011.06.003.

a mostly homogenous “demos” Peter S. Goodman, “The Nordic Model May Be the Best Cushion Against Capitalism. Can It Survive Immigration?,” New York Times, July 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/​2019/​07/​11/​business/​sweden-economy-immigration.html.

weakened the New Deal in 1938 Andrew E. Busch, “The New Deal Comes to a Screeching Halt in 1938,” Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, May 2006, https://ashbrook.org/​publications/​oped-busch-06-1938.

kill national healthcare in 1948 Daniel Prinz, “National Health Insurance—A Brief History of Reform Efforts in the U.S.,” KFF, September 26, 2015, https://scholar.harvard.edu/​files/​dprinz/​files/​kff_national_health_insurance.pdf.

threatened by more frequent droughts “The Economic Case for Climate Action in the US,” Universal Ecological Fund, September 2017, https://feu-us.org/​case-for-climate-action-us.

Commission for Racial Justice “Environmental Justice History,” Office of Legacy Management, U.S. Department of Energy, https://www.energy.gov/​lm/​services/​environmental-justice/​environmental-justice-history.

three out of five Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. and Charles Lee, “Toxic Wastes and Race in the United States” (1987), Commission for Racial Justice, United Church of Christ, http://uccfiles.com/​pdf/​ToxicWastes&Race.pdf.

1.5 times more likely Ihab Mikati et al., “Disparities in Distribution of Particulate Matter Emission Sources by Race and Poverty Status,” American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 4 (April 2018): 480–85, https://doi.org/​10.2105/​AJPH.2017.304297; Maura Allaire et al., “National Trends in Water Quality Violations,” PNAS 115, no. 9 (February 2018): 2078–83, https://doi.org/​10.1073/​pnas.1719805115.

thirteen times as many Jane Kay and Cheryl Katz, “Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Living with Industry,” Scientific American, June 4, 2012, https://www.scientificamerican.com/​article/​pollution-poverty-people-color-living-industry.

government quickly created twenty-four thousand units The housing for the mostly Black workers of color was cheaply built, temporary, and located close to the shipyards and Standard Oil refinery. The white public housing was farther inland and had better construction. Marilynne S. Johnson, “Urban Arsenals: War Housing and Social Change in Richmond and Oakland, California, 1941–1945,” Pacific Historical Review 60, no. 3 (August 1991): 283–308.

“live within a ring of five” Kay and Katz, “Pollution, Poverty.”

97 percent Black, Latino, or Asian Demographic data according to the 2010 decennial Census figures, https://www.city-data.com/​city/​North-Richmond-California.html.

still unincorporated Area leaders have proposed annexing North Richmond into the city that entirely surrounds it, Richmond, but negative perceptions about crime and poverty in North Richmond have contributed to lack of action by the Richmond City Council. See “North Richmond Annexation Information,” Contra Costa Board of Supervisors, n.d., https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/​6812/​North-Richmond-Annexation-information.

one of the first Laotian refugees The United States’ “secret war” in Laos during the Vietnam War made Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in world history. (The United States dropped the equivalent of a planeload of bombs on the mostly rural country every eight minutes, twenty-four hours a day, for nine straight years.) “Secret War in Laos,” Legacies of War, n.d., http://legaciesofwar.org/​about-laos/​secret-war-laos.

Henry Clark, the veteran organizer Sara Bernard, “Henry Clark and Three Decades of Environmental Justice,” Richmond Confidential, December 6, 2012, https://richmondconfidential.org/​2012/​12/​06/​henry-clark-and-three-decades-of-environmental-justice.

won a long battle to close The Ortho pesticide incinerator agreed to close in 1996 and did so in 1997. Jacob Soiffer, “Emergence of Environmental Justice in Richmond: Historical Essay,” FoundSF, 2015, http://www.foundsf.org/​index.php?title=Emergence_of_Environmental_Justice_in_Richmond.

at almost twice the rate Measuring What Matters: Neighborhood Research for Economic and Environmental Health and Justice in Richmond, North Richmond, and San Pablo, Pacific Institute, May 2009, p. 11, https://pacinst.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2009/​06/​measuring-what-matters.pdf.

research increasingly demonstrates a significant link “Indoor Air Quality in High Performance Schools,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/​iaq-schools/​indoor-air-quality-high-performance-schools; “Air Pollution Near Michigan Schools Linked to Poorer Student Health, Academic Performance,” Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, n.d., https://isr.umich.edu/​news-events/​insights-newsletter/​article/​air-pollution-near-michigan-schools-linked-to-poorer-student-health-academic-performance.

ninety-ninth percentile for asthma rates Susie Cagle, “Richmond v Chevron: The California City Taking On Its Most Powerful Polluter,” Guardian, October 9, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/​environment/​2019/​oct/​09/​richmond-chevron-california-city-polluter-fossil-fuel.

leading to more toxic evaporation Gar Smith, “Toxic Tour,” Earth Island Journal (Autumn 2005), https://www.earthisland.org/​journal/​index.php/​magazine/​entry/​toxic_tour. On scientific support for color mattering, see M. Farzaneh-Gord, “Effects of Outer Surface Paint Color on Crude Oil Evaporative Loss from the Khark Island Storage Tanks,” Brazilian Journal of Petroleum and Gas 5, no. 3 (2011): 123–37, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/​d947/​ea1cccb5bd367ddad9400439be64acdc60a2.pdf.

a thousand pounds of chemicals A total of 575,669 pounds of chemicals per year, per 2010 data. Jane Kay and Cheryl Katz, “Pollution, Poverty and People of Color: Living with Industry,” Scientific American, June 4, 2012, https://www.scientificamerican.com/​article/​pollution-poverty-people-color-living-industry.

went unheeded for nearly a decade “Final Investigation Report: Chevron Richmond Refinery Pipe Rupture and Fire,” Report #2012-03-I-CA, U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, January 2015, p. 7, https://www.csb.gov/​chevron-refinery-fire.

fifteen thousand people sickened “Final Investigation Report,” 32.

$816,000 in 2020 “Point Richmond Home Prices & Values,” Zillow, n.d., https://www.zillow.com/​point-richmond-richmond-ca/​home-values.

wasn’t much difference between the three “Analysis of Data from Richmond Community Air Monitoring Program 2016–2017,” https://static1.squarespace.com/​static/​581b7ec43e00bed6261bc168/​t/5b7b4425cd8366741a97de08/​1534805035391/​Analysis+of+RCAMP+Data+Extended.pdf.

“It just wouldn’t be that expensive” When you measure improved health, life expectancy, and productivity, the societal benefits of clean air and water rules significantly dwarf the costs, but even the pollution-control costs that companies must pay are often overestimated during the debates about imposing them, by industry and even the government. See “Progress Cleaning the Air and Improving People’s Health,” Clean Air Act Overview, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/​clean-air-act-overview/​progress-cleaning-air-and-improving-peoples-health; “Industry Opposition to Government Regulation,” Pew Environment Group, March 2011, https://www.pewtrusts.org/​~/media/​assets/​2011/​03/​industry-clean-energy-factsheet.pdf. For example, during the Obama administration, automakers and conservative think tanks warned that requiring vehicles to be more fuel-efficient would make cars prohibitively expensive, but car prices were actually lower in real terms after the new standards, and the benefits ended up outweighing even those lower costs by three to one. See Eric Junga, “Fuel Economy Is Going Up. Vehicle Prices Are Holding Steady,” American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, November 16, 2017, https://www.aceee.org/​blog/​2017/​11/​fuel-economy-going-vehicle-prices-are; “Do Environmental Regulations Cost as Much as We Think They Do?,” Smart Prosperity Institute, December 2018, pp. 8-9, https://institute.smartprosperity.ca/​sites/​default/​files/​regulations-2018december-10.pdf.

The solar array was built with “MCE Solar One Ribbon Cutting,” MCE, April 18, 2018, https://www.mcecleanenergy.org/​news/​press-releases/​mce-solar-one-thinking-globally-building-locally.

more energy and alignment David Roberts, “At Last, a Climate Policy Platform that Can Unite the Left,” Vox, July 9, 2020, https://www.vox.com/​energy-and-environment/​21252892/​climate-change-democrats-joe-biden-renewable-energy-unions-environmental-justice.

59 percent of the population “Memo: U.S. Voters Strongly Support Bold Climate Solutions,” Data for Progress, March 19, 2019, https://www.dataforprogress.org/​the-green-new-deal-is-popular.

California, New Mexico, New York, and Washington Phil McKenna, “Washington Commits to 100% Clean Energy and Other States May Follow Suit,” Inside Climate News, May 7, 2019, https://insideclimatenews.org/​news/​07052019/​100-percent-clean-energy-map-inslee-washington-california-puerto-rico.

Chapter Nine: The Hidden Wound

“Stony the road we trod” James Weldon Johnson, lyrics, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” 1900.

privilege of being born The privilege of being on the heroes’ side in a tragic tale is double-edged. Even my role (or white people’s conception of my role) in this well-intentioned narrative would mark me as a victim, a designation used against Black Americans to suggest our pathology and dependency.

what they were doing was morally right For example, in 2002, white St. Louisan Roland Erbar recalled taking part in the anti-Black violence during the Fairground Park Riot over pool integration, saying, “Everybody was thinking they were doing the right thing at the time, you know.” Eddie Silva, “The Longest Day,” Riverfront Times, March 20, 2002, https://www.riverfronttimes.com/​stlouis/​the-longest-day/​Content?oid=2469321.

truth-and-reconciliation process See, for example, Táíwò, “The Best Way to Respond to Our History of Racism? A Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” Washington Post, June 30, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​opinions/​2020/​06/​30/​best-way-respond-our-history-racism-truth-reconciliation-commission. See also Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation, a project of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, at healourcommunities.org.

Life After Hate The mission of the organization is stated on its website: “Life After Hate is committed to helping people leave the violent far-right to connect with humanity and lead compassionate lives. Our vision is a world that allows people to change and contribute to a society without violence,” in “About Us,” Life After Hate, n.d., https://www.lifeafterhate.org/​about-us-1.

“In some parts of the country” Erin Durkin, “Laura Ingraham Condemned After Saying Immigrants Destroy ‘the America We Love,’ ” Guardian, August 9, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/​media/​2018/​aug/​09/​laura-ingraham-fox-news-attacks-immigrants.

Tucker Carlson raged Tucker Carlson Tonight, December 13, 2018, https://www.mediamatters.org/​white-nationalism/​tucker-carlson-baselessly-accuses-immigrants-making-potomac-dirty.

anti-immigrant sentiment has shifted our politics See “Polling Update: American Attitudes on Immigration Steady, but Showing More Partisan Divides,” National Immigration Forum, April 17, 2019, https://immigrationforum.org/​article/​american-attitudes-on-immigration-steady-but-showing-more-partisan-divides; “Americans’ Immigration Policy Priorities: Divisions Between and Within the Two Parties,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, November 12, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2019/​11/​12/​americans-immigration-policy-priorities-divisions-between-and-within-the-two-parties.

“Therefore love the stranger” Deuteronomy 10:19 (King James version).

“ ‘Give me your tired, your poor’ ” Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883), at Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/​poems/​46550/​the-new-colossus.

that sight triggers your ingrained associations Tiffany A. Ito and Bruce B. Bartholow, “The Neural Correlates of Race,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 12 (December 2009): 524–31, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/​pmc/​articles/​PMC2796452.

If those prejudices about Rich Morin, “Exploring Racial Bias Among Biracial and Single-Race Adults: The IAT,” Pew Research Center, August 19, 2015, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/​2015/​08/​19/​exploring-racial-bias-among-biracial-and-single-race-adults-the-iat.

We now know that color blindness Megan R. Underhill, “White Parents Teach Their Children to Be Colorblind. Here’s Why That’s Bad for Everyone,” Washington Post, October 5, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​nation/​2018/​10/​05/​white-parents-teach-their-children-be-colorblind-heres-why-thats-bad-everyone; Adia Harvey-Wingfield, “Color-Blindness Is Counterproductive,” The Atlantic, September 13, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/​politics/​archive/​2015/​09/​color-blindness-is-counterproductive/​405037.

“explains contemporary racial inequality” Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 2, 302.

“reactionary color blindness” Ian F. Haney López, “A Nation of Minorities: Race, Ethnicity, and Reactionary Colorblindness,” Stanford Law Review 59, no. 4 (February 2007): 985–1063, https://www.jstor.org/​stable/​40040347.

Racial conservatives on the Supreme Court Theodore R. Johnson, “How Conservatives Turned the ‘Color-Blind Constitution’ Against Racial Progress,” The Atlantic, November 19, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/​ideas/​archive/​2019/​11/​colorblind-constitution/​602221.

Well-funded political groups mount campaigns See, for example, an overview of Ward Connerly’s initiatives in Phil Wilayto, “Ward Connerly & the American Civil Rights Institute,” Media Transparency, 2000, https://web.archive.org/​web/​20090212085006/​http://www.mediatransparency.org/​personprofile.php?personID=13.

Wellesley College professor Jennifer Chudy’s Jennifer Chudy, “Racial Sympathy and Its Political Consequences,” The Journal of Politics (September 2020), https://doi.org/​10.1086/​708953.

“a process of knowing designed” Jennifer C. Mueller, “Producing Colorblindness: Everyday Mechanisms of White Ignorance,” Social Problems 64, no. 2 (May 2017): 219–38, https://academic.oup.com/​socpro/​article-abstract/​64/​2/219/​3058571.

Kentuckians for the Commonwealth Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) is a grassroots organization founded in 1981 that uses community organizing and direct action to work for “a fair economy, a healthy environment, new safe energy, and an honest democracy.” Priorities in 2020 included to expand voting rights; protect the land from the predations of coal mining and other extractive industries; ensure local communities and workers have a voice and economic opportunities in the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy; and advance racial and economic justice. See Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, https://kftc.org.

“wishful insinuation that we have done” Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 1989), 14–15.

“the anguish implicit in their racism” Berry, Hidden Wound, 8.

“What they see is a disastrous” James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt,” Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White, ed. David R. Roediger (New York: Schocken Books, 1998), 321–22, originally printed in a special issue of Ebony in 1965.

“you begin to awaken to” Berry, Hidden Wound, 6.

“I have borne it” Berry, Hidden Wound, 4.

“I think white folks are terribly” Karen Grigsby Bates, “The Whiteness Project: Facing Race in a Changing America,” Code Switch, NPR, December 21, 2014, http://www.npr.org/​2014/​12/​21/​371679777/​the-whiteness-project-facing-race-in-a-changing-america.

“Americans, on average, systematically overestimate” Michael W. Krause, Julia M. Rucker, and Jennifer Richeson, “Americans Misperceive Racial Economic Equality,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States 114, no. 39 (September 2017): 10324–31, http://www.pnas.org/​content/​114/​39/​10324.

In a 2019 public opinion survey Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Anna Brown, and Kiana Cox, “Race in America 2019,” Pew Research Center, April 9, 2019, https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/​2019/​04/​09/​race-in-america-2019.

both resent affirmative action and imagine Richard Sanger and Stuart Taylor Jr., “The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action,” The Atlantic, October 2, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/​national/​archive/​2012/​10/​the-painful-truth-about-affirmative-action/​263122; Nikki Graf, “Most Americans Say Colleges Should Not Consider Race or Ethnicity in Admissions,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, February 25, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2019/​02/​25/​most-americans-say-colleges-should-not-consider-race-or-ethnicity-in-admissions.

actually declined over thirty-five years Jeremy Ashkenas, Haeyoun Park, and Adam Pearce, “Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago,” New York Times, August 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2017/​08/​24/​us/​affirmative-action.html.

students admitted to Harvard Peter Arcidiacono, Josh Kinsler, and Tyler Ransom, “Legacy and Athlete Preferences at Harvard,” June 3, 2020, http://public.econ.duke.edu/​~psarcidi/​legacyathlete.pdf.

Meanwhile, according to a 2016 study See Brad Tuttle, “The Cost of Being Black: 33 Facts About the Wealth Gap and Racial Economic Justice,” CNN Money, June 19, 2020, https://money.com/​wealth-gap-race-economic-justice.

“I think affirmative action was nice” “Ronald,” Whiteness Project, http://whitenessproject.org/​checkbox/​ronald. The Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as white, or partially white, understand and experience their race.

outlawed in 1978 by the Supreme Court Regents of University of California v. Bakke 438 US 265 (1978). See the summary in Alex McBride, “Regents of University of California v. Bakke (1978),” The Supreme Court, Thirteen/WNET New York, December 2006, https://www.thirteen.org/​wnet/​supremecourt/​rights/​landmark_regents.html.

Although 1.3 times more likely See Mapping Police Violence, https://mappingpoliceviolence.org.

Indigenous Americans are killed by police Elise Hansen, “The Forgotten Minority in Police Shootings,” CNN, November 13, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/​2017/​11/​10/​us/​native-lives-matter/​index.html; Olugbenga Ajilore, “Native Americans Deserve More Attention in the Police Violence Conversation,” Crime and Justice, Urban Wire (blog), Urban Institute, December 4, 2017, https://www.urban.org/​urban-wire/​native-americans-deserve-more-attention-police-violence-conversation.

An estimated 15 to 26 million people Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History,” New York Times, July 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​interactive/​2020/​07/​03/​us/​george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html. See also Orion Rummier, “The Major Police Reforms Enacted Since George Floyd’s Death,” Axios, September 8, 2020, https://www.axios.com/​police-reform-george-floyd-protest-2150b2dd-a6dc-4a0c-a1fb-62c2e999a03a.html.

Stephon Clark Cynthia Hubert and Benjy Egel, “He Has Become a Hashtag and a Movement for Change. But Who Was the Real Stephon Clark?” Sacramento Bee, April 8, 2018, https://www.sacbee.com/​news/​local/​article208051604.html.

Yet the officers faced no criminal Jose A. Del Real, “No Charges in Sacramento Police Shooting of Stephon Clark,” New York Times, March 2, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/​2019/​03/​02/​us/​stephon-clark-police-shooting-sacramento.html.

“Scared of what? Don’t be scared” Maureen O’Leary, “What Color Is Your Tiki Torch?,” blog post, August 13, 2017, https://maureenolearyauthor.com/​2017/​08/​13/​what-color-is-your-tiki-torch.

In one year, white people called “To the Next ‘BBQ Becky’: Don’t Call 911. Call 1-844-WYT-FEAR,” New York Times, October 22, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/​2018/​10/​22/​opinion/​calling-police-racism-wyt-fear.html.

in 2020, Christian Cooper was bird-watching Troy Closson, “Amy Cooper’s 911 Call, and What’s Happened Since,” New York Times, July 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​07/​08/​nyregion/​amy-cooper-false-report-charge.html.

Among those in the United States arrested “Estimated Number of Arrests by Offense and Race, 2018,” Statistical Briefing Book, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, released on October 31, 2019, https://www.ojjdp.gov/​ojstatbb/​crime/​ucr.asp?table_in=2.

only about 28 percent Travis L. Dixon, “A Dangerous Distortion of Our Families,” Color of Change, January 2017, https://colorofchange.org/​dangerousdistortion/​#key_findings.

Yes, violent crime rates “Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000). Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000). Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000). Violence against persons in poor (51%) and low-income (50%) households was more likely to be reported to police than violence against persons in mid- (43%) and high-income (45%) households.” Erika Harrell, PhD, and Lynn Langton, PhD, BJS Statisticians, Marcus Berzofsky, Dr.P.H., Lance Couzens, and Hope Smiley-McDonald, PhD, RTI International, “Special Report: Household Poverty and Nonfatal Violent Victimization, 2008–2012,” United States Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics, p. 1, https://www.bjs.gov/​content/​pub/​pdf/​hpnvv0812.pdf.

“I am pretty moderate” Avalanche, “Federal Law Enforcement: Confidential Polling Memo,” August 2020, on file with author.

93 percent of the events Tim Craig, “ ‘The United States Is in Crisis’: Report Tracks Thousands of Summer Protests, Most Nonviolent,” Washington Post, September 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​national/​the-united-states-is-in-crisis-report-tracks-thousands-of-summer-protests-most-nonviolent/​2020/​09/​03/​b43c359a-edec-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html.

45 percent in June in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death Michael Tesler, “Support for Black Lives Matter Surged During Protests, but Is Waning Among White Americans,” FiveThirtyEight, August 19, 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/​features/​support-for-black-lives-matter-surged-during-protests-but-is-waning-among-white-americans.

four in ten adults live Lydia Saad, “What Percentage of Americans Own Guns?,” Gallup, August 14, 2019, https://news.gallup.com/​poll/​264932/​percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx.

“They have to make Americans afraid” Laura Reston, “The NRA’s New Scare Tactics,” New Republic, October 3, 2017, https://newrepublic.com/​article/​145001/​nra-new-scare-tactic-gun-lobby-remaking-itself-arm-alt-right.

era of record-low crime rates John Gramlich, “5 Facts About Crime in the U.S.,” Fact Tank, Pew Research Center, October 17, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/​fact-tank/​2019/​10/​17/​facts-about-crime-in-the-u-s.

three-quarters of the gun suicide Jonathan Metzl, “White Men Keep Killing Themselves with Guns. The NRA Is Making It Worse,” Vice, July 3, 2019, https://www.vice.com/​en_us/​article/​7xg3zd/​white-men-keep-killing-themselves-with-guns-the-nra-is-making-it-worse.

“In order for the concept” Richard Thompson Ford, “Urban Space and the Color Line: The Consequences of Demarcation and Disorientation in the Postmodern Metropolis,” Harvard Blackletter Journal 9 (January 1992): 117.

“a world turned upside down” Abraham Lateiner, “Grief and the White Void,” Medium, March 7, 2016, https://medium.com/​@abelateiner/​grieving-the-white-void-48c410fdd7f3.

Fox News is the most-watched cable news Tara Lachapelle, “The New Fox Shows What Outrage Is Worth,” Bloomberg, March 28, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/​opinion/​articles/​2019-03-28/​fox-news-shows-what-outrage-is-worth.

progressive policies but for basic societal norms Fox News–watching Republicans are more conservative than other Republicans on a host of progressive policies, from a wealth tax to green jobs, and they express more support for drug testing welfare recipients and the idea that skin color does not give white people societal advantages. John Ray, “The Fox News Bubble,” Data for Progress (blog), March 24, 2019, https://www.dataforprogress.org/​blog/​2019/​3/23/​the-fox-news-bubble. Researchers in 2020 found that Fox News viewership significantly impacted noncompliance on stay-at-home orders. Andrey Simonov, Szymon K. Sacher, Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, and Shirsho Biswas, “The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Non-Compliance with Social Distancing During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, May 2020, https://www.nber.org/​papers/​w27237.

Facebook, where content from conservative Kevin Roose, “Social Media Giants Support Racial Justice. Their Products Undermine It,” New York Times, June 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​06/​19/​technology/​facebook-youtube-twitter-black-lives-matter.html.

“none addresses how the ideology” Kate Shuster, Teaching Hard History: American Slavery, Teaching Tolerance, Southern Poverty Law Center, 2018, https://www.tolerance.org/​sites/​default/​files/​2018-02/​TT-Teaching-Hard-History-American-Slavery-Report-WEB-February2018.pdf.

“I am sorry that your statement” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Atlantic Monthly, August 1963, 78–88.

“So, we said they weren’t” In the colonial era, slavers sought to bend the Bible to fit their economic imperative, and they succeeded. In 1667, the colonial Virginia Assembly, composed of Anglican men, passed a law to settle a pressing controversy: If an enslaved African or [sic] Indian became a Christian, could they still be a slave? The Virginians decided that the answer was yes: baptism conferred Christianity, not freedom. Other colonial legislatures reached similar decisions. Craving further confirmation, clergymen sought and, in 1729, received formal declarations from both the solicitor general and attorney general of Britain, who came to the same reassuring conclusion: baptizing enslaved people set them free only metaphorically. Saving their souls did nothing to change their earthly condition as chattel. See Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 23.

30 percentage points more For example, 85 percent of white evangelical Protestants consider the Confederate flag not to be a symbol of racism; only 41 percent of religiously unaffiliated white Americans agree. There’s a 26 percentage point gap between white Christians and religiously unaffiliated white people on the idea that police killings of unarmed Black people are isolated incidents, and a 38 percentage point gap on the idea that football players should be required to stand for the national anthem rather than protest police brutality. Jones’s analysis included a battery of “racial resentment” questions and revealed that “more than six in ten white Christians overall disagree with this basic statement: ‘Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.’ ” Among religiously unaffiliated white people, only 40 percent disagree. Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 159–61.

“The unsettling truth” Jones, White Too Long, 6, 20. Also, the psychologists Simon Howard and Samuel Sommers found that exposure to a white-skinned representation of Jesus Christ increased white anti-Black attitudes. “White Religious Iconography Increases Anti-Black Attitudes,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 11, no. 4 (2019): 382–91, https://doi.org/​10.1037/​rel0000144.

Many of the leading lawyers, philanthropists See, for example, Debra L. Schulz, Going South: Jewish Women in the Civil Rights Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2001); current-day antiracist and anti–family separation activism by Jewish social justice organizations including Bend the Arc; Rebecca Tan, “In D.C., New York and Beyond, Jews Mark Annual Day of Mourning by Protesting Trump Immigration Policies,” Washington Post, August 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​immigration/​in-dc-new-york-and-beyond-jews-mark-annual-day-of-mourning-by-protesting-trump-immigration-policies/​2019/​08/​11/​16975ec2-bc70-11e9-b873-63ace636af08_story.html; for an interrogation of the dominant narrative about Blacks and Jews in the movement and today, see Marc Dollinger, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2018).

12 to 15 percent of American Jews Ari Y. Kelman et al., “Counting Inconsistencies: An Analysis of American Jewish Population Studies, with a Focus on Jews of Color,” Stanford University and University of San Francisco, May 2019, https://jewsofcolorfieldbuilding.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2019/​05/​Counting-Inconsistencies-052119.pdf.

source of solidarity with antiracist struggles Sanya Mansoor, “ ‘At the Intersection of Two Criminalized Identities’: Black and Non-Black Muslims Confront a Complicated Relationship with Policing and Anti-Blackness,” Time, September 15, 2020, https://time.com/​5884176/​islam-black-lives-matter-policing-muslims.

“we…made you into nations” Quran 49:13.

“We can rebuild a building” Amelia Nierenberg, “Their Minneapolis Restaurant Burned, but They Back the Protest,” New York Times, May 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/​2020/​05/​29/​dining/​minnesota-restaurant-fire-protests.html.

For all the differences among the world’s major religions For my research, I also spoke with people practicing and leading faith communities rooted in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Indigenous American spiritual traditions.

“If white people have suffered” Berry, Hidden Wound, 3.

Chapter Ten: The Solidarity Dividend

oldest population in the country David Johnson, “These Are the Youngest States in America,” Time, November 6, 2017, https://time.com/​5000792/​youngest-oldest-us-states.

least likely in the country Darren Fishell, “White Maine Students Are Least Likely in Nation to See Kids of Another Race at School,” Bangor Daily News, December 6, 2017, https://bangordailynews.com/​2017/​12/​06/​mainefocus/​white-maine-students-are-least-likely-in-nation-to-see-kids-of-another-race-at-school.

among the top ten in opioid “Opioid Summaries by State,” National Institute on Drug Abuse, https://www.drugabuse.gov/​drug-topics/​opioids/​opioid-summaries-by-state.

“D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” Randy Billings, “LePage in Spotlight for Saying Drug Dealers Impregnate ‘White Girls,’ ” Portland Press-Herald, January 7, 2016, https://www.pressherald.com/​2016/​01/​07/​lepage-accused-of-making-racist-comment-at-bridgton-meeting/.

many other African refugees Cynthia Anderson, “Refugees Poured into My State. Here’s How It Changed Me,” Christian Science Monitor, October 28, 2019, https://www.csmonitor.com/​USA/​2019/​1028/​Refugees-poured-into-my-state.-Here-s-how-it-changed-me.

A bipartisan think tank calculated New American Economy, “Map the Impact,” Taxes and Spending Power, January 31, 2020, https://www.newamericaneconomy.org/​locations/.

introduced by his new Muslim name Harvey Araton, “The Night the Ali-Liston Fight Came to Lewiston,” New York Times, May 19, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/​2015/​05/​20/​sports/​the-night-the-ali-liston-fight-came-to-lewiston.html.

Kennett Square, Pennsylvania Araton, “The Night the Ali-Liston Fight.”

90 percent children of color Art Cullen, “Help Wanted: Rural America Needs Immigrants,” Washington Post, February 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​opinions/​2019/​02/​12/​help-wanted-rural-america-needs-immigrants/​?utm_term=.57c0d68b736a.

Dalhart grew by 7 percent Gus Bova and Christopher Collins, “These Rural Panhandle Towns Should Be Shrinking, but Thanks to Immigrants, They’re Booming,” Texas Observer, January 3, 2019, https://www.texasobserver.org/​these-rural-panhandle-towns-should-be-shrinking-but-thanks-to-immigrants-theyre-booming.

one in five owes the entirety Silva Mathema, Nicole Prchal Svajlenka, and Anneliese Hermann, “Revival and Opportunity: Immigrants in Rural America,” Center for American Progress, September 2, 2018, https://www.americanprogress.org/​issues/​immigration/​reports/​2018/​09/​02/​455269/​revival-and-opportunity.

nearly 83 percent of the growth Kenneth M. Johnson, “Rural Demographic Change in the New Century: Slower Growth, Increased Diversity,” Carsey School of Public Policy, Issue Brief no. 44 (Winter 2012), https://scholars.unh.edu/​carsey/​159.

“Asians and Africans and Latinos” Cullen, “Help Wanted.”

These small-town success stories Mathema, Svajlenka, and Hermann, “Revival and Opportunity”; Cullen, “Help Wanted.”

A quarter of Maine citizens U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2012–2016.

Social isolation Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Timothy B. Smith, and J. Bradley Layton, “Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review,” PLoS Medicine 7, no. 7 (July 2010), doi:10.1371/​journal.pmed.1000316.

three years of state championships They were state champions in 2015, 2017, and 2018. “Lewiston High School: Team Championships,” Lewiston Blue Devils Athletics, http://lhsathletics.lewistonpublicschools.org/​lhs-athletic-success-championships. Six countries reported on in Scott Stump and Josh Weiner, “How This High School Soccer Coach Brought a Divided Town Together,” Today, February 27, 2018, https://www.today.com/​news/​how-high-school-soccer-coach-brought-immigrant-town-maine-town-t123948.

Raymond Jr. wrote an open letter Katharine Q. Seelye, “Mayoral Race in Maine Could Help Define City’s Future amid Demographic Shift,” New York Times, December 6, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/​2015/​12/​07/​us/​mayoral-race-in-maine-could-help-define-citys-future-amid-demographic-shift.html.

“to make sure Lewiston” Maine People’s Alliance, “Ben Chin Breaks State Fundraising Record in Race for Lewiston Mayor,” Maine Beacon, September 1, 2015, https://mainebeacon.com/​ben-chin-breaks-state-fundraising-record-in-race-for-lewiston-mayor.

coming within 600 votes Andrew Rice, “Lewiston’s Ben Chin Announces Bid for Mayor,” Sun Journal, February 23, 2017, https://www.sunjournal.com/​2017/​02/​23/​lewistons-ben-chin-announces-bid-for-mayor.

Ben’s first opponent, Mayor Macdonald, proposed “Lewiston Mayor Says Asylum Seekers Cost Too Much Money,” WGME, January 31, 2017, https://wgme.com/​news/​local/​lewiston-mayor-says-asylum-seekers-cost-too-much-money.

almost 10 percent “Maine Summary, 2019,” Annual Report, America’s Health Rankings, United Health Foundation, https://www.americashealthrankings.org/​explore/​annual/​measure/​HealthInsurance/​state/​ME.

11.5 percent of them “Poverty in Maine: Lack of Progress and New Threats Ahead,” Coalition on Human Needs and Maine Equal Justice Partners, November 17, 2017, p. 2, https://www.chn.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2019/​02/​Poverty-in-Maine-Lack-of-Progress-and-New-Threats-Ahead.pdf. The state has roughly 60,000 people of color and 1.2 million white people, 11 percent in poverty. See “Quick Facts: Maine,” United States Census Bureau, https://www.census.gov/​quickfacts/​ME.

sixty thousand Mainers winning access “As of 09/03/20, 61,539 people were enrolled through MaineCare expansion, including 51,505 adults without children and 10,034 parents and caretaker relatives.” State of Maine Department of Human Services, “MaineCare (Medicaid) Update: September 3, 2020,” https://www.maine.gov/​dhhs/​data-reports/​mainecare-expansion.

a slate of progressive school board candidates Dan Neumann, “Progressives Running for School Boards Across Maine Focus On Racial Equity,” Maine Beacon, October 14, 2020, https://mainebeacon.com/​progressives-running-for-school-boards-across-maine-focus-on-racial-equity/.

“All my jokes are quite racist” Lindsay Tice, “Lewiston Mayor’s Texts Reveal Racist Comment Before Election,” Sun Journal, March 7, 2019, https://www.sunjournal.com/​2019/​03/​07/​lewiston-mayors-texts-reveal-racist-comment-before-election.

largest Ku Klux Klan Donna Stuart, “Gentleman’s Agreement,” Portland Monthly, Feb/March 2009, https://www.portlandmonthly.com/​portmag/​2017/​08/​gentlemans-agreement/.

than the wealthiest 1 percent Isabel V. Sawhill and Christopher Pulliam, “Six Facts About Wealth in the United States,” Up Front, Brookings Institution, Tuesday, June 25, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/​blog/​up-front/​2019/​06/​25/​six-facts-about-wealth-in-the-united-states.

There’s a growing body of literature Andrew Berg and Jonathan Ostry, “Equality and Efficiency,” Finance and Development 48, no. 3 (September 2011), https://www.imf.org/​external/​pubs/​ft/​fandd/​2011/​09/​Berg.htm.

were still waiting months later Eli Rosenberg, “Workers Are Pushed to Brink as They Continue to Wait for Delayed Unemployment Payments,” Washington Post, July 13, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​business/​2020/​07/​13/​unemployment-payment-delays.

due to technicalities Ninety-nine percent of 2018–19 public service loan forgiveness applications were denied. Government Accountability Office, “Public Service Loan Forgiveness Improving the Temporary Expanded Process Could Help Reduce Borrower Confusion,” GAO-19-595, September 2019.

An analysis Demos did Philip Harvey, “Back to Work: A Public Jobs Proposal for Economic Recovery,” Demos, March 7, 2011, https://www.demos.org/​research/​back-work-public-jobs-proposal-economic-recovery.

Angela Glover Blackwell calls this Angela Glover Blackwell, “The Curb-Cut Effect,” Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2017), ssir.org/​articles/​entry/​the_curb_cut_effect.

about 15 percent of the GDP “Housing’s Contribution to Gross Domestic Product,” National Association of Home Builders, https://www.nahb.org/​research/​housing-economics/​housings-economic-impact/​housings-contribution-to-gross-domestic-product-gdp.aspx.

by more than 30 percent Amy Traub et al., “The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters,” Demos, June 21, 2016, https://www.demos.org/​research/​racial-wealth-gap-why-policy-matters.

largest benefits on the richest people “The deduction has always been regressive, and the 2017 tax changes made it more so. In 2018 almost 17% of the benefits will go to the top 1% of households, and 80% of the benefits will go to households in the top 20% of the income distribution. Only 4% will accrue to households in the middle income quintile.” William W. Gale, “Chipping Away at the Mortgage Interest Deduction,” Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/​opinions/​chipping-away-at-the-mortgage-deduction/.

inheritances from previous generations Darrick Hamilton and William Darity Jr., “Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post-Racial America?,” The Review of Black Political Economy 37, no. 3–4 (2010), https://doi.org/​10.1007/​s12114-010-9063-1.

Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren Maggie Astor, “Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren Introduce Racial Equity Plans,” New York Times, July 6, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/​2019/​07/​06/​us/​politics/​harris-essence-festival-2020-democrats.html; Team Warren, “My Housing Plan for America,” Medium, March 16, 2019, https://medium.com/​@teamwarren/​my-housing-plan-for-america-20038e19dc26.

eight trillion dollars larger in 2050 “Nine million potential jobs would be created if people of color owned businesses at rates comparable to Whites…Better jobs, health and education would spark an additional $109 billion of food purchases each year, $286 billion on housing, $147 billion on transportation, $44 billion on entertainment and $30 billion on clothing and apparel. Federal tax revenues would increase by $450 billion annually and state and local tax revenues would increase by $100 billion.” “Updated Study Outlines Potential Gains to U.S. Economy and a Pathway for Economic Growth,” W. K. Kellogg Foundation, April 24, 2018, https://www.wkkf.org/​news-and-media/​article/​2018/​04/​updated-study-outlines-potential-gains-to-us-economy-and-a-pathway-for-economic-growth.

wealth gap is growing Lisa J. Dettling, Joanne W. Hsu, Lindsay Jacobs, Kevin B. Moore, and Jeffrey P. Thompson, “Recent Trends in Wealth-Holding by Race and Ethnicity: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances,” Federal Reserve, September 27, 2017, https://www.federalreserve.gov/​econres/​notes/​feds-notes/​recent-trends-in-wealth-holding-by-race-and-ethnicity-evidence-from-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20170927.htm; Jennifer Cheeseman Day, “Black High School Attainment Nearly on Par with National Average,” U.S. Census Bureau, June 10, 2020, https://www.census.gov/​library/​stories/​2020/​06/​black-high-school-attainment-nearly-on-par-with-national-average.html.

descendants of a stolen people These inventors are Dr. Shirley Jackson, Dr. Lewis Latimer, Charles Drew, Garrett Morgan, Alice H. Parker, Dr. Daniel Hale Williams, and Katherine Johnson.

A 2020 Citigroup report Dana M. Peterson and Catherine L. Mann, “Closing the Racial Inequality Gaps: The Economic Cost of Black Inequality in the U.S.” Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions, September 2020, https://www.citivelocity.com/​citigps/​closing-the-racial-inequality-gaps/.

multiple times more likely “COVID-19 Hospitalization and Death by Race/Ethnicity,” Cases, Data & Surveillance, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated August 18, 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/​coronavirus/​2019-ncov/​covid-data/​investigations-discovery/​hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html.

study modeling COVID-19 transmission routes Phillip Atiba Goff, Amelia M. Haviland, Tracey Lloyd, Mikaela Meyer, and Rachel Warren, “How Racism Amplifies Covid-19 Risk for Everyone,” Vox, October 26, 2020, https://www.vox.com/​2020/​10/​26/​21529323/​police-covid-19-risk-race-racial-disparities.

decades of cuts to public hospitals “This history of cuts has led to the United States having just 2.9 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to 3.1 for Italy, 4.3 for China and 13 for Japan.” George Aumoithe, “The Racist History that Explains Why Some Communities Don’t Have Enough ICU Beds,” Washington Post, September 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/​outlook/​2020/​09/​16/​racist-history-that-explains-why-some-communities-dont-have-enough-icu-beds.

half of low-income areas without Genevieve P. Kanter, Andrea G. Segal, and Peter W. Groeneveld, “Income Disparities in Access to Critical Care Services,” Health Affairs 39, no. 8 (August 2020), https://doi.org/​10.1377/​hlthaff.2020.00581.

In my hometown of Chicago Duaa Eldib et al., “The First 100: COVID-19 Took Black Lives First. It Didn’t Have To,” ProPublica, May 9, 2020, https://features.propublica.org/​chicago-first-deaths/​covid-coronavirus-took-black-lives-first.

“How precisely is diversity” Carla Herreria Russo, “Tucker Carlson Has No Idea How Diversity Strengthens America,” HuffPost, September 8, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/​entry/​tucker-carlson-diversity_n_5b91d170e4b0511db3e0b3e8.

“Members of a homogeneous group” Katherine W. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Scientific American, October 1, 2014, https://www.scientificamerican.com/​article/​how-diversity-makes-us-smarter.

Samuel Sommers borrowed real jurors Samuel R. Sommers, “On Racial Diversity and Group Decision Making: Identifying Multiple Effects of Racial Composition on Jury Deliberations,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, no. 4 (2006): 597–612, quote at 606.

Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) “TRHT is a national effort and throughout the next two to five years there will be place-based TRHT processes in 14 communities, including: (1) State of Alaska; (2) Baton Rouge and (3) New Orleans, Louisiana; (4) Buffalo, New York; (5) Chicago, Illinois; (6) Dallas, Texas; (7) Los Angeles, California; (8) Richmond, Virginia; (9) Selma, Alabama; (10) Saint Paul, Minnesota; and (11) Battle Creek, (12) Flint, (13) Kalamazoo and (14) Lansing, Michigan.” See “Where Is TRHT Happening?,” Frequently Asked Questions, Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, accessed September 22, 2020, https://healourcommunities.org.

“To reconcile” See “Is the TRHT the same as a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)?,” Frequently Asked Questions, Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, https://healourcommunities.org.

I almost turned the page Jerry Hawkins et al., “A New Community Vision for Dallas: 2019 Report,” Dallas Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation, p. 23, https://dallastrht.org/​wp-content/​uploads/​2019/​05/​DTRHT-Report.pdf.

a photo of a smiling twelve-year-old Jerry Hawkins et al., “A New Community Vision,” 24.

“Marsha Jackson and the Shingle Mountain” Michelle Aslam, “What Is Shingle Mountain?,” Daily Campus, Southern Methodist University, November 21, 2019, https://www.smudailycampus.com/​news/​the-mountain-of-toxic-shingles-in-south-dallas; Robert Wilonsky, “Here’s How Shingle Mountain Was Born—And Why Dallas Won’t Pay to Destroy the 70,000-Ton Monster,” Dallas Morning News, February 14, 2020, https://www.dallasnews.com/​news/​commentary/​2020/​02/​14/​heres-how-shingle-mountain-was-born-and-why-dallas-wont-pay-to-destroy-the-70000-ton-monster.

After a white policewoman mistakenly walked into Erik Ortiz and Alex Johnson, “Amber Guyger Sentenced to 10 Years for Murdering Neighbor Botham Jean,” NBC News, October 2, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/​news/​crime-courts/​amber-guyger-sentencing-resumes-after-murder-conviction-death-botham-jean-n1061146; Joel Shannon, “Lawyer: Police Seized Pot to Smear Botham Jean After He Was Shot in His Own Apartment,” USA Today, September 13, 2018, https://www.usatoday.com/​story/​news/​nation-now/​2018/​09/​13/​lawyer-claims-police-seized-pot-smear-botham-jean/​1297225002.