The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together: Summary & Key Insights

One of the clearest illustrations of how racism destroys shared prosperity is found in the story of America’s public swimming pools. During the mid-20th century, many American cities built grand, resort-style public pools—symbols of postwar optimism and community life. But when courts mandated desegregation, instead of integrating these pools, many municipalities chose to drain them. They closed them down entirely rather than allow Black children to swim alongside white children. This choice was both literal and metaphorical: instead of extending public good to all, people in power preferred to destroy it.

The drained pools became for me a prism for understanding the modern American economy. Time and again, we’ve chosen to empty out our shared investments—whether in education, healthcare, or social infrastructure—when inclusion became part of the equation. As I spoke to community members and historians, I saw how this dynamic repeated itself after the civil rights era, as public policy shifted from supporting collective goods to privileging individualism and privatization. What resulted was an America where the rich swim in private club pools while everyone else looks on.

What struck me was that this self-destructive impulse didn’t come from some economic law of nature but from a social choice rooted in racial fear. If the history of the drained pool teaches us anything, it’s that when we define belonging narrowly, everyone loses access to the richness of the common good. If, however, we fill the pool back up—rebuilding our public institutions with an inclusive ethos—we all get to dive in.

As I traced the economic history of the United States, I found that the white middle class—long believed to be the chief beneficiary of American capitalism—has in many ways also suffered from the zero-sum paradigm. During the mid-century boom, public investment created broad prosperity: affordable housing, reliable union jobs, and expanding public universities helped millions move into the middle class. But the majority of those benefits were racially restricted. When, after the civil rights movement, racial equality became law, instead of expanding these programs to include everyone, policymakers began to dismantle them altogether.

Tax revolts, deregulation, and anti-government rhetoric, often wrapped in racial categories, convinced many white Americans that government action primarily favored undeserving minorities. Yet these very policies eroded the foundation of economic security—from pensions and stable jobs to affordable education—for everyone. The neoliberal turn of the 1980s, embraced partly in reaction to social change, hollowed out the same middle class it purported to serve. The economy became more unequal, wages stagnated, and social safety nets frayed—a high cost paid for the illusion of racial advantage.

As I spoke with white workers in places like Maine and Ohio, I heard echoes of this betrayal. Many realized that chasing an imagined racial hierarchy had not protected their livelihoods but left them more exposed. When we see how racism distorts policy priorities, we begin to understand that fairness and prosperity are inseparable. The supposed zero-sum game has always been rigged to benefit only the top sliver of wealth, while most Americans—of all colors—lose ground.