Welcome to another episode of the Willoughby Hills podcast!
On today’s episode, I speak with journalist and author Tracie McMillan about her incredible new book The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America.
When it comes to race, white Americans often acknowledge a “Black tax,” meaning a cost that Black people pay for the color of their skin. It could come in lower wages, shorter life spans, or less access to housing and healthy food. But white people rarely acknowledge the inverse of the Black tax, what Tracie calls the “White Bonus.”
In her book, she charts her own family’s history, plus follows the stories of four other white American families, to see how explicit government policies and implicit biases have led to massive amounts of wealth for white Americans.
In this conversation, Tracie and I discuss her writing process in researching the book, why it’s so difficult for white people to acknowledge this bonus, and what it might take to reverse course.
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127. Author Tracie McMillan on "The White Bonus"