Exactly how much has racism benefited White Americans?
Journalist and author Tracie McMillan did the math: The advantages she’s gotten over her life from being White, she estimates, amount to $371,934.30.
To calculate that number, McMillan tallied those benefits and divided them into two categories: A family bonus, which includes money her parents spent on her college tuition, educational loans she got from her grandfather and an inheritance; and a social bonus, which includes jobs, apartments and access to credit she’s gotten throughout her life.
Those resources and capital, she concludes, wouldn’t have been available to her if it weren’t for her race.
In her new book, “The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America,” which publishes Tuesday, McMillan traces just how much of her family’s modest wealth can be attributed to policies and practices that have systematically hurt Black Americans.
Through investigative research, interviews and personal recollections, McMillan examines how racism has shaped her life, as well as the lives of four other White, middle class families.
“It was the one story about White people that I didn’t know,” she says
McMillan, who grew up in rural Michigan and now lives in New York, didn’t have a particularly privileged upbringing by most standards. As she details in the book, she grew up in an abusive household and an unfortunate accident left her mother unable to care for her. In college, McMillan juggled numerous jobs to support herself, and as a working journalist, she’s had her own brushes with poverty.
Despite those hardships, McMillan says the financial advantages she’s experienced because of her race are undeniable. Her grandparents benefited from federal programs that largely excluded Black people, allowing them to build wealth that was then passed on to the next generation. That enabled her parents to help her pay to attend an elite university, which in turn opened doors to employment opportunities.
