The Sum of Us

A foreclosure is a process whereby a lender recovers money from a borrower who has stopped making mortgage payments by forcing the sale of their home. Foreclosures have risen significantly in the United States, from 183,000 in 2001 to more than 1 million in 2010, partly due to the 2008 financial crisis. These foreclosures have cascading effects throughout society, from increased suicide rates to reduced student achievement. Like many other harmful practices identified in the book, they were first used on Black homeowners.

The Green New Deal is the work of a multiracial group of activists, politicians, and public policy researchers dedicated to bringing about meaningful action on climate change. As McGhee notes, the diverse nature of the alliance that incited the Green New Deal is significant, as it brought together groups that had formerly operated at cross-purposes. By overcoming these divisions, proponents of the Green New Deal have articulated a vision of how to transition away from fossil fuels and have achieved legislative successes across the United States.

The term “just transition” first emerged in the 1990s as an advocacy effort from unions looking to protect jobs from the impacts of environmental regulations, but it has come to refer to a campaign by environmental advocates that promotes the message that climate change action doesn’t have to mean job losses. In The Sum of Us, McGhee cites an example of a Just Transition project in Richmond, California, where a legacy of environmental racism and corporate indifference had created an unhealthy environment that disproportionately affected people of color. By banding together, a multiethnic coalition of community members enacted positive change in Richmond, including a solar project that provided jobs and low-cost power for residents.

In the book McGhee describes how, in the early 2000s, she couldn’t understand how the high rate of foreclosures from subprime loans weren’t resulting in banks being forced to change their practices. She later realized that mortgage-backed securities were the answer. These securities are bundles of mortgages sold to investors, who can then sell them to other investors, creating a situation whereby the investment still generates profit even if the mortgage ends in foreclosure. As McGhee notes, this practice was first tested on people of color, but once it proved profitable, it was expanded to the wider market, affecting many white homeowners.

As part of its response to the Great Depression in the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority offered to insure mortgages to reduce borrowing costs for homeowners, but this benefit only applied to white citizens. On maps, the government marked out Black neighborhoods with red shading, to indicate areas where banks should not lend (based on the racist assumption that these areas posed too much risk to lenders). This practice became known as redlining, and its impact has continued for generations, such that in 2016, the average wealth for Black families was a fraction of that of white families.

Solidarity dividend refers to the gains that accrue when people come together to work for the benefit of all involved. This occurs because coalitions can accomplish goals that are in their own interests—such as health care for all or action on climate change—in a way that is not possible when the individual members are divided by racism and the interests of elites. Additionally, diverse groups, from executive boards to juries to classrooms, are more resilient and capable than homogenous collectives, as they draw on their members’ varied strengths and experiences.

Subprime loans are meant to be sold to borrows who have a less-than-prime credit score; because of the higher risk, these loans also have higher fees and interest rates than regular loans, making them more profitable for lenders. In practice, however, subprime loans were often sold to borrowers who could have qualified for less expensive loans. McGhee first became aware of subprime loans while working at Demos in the early 2000s, by which point subprime loans had already affected many Black homeowners but were not yet on the radar of regulators.