The White Bonus, Tracie McMillan
The White Bonus, Tracie McMillan
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The White Bonus
Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America

Author: Tracie McMillan

Narrator: Tavia Gilbert

Unabridged: 11 hr 50 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/23/2024


Synopsis

This unflinching book from award-winning investigative reporter Tracie McMillan examines what white privilege delivers—in dollars and cents—not only to white people of wealth but also to white people from the poor to the middle class.

McMillan begins with her own downwardly mobile middle-class family and takes us through a personal history marked with abuse, illness, and poverty, while training her journalistic eye on the benefits she saw from being white. McMillan then alternates her story with profiles of four other white subjects, millennials to baby boomers, from across the United States.

For readers of Stephanie Land's Maid, Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us, and Clint Smith's How the Word Is Passed, McMillan brings groundbreaking insight into how, and to what degree, white racial privilege builds material advantage across class, time, and place. Rather than analyzing racism as a thing that gives less to people of color, McMillan studies how it gives more to people who are white—including, with uncommon honesty, herself—and how it takes so much from so many. The unforgettable follow-up question thrums steadily through this book: Do white Americans believe that racism is worth what it costs all of us?

About Tracie McMillan

Raised in rural Michigan, Detroit- and Brooklyn-based writer Tracie McMillan has written for publications including the New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Mother Jones; Harper's Magazine; Slate; and National Geographic. After putting herself through New York University and training under legendary reporter Wayne Barrett, she was the managing editor of the award-winning magazine City Limits from 2001 to 2005. A one-time target of Rush Limbaugh and a 2012-13 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow, McMillan is also the author of the bestselling The American Way of Eating. McMillan's work has been recognized by the Sidney Hillman Book Prize, the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, and Investigative Reporters and Editors, among others.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jillian on October 01, 2024

This is such an important read. Combining journalism and memoir, the author traces the circumstances of her own family across several generations and points to the lasting ripple effects of the unseen advantages they’ve had for being white. For instance, her father is wealthy because he inherited mo......more

Goodreads review by Wendy on May 27, 2024

Part journalistic review of institional racism, told through personal stories, and part personal cathartic autobiography (sort of Nickel and Dimed meets Educated). I learned a lot about systemic and institutional racism. I've always understood it was there (I'm not a denier of that) but didn't under......more

Goodreads review by Cecilly on January 08, 2024

As I focus a lot of my perinatal quality initiatives on the maternal and infant mortality rates for black and Hispanic women, I was drawn to this book instantly. Unfortunately, it did not offer much insight that I didn't already know or experienced or witnessed myself growing up in a biracial family......more

Goodreads review by Tami on January 29, 2025

This book is like memoir mixed with storytelling journalism and a fine critique of the racist structures that benefit some but not all in the US. Highly recommend!......more

Goodreads review by Seth on May 31, 2024

McMillan's book provides the hard working, middle class and Caucasian population with the tools to understand how they have privilege. We feel we have earned every penny, and we have, but we don't recognize that the bonus we received was the opportunity to pursue education and job opportunities. McMi......more