# The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America - Hardcover

by **Tracie McMillan** (Author)

**A genre-bending work of journalism and memoir by award-winning writer Tracie McMillan tallies the cash benefit--and cost--of racism in America.**

In _The White Bonus_, McMillan asks a provocative question about racism in America: When people of color are denied so much, what are white people given? And how much is it _worth_\--not in amorphous privilege, but in dollars and cents?

McMillan begins with three generations of her family, tracking their modest wealth to its roots: American policy that helped whites first. Simultaneously, she details the complexities of their advantage, exploring her mother's death in a nursing home, at 44, on Medicaid; her family's implosion; and a small inheritance from a banker grandfather. In the process, McMillan puts a cash value to whiteness in her life and assesses its worth.

McMillan then expands her investigation to four other white subjects of different generations across the U.S. Alternating between these subjects and her family, McMillan shows how, and to what degree, racial privilege begets material advantage across class, time, and place.

For readers of Robin DiAngelo's _White Fragility_ and Heather McGhee's _The Sum of Us,_ McMillan brings groundbreaking insight on the white working class. And for readers of Tara Westover's _Educated_ and Kiese Laymon's _Heavy_, McMillan reckons intimately with the connection between the abuse we endure at home and the abuse America allows in public.

### Author Biography

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_ (Scribner, 2012). 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.

**Number of Pages:** 464

**Dimensions:** 1.49 x 9.48 x 6.62 IN

**Publication Date:** April 23, 2024

## Details

- **Price:** 32.99 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
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- The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America - Hardcover

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