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