It makes people less effective at collaborating with colleagues, coaching kids’ sports teams, advocating for their neighborhoods, even chatting with acquaintances at social events.” Denial leaves people ill-prepared to function or thrive in a diverse society. When that person then faces the inevitable uncomfortable racial reality-an offended co-worker, a presentation about racial disparity at a PTA meeting, her inadvertent use of a stereotype-she’s caught flat-footed. That person is less likely to listen deeply to unexpected ideas expressed by people from other cultures or to do the research on her own to learn about her blind spots. A person who avoids the realities of racism doesn’t build the crucial muscles for navigating cross-cultural tensions or recovering with grace from missteps. “Color blindness has become a powerful weapon against progress for people of color, but as a denial mindset, it doesn’t do white people any favors, either.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together We are greater than and greater for the sum of us.” Rooted in the knowledge that we are so much more, when the we in we the people is not some of us, but all of us. In short, we must emerge from this crisis in our republic with a new birth of freedom. Since this country’s founding, we have not allowed our diversity to be our superpower and the result is that the United States is not more than the sum of its disparate parts.

We must demand changes to the rules in order to disrupt the very notion that those who have more money are worth more in our democracy and our economy. To make it manifest, we must challenge ourselves to live our lives in solidarity across color, origin, and class. “For when a nation founded on the belief in racial hierarchy truly rejects that belief then and only then will we have discovered a new world.

The sum of us heather