The Sum of Us was published in 2021, amid a global pandemic and an accelerating climate crisis, and on the heels of a presidential election. The book serves as an exploration of some of these tensions, as well as the history and policies that have led to the present moment.

Since the founding of the United States, racism has undermined the country’s ability to live up to its promise as a representative democracy. As McGhee notes, the writers of the Constitution crafted the document to allow for the ongoing existence of slavery; this opened the door for the distorting effect of the Electoral College, which in turn led to the election of Donald Trump, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote—a state of affairs that gives white-majority states a disproportionate influence on the election. The franchise of people of color has been eroded across the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries by policies that make it harder for Black people to vote, like the denial of voting rights to convicted felons.

McGhee notes that the historical roots of these voting obstacles must be understood in order for the scale of the problem to be grasped: “I would argue that all are a product of the same basic tolerance for a compromised republic that was established at our founding, in the interest of racial slavery” (147).