Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else?

Praise for Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? “Steve Phillips situates our present crisis exactly where it belongs—within the long, unfinished struggle to make real the promise that all are created equal. By tracing a line from the Gettysburg Address to the nationwide, and global, racial reckoning sparked by the murder of George Floyd, he reminds us that backlash is not new, but neither is resistance.”—Anna Malaika Tubbs, New York Times bestselling author of Erased and The Three Mothers “Steve Phillips says the quiet part out loud. He names, with precision and urgency, the uncomfortable truth many of us, especially those of us who are white, have been taught to skirt around: racial inequality in America is the result of sustained conditioning that leads so many of us to believe that straight white men are far more competent than the rest of us. This book exposes who holds power—and why. This book doesn’t allow white readers to remain spectators. It calls us in and calls us out.”—Erin Heaney, executive director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) “For more than a decade Steve Phillips has been an indispensable analyst of America’s political failures—and political possibilities. Now, with this provocative and powerful book, he offers the modest suggestion that white men may not be smarter and more talented than the other 71 percent of the population—and that the way to find out is to end straight white American male preference—or, as he puts it so eloquently, the SWAMP—and create a truly multiracial democracy.”—Jon Wiener, historian, journalist, contributing editor of The Nation and host of The Nation’s weekly podcast, Start Making Sense