Karen Hunter welcomes award-winning writer Tracie McMillan to discuss her latest book, The White Bonus. The book tackles the complex question of what it materially costs—and benefits—to be white in America.
McMillan traces her family’s story through three generations, leveling their unassuming wealth in policies historically skewed to profit white Americans and examines the financial worth of whiteness in her own life and white women voters as a whole as Election Day nears.
About Tracie McMillan
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. She edits coverage of worker organizing for Capital & Main.