Rich Thanks to Racism - by Jim Freeman (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this book, Jim Freeman suggests that the biggest reason America cannot get beyond its racial divide is as simple as it disturbing: Racism is enormously profitable. Rich Thanks to Racism exposes a group of Corporate America and Wall Street billionaires as a driving force behind the public policies that perpetuate racial inequities and cause severe harm to communities of color across the country"--

Book Synopsis

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. In Rich Thanks to Racism, Jim Freeman, one of the country's leading civil rights lawyers, explains why as he reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. He details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality.

In this groundbreaking examination of "strategic racism," Freeman carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. He uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. He exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and our most extreme anti-immigrant policies. Freeman also demonstrates how these "racism profiteers" prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color.

Rich Thanks to Racism is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.

Review Quotes

The book's strengths lie in centering the voices of those most harmed by strategic racism, the well-researched financial trail of spending to support the political agenda of a core group of the ultra-wealthy, and the examples of community-generated solutions to end systemic racism. Freeman does a great job supporting his claim that a small group of ultra-wealthy people are using strategic racism to undermine democracy and amass a disproportionate amount of wealth for themselves.

-- "ILR Review"

About the Author

Jim Freeman directs the Social Movement Support Lab at the University of Denver, which works with communities of color across the US to dismantle systemic racism and create positive social change. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Notre Dame, and was an editor on the Harvard Law Review. He served under President Obama as a Commissioner on the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.