Long Beach Public Library Foundation

Long Beach Leaders are Readers Uduak-Joe Ntuk, Trustee President, Long Beach Community College District

Long Beach Leaders are Readers is our newest series in which leaders in our community share recommended reads. In celebration of Black History Month, LBCC Trustee Uduak-Joe Ntuk has shared the following reading recommendation. Enjoy!

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together” by Heather McGhee

My recommendation is “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone And How We Can Prosper Together” by New York Times bestselling author Heather McGhee. Heather is a frequent guest on NBC’s Meet the Press where she specializes in economics and income inequality. From the financial crisis of 2008 to raising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? The book leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.

Uduak-Joe Ntuk

Trustee, Long Beach Community College District

Find The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together at your local library branch here.