“White men are 29 percent of the population but hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, 90 percent of venture capital, and 98 percent of all money managed by money managers. Is that because they’re smarter? Or is it because there is preference and active bias in favor of white men?” — Steve Phillips

Are white men really smarter than other Americans? Some white men might think so, but few others are convinced. Especially the Stanford educated Steve Phillips whose new book, Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? is designed to “play offense” in the fight for American racial justice. The title of Phillips’s new book is, of course, a provocation. White men are 29 percent of the population, he tells us, but hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, 90 percent of venture capital, and 98 percent of all investment funds managed by money managers. Is that really because they’re smarter than everybody else? Or is it because the system is biased in favor of white dudes who graduated from Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.

After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Phillips argues, there was, albeit all-too-briefly, broad agreement that systemic racism existed and needed to be addressed. Then came the 2024 election and the MAGA war against DEI. It’s time to fight back, Phillips says. Rather than defending affirmative action, Phillips says that the question is why, in the richest country in the world, white men hold 90 percent of the power when they are only 29 percent of the population. Until that mathematical inconsistency is explained, there’s no point in pretending that the arc of American history bends toward justice.

Five Takeaways

• 29 Percent of the Population, 90 Percent of the Power. White men hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, 90 percent of venture capital, and manage 98 percent of all investment money — while being 29 percent of the population. Either white men are smarter than everybody else, or the system is not meritocratic. The book forces the question.

• Playing Offense. After George Floyd, the left spent four years defending DEI. The result was a retreat. Phillips’s prescription: stop defending programmes, start prosecuting the inequality. Reframe the question: not “should we have DEI?” but “why do white men hold 90 percent of the power?”

• The Biker Gang. A gang takes over a house, passes it on to their children. The children say: I didn’t do it. True. But they inherited a structurally unequal situation. The GI Bill created the white middle class while largely excluding people of color. The average white family has ten times the assets of the average black family. “I didn’t do it” is not the same as “I don’t benefit from it.”

• The Confederates Never Stopped Fighting. The existential question — is this a white country, or a multiracial democracy? — has never been resolved. White fear and resentment at equality is the single most consistent force in Republican politics since 1965. No Democratic presidential candidate has won the majority of the white vote since Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

• America Can’t Pass a Bill to Study Reparations. The wealth of the US was created by enslaved labour and on stolen land. Congress has repeatedly failed to pass a bill not to pay reparations — merely to study them. Until America can have that conversation, it hasn’t begun to confront what is owed.

About the Guest

Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color and the author of Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else?, How We Won the Civil War, and Brown Is the New White.

References

Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? by Steve Phillips
Democracy in Color: democracyincolor.com

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:30 Has anything changed in 200 years?
00:02:03 Why the racial wealth gap persists
00:03:26 The Confederates never stopped fighting
00:04:06 The biker gang analogy
00:06:18 What the Civil Rights Acts changed — and didn’t
00:12:00 Poor white men and the race vs. class question
00:19:19 The Latino community: political loyalties in play
00:23:28 29 percent of the population, 90 percent of the power
00:28:43 Obama and the multiracial new American majority
00:45:00 Playing offense: the strategic reframe
00:54:46 Reparations: what is owed?
01:00:32 Is America ready for this conversation?