"There's really a question around wherever you are, if you're in a school, if you're in a corporation, if you're at a university or in a school district, look at that organization and just do your own kind of informal swamp audit," says Steve Phillips. Learn what a "swamp audit" is by clicking on the link below to upgrade your subscription!
Subscribe for as little as $4 a month (5-day free trial)
FEATURING STEVE PHILLIPS - President Donald Trump’s central domestic agenda appears to be reversing gains made by proponents of racial equality and ensuring minority rule by white men remains intact. In dismantling federal Diversity- Equity-Inclusion initiatives, encouraging white men to sue for racial discrimination, and exclusively welcoming white South Africans into the nation via the refugee program, he has been overt about his racist, sexist agenda. Steve Phillips has coined a new term for Trump’s white supremacist patriarchy and says it’s time to go on the offense.
Phillips is a columnist for The Guardian and The Nation. He is also the host of the podcast, “Democracy in Color with Steve Phillips,” and the founder of the political media organization, Democracy in Color. He is author of The New York Times bestseller Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and the national bestselling book How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good. His latest book is, Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America. Steve spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about his latest book.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: It's so good to have you back with your latest book. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. And so, the subtitle for your book is important, "Playing Offense in the Fight for Racial Justice in America."
Let's start with how over-represented white men really are in positions of power. If you listen to Trump and his allies, it seems as though white men are just being pushed out of everywhere, and they are the ones facing the most discrimination. How untrue is that?
Steve Phillips: Right. Well, it's important to start with the baseline, right? That white men, by the latest census data, are 29% of the US population. And so that's the baseline in terms of determining what is their representation in all of these other different sectors of society. And so, you could start with, presidents of the United States, all have been men, all but one have been white men. Ninety percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies, 90% of the companies that receive venture capital startup funding, around 80% of the United States Senate.
And then across the board in local organizations, college presidents, senior faculty on different campuses, most of the positions of power, influence, and decision-making in our society are held by white men, and they're certainly held by white men in significantly over-representative numbers than their numbers in the population.
