Tracie McMillan
“The white bonus is an estimate of the money white people get because of white supremacy. It’s a variation or a variant of white privilege, but it’s specific and concrete. I don’t think I would have much understanding of the scale, scope and depth of racism in my country if I hadn’t taken that perspective.”
“Finding hidden systems that enrich a few at the expense of the many is Tracie McMillan’s superpower. Armed with an ethnographer’s sensitivity, a journalist’s instinct, a scholar’s capacity to see the value of both forests and trees, and a poet’s gift for turning words into feelings, she combines deep investigative research with personal stories to reveal that “whiteness” is America’s most lucrative fiction, the intangible asset that keeps on giving—and taking. The point of the book is not just to interpret the “white bonus” but to end it.”
“Intimate and eye-opening... [A] compassionate invitation to white readers to hear, and reckon with, the story of race in America as deeply personal.”
“[A] fresh, urgent new look at the mechanisms of racism in America.”
“The book Ms. McMillan’s most resembles is Barbara Ehrenreich’s bestseller Nickel and Dimed. Like Ms. Ehrenreich, Ms. McMillan goes undercover amid this country’s working poor…This is a voice the food world needs.”
“This book is vital. McMillan has the writing skills to bear witness, the research background to provide context, and the courage to take on the challenging task.”
A rural Midwestern transplant to New York City, Tracie McMillan is the author of The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America (Henry Holt + Company, 2024) and the New York Times bestseller,The American Way of Eating (Scribner, 2012), which won the Books for a Better Life Award and the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism. A one time target of Rush Limbaugh, McMillan also oversees national coverage of worker organizing for Capital & Main.
Tracie has received fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, MacDowell, and the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellows at the University of Michigan. Her essays and journalism have been published in the New York Times, Mother Jones, Harper’s, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, and elsewhere. She is a two-time finalist for a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, a Livingston Award Finalist, and the winner of the Harry Chapin Media Award, the James Aronson Prize for Social Justice Journalism, and a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award. She has spoken widely about her work and the topics it covers for audiences ranging from the Logan Symposium on Investigative Reporting to the Chautauqua Institution, Seattle Town Hall to Texas A&M University.
Previously, Tracie served as a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism; the managing editor at City Limits magazine in New York City; and as a member of the James Beard Foundation Media Awards Journalism Committee, where she pushed for broader racial, economic, and geographic diversity in judging panels. Her career began with an internship under the legendary investigative reporter at the Village Voice, Wayne Barrett. In 2023, she began editing coverage of worker organizing at the award-winning news site, Capital & Main.
In an interview with NPR, Tracie was asked what she says to people who believe that there’s discrimination against white people: “I'd say for a long time, we've had affirmative action for white people, particularly when you look at the 20th century, right? So when you look at the postwar period, which is, you know, for my family, where most of our wealth comes from, the GI Bill, which essentially was designed to go to white folks - I mean, it was not written that way, but it was implemented that way, it was understood by everybody that that's the way it was going to play out, and then you could get help with your mortgage and things like that. And we didn't give that to Black communities and other communities.”
Tracie was a scholarship kid at New York University, where she received her B.A. in Political Science. Born and raised in the exurbs between Flint and Detroit, she currently splits her time between Brooklyn, NY and Detroit, MI.
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