More people than ever are recognizing the destructive impact of systemic racism and the urgent need to dismantle it. In a groundbreaking examination of “strategic racism,” Rich Thanks to Racism (Cornell University Press) explains what and who stand in the way.

Jim Freeman details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States are Corporate America and Wall Street executives who profit mightily from racial inequities. He dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins, why they persist, and the hidden strategy behind them. Freeman 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 big banks was instrumental in creating the world’s largest prison population and our many anti-immigrant policies. Freeman also demonstrates how “racism profiteers” defend these injustices by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles they face are deeply interconnected.

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 join together in finally ending systemic racism once and for all.