Why are hierarchies still all but entirely white?

I have reviewed probably 60 or 70 books on racism and Black issues, so it is difficult for me to find a new angle for my readers. I thought I found one in Are White Men Smarter Than Everyone Else? by Steve Phillips. It is his fifth book on the subject, but my first exposure to his work, so I was delighted to dive right in.

Sadly, there is not a single new fact, theory or idea that comes out of the book. The only thing close to a “new” idea is to audit every organization, to be able to list how many Black managers there are, compared to whites. It is always less than their share of the population, to no one’s shock. (This all came from Phillips’ own audit of the Democratic Party in 2014.) It is not enough to move me, or I would think anybody, to march in the streets.

Here, for example, is a graph of his findings in the American film industry:

Blacks in the film industry

Each chapter tackles a sector of some sort: entertainment, universities, K-12 education, state and local government, the federal government, philanthropies, and so on. In every case, he discusses their racial histories and weaknesses concerning Blacks, and in each case he has a three point action plan.

Unfortunately, every action plan is the same, chapter after chapter. First, remind the organization of its various commitments to equality, DEI and whatever else they proudly proclaimed and allowed to quietly die. In other words, rub their hypocrisy in their faces. Second, perform an audit of the racial composition of management and employees, so you have proof that the higher you go, the less color there is. And third, “Be Bold and Dream Big Dreams.” That’s the solution in every case.

The audit is meant to seek out the SWAMP — Straight White American Male Preference — wherever it festers. It is everywhere. That is not news either, except that the Trump regime is actually promoting and coddling it. “SWAMP” appears on most of the pages in the book.

One way or another, every chapter recalls George Floyd, who was choked to death in 2020 by Patrolman Derek Chauvin. The ensuing scandal saw numerous entities promise equality, DEI, wokeness, mindfulness and so on, and pledged all kinds of money to ensure it happened. For Phillips, it was the pivot point in the history of discrimination. Everything reset right then. He comes back to it continuously. But as the years passed, the money got withdrawn, the programs were terminated and nothing much changed. Business as usual quickly resumed. There is precious little evidence that anything changed at all, at least in terms of this book.

With all the literally millions of examples of abuse, it quickly becomes tiresome that Phillips seems incapable of referencing anyone else to reinforce his George Floyd symbol. There is lots in the book on the betrayal of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow periods after the civil war, and the brief sunshine of the Great Society laws pushed into existence by LBJ after the Bloody Sunday March across the Pettus Bridge. Again, is that really all there is to this subject? Are there no current stories he can tell to drive home his points? The book never builds. It just adds, incrementally, with things we (should) already know.

As for news, as readers of this space know, I am very big (sometimes too big) on quotes. I hi-lite, I quote and I feature dramatic, unusual or newsworthy takes on everything, because it is the author’s work, not mine. So they get the exposure and the credit, to new audiences for them. In this book, I hi-lited just three sentences, and on second thought, found none of them worth repeating. That is very telling in my little world of non-fiction reviewing.

This is Phillips’ life. He writes books about it, has a podcast about it, and freelances articles about it. It is a shame that the result after all these years is this uninspiring.

David Wineberg

(Are White Men Smarter Than Everyone Else?, Steve Phillips, April 2026)

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