From WNYC Studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Friday, June 7th.

In December of 2016, just after Donald Trump was elected president, journalist Tracy McMillan published an essay in the New York Times called White Resentment on the Night Shift at Walmart.

She had previously gone undercover as a journalist working the night shift at Walmart for a few months to hear what life was like for the lives of people making their real livings that way.

More than 90% of Americans born in 1940 earned more than their parents, she reminds us in that

piece, but only 50% of those born in 1980 will, according to the Equality of Opportunity Project.

And that's some of the context.

But she found that white resentment on the night shift

at Walmart wasn't aimed at structural changes in the economy like the decline of manufacturing

in their Michigan town or the decline of unions in America. But as McMillan wrote, they blamed a rigged

system. That was 2016. Sound familiar? a rigged system, new workers taking jobs,

meaning immigrants, and corrupt politicians, all sounding like a big part of what put Donald

J. Trump in office. Here we are again in a Trump-involved election year, and Tracy McMillan

has a new book that she says that resentment on the night shift at

Walmart article set the stage for it's called the white bonus five families and the cash

value of racism in America she calculates her own white bonus by the way at about $372,000 so let's do

the math and let's hear the stories. Tracy McMillan,

hi, welcome. Nice to have you on with me again. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

Can we start with some of your own story and maybe link it back to your night shift at Walmart

experience? Maybe some listeners, remember that New York Times essay,

because you also grew up working class and with a difficult family life and childhood

in many ways in Michigan, right?

Yeah, I did.

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