The Cost of Privilege is a fine activists' primer for understanding racism in the US from a revolutionary, democratic, working-class perspective. Writing in a down-to-earth style, Smith weaves theoretical insight, political history, and organizing practice together, shows how capitalism, racism, and patriarchy interconnect, and offers excellent ideas for movement-building.

-Johanna Brenner, author of Women and the Politics of Class

The Cost of Privilege is U.S. history without jargon and blinders. It demonstrates how a stronger grasp of the past may be used to inform social justice organizing in the present. Chip Smith is not interested in moralizing about white supremacy; he wants to dismantle it. Smith presents historical and personal case studies about how to challenge racism as well as anti-immigrant hysteria. Community activists, union organizers, and educators will find this book indispensable in their work."

-Paul Ortiz, author of Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920

"This book will be an eye-opener for union leaders trying to unite the movement. It challenges those who hope to avoid divisions in the US working class by simply changing the subject to "common interests". And it will no doubt help white union leaders in particular reflect differently on their own history and position in society. It is a colossal effort, bringing together--probably for the first time--race theory, labor history, analyses of patriarchy and intersectionality, and personal reflections on race and social activism, between the covers of a single volume. Read it, change the way you organize, change the world."

-Jeff Crosby, President, North Shore Labor Council, Lynn, Massachusetts

The Cost of Privilege makes it clear that the struggle for racial equality must be at the very heart of a movement to replace a system based on exploitation with one based on cooperation.  Historical and future oriented, theoretical and practical, global and local, social and personal, it encourages reflection, organization, and strategic action.

-Meizhu Lui, Executive Director, United for a Fair Economy

The Cost of Privilege represents a significant contribution to our understanding of the integral link between capitalism, race and white supremacy. The book plays a unique role in that it is written from the standpoint of the practitioner or the organizer, rather than from the standpoint of the observer. This is a book that not only must be read, but can serve as a basis for anti-racist work in existing struggles and movements. I am keeping my copy of the book very nearby!"

-Bill Fletcher, Jr., labor and international writer and activist

This is a path-breaking study of the sometimes baffling dynamics of racial oppression in the United States. In fact, this is the most comprehensive and clear analysis of racism and national oppression that I've seen. I especially like the fact that this is a call for action against racial injustice. Sun Tzu wrote the classic "The Art of War"; but this is book about the "art of liberation" in America today. It is recommended reading for any serious activist fighting for social justice in our time. Not just theory, but a guide to action!

--Komozi Woodard, Professor of History, Public Policy & Africana Studies, Sarah Lawrence College

As a white anti-racist organizer, I've been looking for an analysis of white privilege that is grounded in the historical development of the intersecting systems of white supremacy, capitalism and patriarchy in the U.S. I've been seeking strategies that challenge white privilege in the context of working to build a revolutionary multi-national movement: one whose politics support the self-determination of peoples of color; the struggles of working class people of all colors against the capitalist system; the liberation of all women, especially women of color; and the efforts of nations in the Global South to free themselves from the tentacles of U.S. imperialism.

The Cost of Privilege is a book I've been waiting for. I think it's written by revolutionary anti-racist organizers for social justice activists who aspire to be anti-racist organizers and revolutionaries. At a time when the white anti-racist movement is growing and searching for ways to do more principled and effective political work, this book is a 'must read' for all those committed to challenging white supremacy.

-Sharon Martinas, co-founder of the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop, based in San Francisco.

The key to Chip Smith's book, The Cost of Privilege, can be found in its subtitle: Taking On The System of White Supremacy and Racism, which signals that this is the work of a social justice activist. Yet, it is also meticulously researched and based on wide reading. As a teacher, I see this book as a dream text for a high school or university course on racism; as an activist myself, I see it as an organizing manual.  But the general reader can be assured that this is a well-written and reliable book on a subject that everyday is becoming more urgent.

-Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian, writer, and activist

The Cost of Privilege is one of those rare books that manages to blend first-rate analysis around racism and white supremacy, with first-rate class analysis as well. The result is that the reader gains invaluable insights into the ways in which capitalism and white supremacy have interacted to produce and reproduce injustice, and the ways in which the working class has remain divided by the promise of white privilege to some of its members. This is an important and insightful volume.

--Tim Wise, author, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son

The Cost of Privilege provides a comprehensive and thoughtful examination of the emergence and evolution of white supremacy.  This book does so in a manner that reckons with the complexity of this history in the intertwining of patriarchal and capitalist class structure of society while maintaining clarity about the overriding social forces at work.  The Cost of Privilege balances discussion of systemic and institutional structuring of white supremacy in US and global society with rich evidence of people's struggles throughout history to resist and challenge these realities as well as concrete examples for reflecting upon assumptions and actions.  In doing so, this book offers the reader cause for hope in the face of the brutality that white supremacy has rendered throughout the last five centuries.

-Melanie E. L. Bush, Assistant Professor, Adelphi University

Chip Smith has given us a powerful weapon for the battle against white supremacy.  It combines an in-depth look at the long history of this profoundly rooted plague with an enlightening, up-do-date review of the many efforts to end it. We have here much more than a brilliant analysis of past and present,  the author dares to outline a bold program of revolutionary action that lays out both the challenges to be faced and how to confront them. Who could ask for more?

-Elizabeth (Betita) Martínez, Chicana author, activist and director of the Institute for MultiRacial Justice

Chip Smith and the large cast of characters who engaged in the production of The Cost of Privilege have given us a book of enormous power, scope, and analytic/practical insight. It locates white supremacy and racism as central to the systems of power within the United States and the larger world-system. But it points as well to race, class, and gender as interlocking forms of oppression, as opposed to viewing them as separate but related systems of oppression. Even more important this work not only locates these systems of oppression within a historical social system, it explains the role of oppressed strata in the development of knowledge about the social world, and strategies for changing that world. Smith and his comrades who have been in the forefront of the struggle against racism and white supremacy for some thirty years have given us an exemplary work which I place on a par with classics such as Robert Allen's Black Awakening in Capitalist America (1970), Bob Blauner's Racial Oppression in America (1972), and James Boggs's Racism and the Class Struggle (1970).

-Rod Bush, author, We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century

In The Cost of Privilege, Chip Smith and his associates have done something I never  thought possible: they've combined a solid analysis of race and racism in the US with a training manual for white anti-racists.  Their work is deep: accounts of past struggles inform their thinking about 21st-century racism.  The book is both readable and humane: while teaching and challenging white anti-racists,  it also respects and honors their struggles and accomplishments. The Cost of Privilege will be an excellent text for a practice-oriented course on race, and it also speaks eloquently to all whites committed to racial justice. Highly recommended!

-Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara, and author of The World Is a Ghetto: Race and Democracy since World War I