Brown Is the New White ─ How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority

29 + 26 = 55: that’s the math behind the new hidden majority in America. Progressive people of color now make up 29 percent of the entire U.S. population, and progressive whites make up 26 percent of the population. In a book brimming with optimism, Steve Phillips, the founding chairman of a group dedicated to realizing the promise of this new majority, shows how we are now positioned to overcome the racial barrier that has divided our electorate for the past two centuries. Together, these two groups form a progressive majority for the first time, with huge potential implications for…everything.

Phillips takes readers on a journey through U.S. history to reveal how racial inequality was deliberately constructed in different historical eras; the historical and demographic roots of the new American majority; and the policy shifts in the realms of education, criminal justice, housing, environmental justice, and economic justice that will be possible—in our lifetimes—when this majority realizes its potential. The book goes on to offer a range of solutions and tools, including an audit of recent Democratic spending, an analysis of key battleground states, and concrete suggestions for steps we can all take to make a progressive future a reality.

Steve Phillips is an attorney and the founder and chairman of PowerPAC+ and PowerPAC.org. In 1992, at the age of twenty-eight, he became the youngest person ever elected to public office in San Francisco when he won a seat on the Board of Education, where he went on to serve as president. He lives in San Francisco.