Are White Men Really Smarter Than Everybody Else? Steve Phillips on Who Actually Runs America
“White men are 29 percent of the population but hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, 90 percent of venture capital, and 98 percent of all money managed by money managers. Is that because they’re smarter? Or is it because there is preference, inequality, and active bias in favor of white men?” — Steve Phillips
Are white men really smarter than other Americans? Some white men might think so, but few others are convinced. Especially the Stanford educated Steve Phillips whose new book, Are White Men Smarter Than Everybody Else? is designed to “play offense” in the fight for American racial justice. The title of Phillips’s new book is, of course, a provocation. White men are 29 percent of the population, he tells us, but hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions, 90 percent of venture capital, and 98 percent of all investment funds managed by money managers. Is that really because they’re smarter than everybody else? Or is it because the system is biased in favor of white dudes who graduated from Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.
After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, Phillips argues, there was, albeit all-too-briefly, broad agreement that systemic racism existed and needed to be addressed. Then came the 2024 election and the MAGA war against DEI. It’s time to fight back, Phillips says. Rather than defending affirmative action, Phillips says that the question is why, in the richest country in the world, white men hold 90 percent of the power when they are only 29 percent of the population. Until that mathematical inconsistency is explained, there’s no point in pretending that the arc of American history bends toward justice.
Five Takeaways
• 29 Percent of the Population, 90 Percent of the Power: The book’s central data point. White men are 29 percent of the US population. They hold 90 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions. They receive 90 percent of venture capital funding. They manage 98 percent of all investment money in the country. Phillips’s argument: you don’t need to allege conscious racism to explain this. You just need to acknowledge that a system shaped by centuries of exclusion doesn’t self-correct. The question the title asks is the question nobody wants to answer: if the system is meritocratic, why do these numbers look like this? Either white men are smarter than everybody else, or the system is not meritocratic.
• Playing Offense: The book began as a study of what happened to the post-George Floyd consensus. The broad agreement that systemic racism existed — widespread in June 2020 — dissolved within months. By 2024, the political momentum had reversed entirely. Phillips’s diagnosis: the left spent the intervening years playing defense — defending DEI, defending affirmative action, defending the language of equity. The result was a retreat. His prescription: stop defending programmes and start prosecuting the inequality. Make the other side explain the numbers. Reframe the question from “should we have DEI?” to “why do white men hold 90 percent of the power?”
• The Biker Gang Analogy: To the objection — common from white Americans — that they personally didn’t create the racial wealth gap: Phillips offers the biker gang. A gang comes into someone’s house, takes all the resources, occupies the house, and passes it on to their children. The children can say: I didn’t do anything. But they inherited a structurally unequal situation. The GI Bill after World War II gave billions of dollars in wealth-building to white Americans while largely excluding people of color. The average white family has more than ten times the assets of the average black family. “I didn’t do it” is not the same as “I
