Congress enacted the marriage bonus knowing it disadvantaged black couples

Evidence

It was well established in the early twentieth century—and therefore predictable when Poe v. Seaborn was decided by the Supreme Court—that any system that gave tax cuts to single-wage-earner households like the Seaborns’ would disadvantage black married couples. But that didn’t stop anyone from changing the law. By 1948, when the joint return was accessible to everyone, 85 percent of white families were in single-wage-earner households. Four years later, in the fall of 1952, my parents met and set in motion decades of their paying more in taxes as a double-wage-earner household. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 97

Categorization

• SEED: The juxtaposition ‘85 percent of white families single-earner versus a law passed despite known Black disadvantage’ is a compact, quotable stat for an essay on structural racism as a knowing — not accidental — design.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘facial neutrality plus unequal starting conditions equals engineered disparity’ template the reader tracks across the chapter; also rhymes with craft of personalizing policy via the mother and the 1952 meeting.