Foundational US tax laws were written when overt racial bias was legal.

Evidence

That doesn’t mean that the joint tax return was created as a way to punish hardworking black women and their husbands. Like most tax policies, it was the result of decisions made by many different actors, over many years. But when those actors—members of Congress, judges and clerks, lobbyists, and more—sit down to craft or modify tax law, they bring their conscious and unconscious biases to the table. And our most foundational tax laws were created at a time when racial bias wasn’t just common—it was the norm and quite legal. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 43

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s note that race-neutral provisions plus unequal starting conditions equals engineered disparity — the mechanisms here are inherited, not consciously designed.