Present-day race-neutral tax subsidies deepen the racial wealth gap inherited from past discrimination.

Evidence

It’s widely acknowledged today that past policies like those covenants left black American families behind when it comes to homeownership and its role in generational wealth building. Less known is the fact that present-day tax policy helps keep them there. Federal tax subsidies make things better for most white Americans, who’ve been reaping market and governmental rewards for more than half a century, and worse for most black Americans, whom the market and government have already punished. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 176

Categorization

• XREF: This is the explicit statement of the structural-racism-as-mechanism thesis the reader is tracking; also connects to chapter 1’s marriage benefit discussion.