Tax policy’s harms to black families operate through effects that are systemic and pervasive.

Evidence

That’s why I was wrong, all those years ago, when I went into tax law thinking that race wasn’t a part of it. The truth is, there’s nothing in this country that race and racism aren’t a part of—the very foundation of the United States emerged on the premise that black people weren’t fully human, and despite the progress since the civil rights era, the stories here show us how much work is left to be done. At first glance, tax policy may not be an obvious way to fight systemic racism. But as we’ve seen, its effects on black families are, by and large, insidious, debilitating, and ubiquitous. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 562

Categorization

Category: Craft and Method

Related

• Tax policies encode assumptions from an era of legalized black exclusion (similarity 0.85)
• White decision-making, not black behavior, drives black outcomes today (similarity 0.83)
• Race-neutral tax reforms will fail until underlying societal racism is addressed. (similarity 0.83)
• Foundational tax laws were crafted when racial bias was legal and normal (similarity 0.83)
• Black married couples trail white peers due to tax policy decisions made long ago (similarity 0.82)
• Race-neutral tax reforms perpetuate racial wealth gaps unless they account for societal racism (similarity 0.82)
• Present-day race-neutral tax subsidies deepen the racial wealth gap inherited from past discrimination. (similarity 0.82)
• Tax policy rewards those already holding assets and punishes wage earners (similarity 0.81)
• Tax policy rewards the downward-flowing wealth pattern typical of white families (similarity 0.81)
• Racial tax disparity comes from ignoring race, not from race-based provisions. (similarity 0.80)
• The black perspective was systematically excised from the legal record (similarity 0.80)
• Left narratives blame past bad actors rather than present policy design (similarity 0.80)
• Hidden white wealth harms both black and white families, in opposite ways (similarity 0.80)
• The 1913 Revenue Act benefited black taxpayers only by excluding whites (similarity 0.80)
• No single tax provision change can close the racial wealth gap (similarity 0.80)