Tax policy punishes black workers with early-withdrawal penalties while rewarding white ones.

Evidence

Blacks graduate from college with more debt, do not get jobs as easily as whites, are not paid the same wages as their equally qualified white peers, are steered toward lower-paying jobs, and have an unemployment rate twice that of whites—yet are more likely to provide financial support for extended family. Once again, tax policy adds insult to injury, giving tax breaks to white workers already winning in the paid labor market while also levying heavy penalties for early withdrawal from retirement accounts against those black workers the paid labor market fails. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 420

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The early-withdrawal penalty as a racial mechanism reinforces the sacrifice framing’s insight that penalties hit those already excluded from gain.