Tax policy rewards the downward-flowing wealth pattern typical of white families

Evidence

There aren’t, of course, different tax rates in place for black and white families. But the way wealth typically flows in black and white families is dramatically different, and tax policy favors a predominantly white wealth pattern. In white families, wealth is more likely to increase from generation to generation, and tax-free gifts are likely to travel from parent to child, or grandparent to grandchild. In black families, however, tax-free gifts often travel in the opposite direction, like Racheal’s financial gifts to her grandmother. This both limits black households’ potential to save and invest, and reduces the likelihood that a black parent will be able to leave an inheritance to be passed down to the next generation tax-free. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 465

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the book’s central mechanism in its cleanest form: a facially neutral provision (no different rates by race) that nonetheless selects a racial pattern of wealth flow.