The race-neutral joint return punishes households that depart from a white single-earner ideal

Evidence

Race plays a larger role than class here. Only at the lowest income levels are married blacks significantly more likely to be in the ideal single-wage-earner households. I have a hunch this is related to the instability of the labor market for low-wage workers—and especially for black men. (The single wage earner here is not necessarily the husband.) Once household income exceeds $30,000, black couples are always more likely to be found in coequal-wage-earner households regardless of income. Black households are far more likely to not meet the white “ideal” of marriage as defined in our tax system, and the joint return causes these married black couples considerable financial harm. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 150

Categorization

• DEFINE: Nails the core mechanism: facial neutrality (the joint return applies to everyone) plus unequal starting conditions (black dual earners) equals engineered disparity — laws written for a white archetype.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s framing of structural racism as mechanism, not accusation; also pairs with the earlier bonus/penalty discussion and the ‘not necessarily the husband’ caveat.