Janine Jackson interviewed Emory University’s Dorothy A. Brown about racist tax policy for the April 16, 2021, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: The centuries-old expression about nothing being certain except death and taxes reflects a general belief that these things are universal, and come to us all despite apparent differences. It’s not true, of course, and being a critical thinker today means reckoning with supposedly neutral systems whose disparate impacts on different people are not accidental. We like to think of law as something that exists somewhere, and we just find it and apply it, when, in reality, law is something created and forged for purpose, and sometimes you can still see the fingerprints.
In the United States today, the median white family—not average, but median: half above, half below—has a net worth (that’s a weird term that means wealth or assets minus debts or liabilities) eight times that of the median Black family. That’s the same gap as 40 years ago, despite gains that Black people have made in income and education and all of the things that you do to accrue wealth.
So what’s going on, and what does it have to do with our system of taxation? Dorothy A. Brown is Asa Griggs Candler professor of law at Emory University School of Law, and author of the new book The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It; it’s out last month from Crown. She joins us now by phone from Atlanta. Welcome to CounterSpin, Dorothy Brown.
Dorothy A. Brown: Thanks so much for having me.
JJ: Let’s first say, Black people are underpaid, and are shuttled into work sectors that are underpaid. But your focus is not employment income—how much money comes in—but tax policy, which is completely related, but it’s not the same, right?
DAB: That’s right. So, how much income we have helps inform how much we owe in taxes. But what my research showed is when Black and white Americans engage in the same activity—whether it’s work, whether it’s owning a home, whether it’s getting married, whether it’s paying for college—tax policies subsidize the way white Americans engage in the activity, while disadvantaging the way Black Americans engage in the activity.
JJ: So let’s just get into that a little more: What are some of the ways that that works, that that happens?
DAB: We can start with what you talked about, with jobs. So we know that there’s occupational segregation, right? Some jobs are disproportionately filled by white Americans, and other jobs are disproportionately filled by Black Americans.
But there are tax subsidies associated with jobs. Think employer-provided retirement accounts: Any money that the employer puts in a retirement account, any money you put in a retirement account, is not taxed today, even though it’s wage income. It will be taxed later, when you retire and withdraw the amount. And presumably, in 20, 30, 40 years, when you retire, you won’t be working, and the amount of income taxes you pay on that retirement amount will be less.
JJ: Right.
DAB: Right? If you were to take the money today, add it to your other wage income, you’d be paying higher taxes. So it’s a big tax break.
Well, what we know are jobs that are disproportionately held by white Americans are more likely to come with retirement benefits. But even when a Black American is fortunate enough to get such a job, we are less likely to participate and contribute to that benefit, and if we are able to participate in that retirement account, we’re more likely to withdraw an amount early that’s subject to a tax penalty.
So how does this happen? Research shows Black college graduates are more likely to send money to their parents or grandparents to help them pay for necessities, whereas white college graduates are more likely to receive money from their parents and grandparents that can help them with a down payment for a home, pay for K-12 private school for their children. So that even if, miraculously, we were to find a white American and a Black American making the same amount—we know that doesn’t happen, right, because of wage discrimination in the labor market…
JJ: Right.
DAB: …but even if we find that, the Black worker, because their parents and grandparents suffered under Jim Crow, is going to be more likely to have less after-tax dollars, because they’re going to send some money home.
JJ: You know, Jeremie Greer from the Corporation for Enterprise Development, told me, “Income helps you get by, but wealth helps you get ahead,” and allows you to think about the future. And it’s so critical. And if you don’t have to think of it that way, well then, you don’t think of it that way.
DAB: That’s right, that’s right.
JJ: Ok so, “That’s just the law,” is what we would hear. And yet, we see corporations write tax law favorable to themselves. We see Congress carve out exceptions or offer rebates for specific individual companies, like, it looks like sausages being made. And yet we’re somehow disinclined to think that that corruption and cronyism might include systemic racism.
Dorothy A. Brown: “The notion that you have to have a law say, ‘We discriminate against Black people,’ before we can find the law actually discriminates against Black people, defies logic and history.”
DAB: Absolutely. And part of the problem is the IRS doesn’t collect or publish statistics based on race. So people can walk around saying, “Tax law is colorblind,” because when you go to the IRS statistics, it has nothing up there dealing with race.
In fact, I’ve been writing in this area for a couple of decades, and the typical white tax law professor ignores what I say, or pushes back or marginalizes what I say, because their response is, “There’s nothing in the code about race, there’s nothing in tax law about race,” which ignores the disparate impact based on race.
We’ve seen this in Georgia, with voting rights. There’s nothing in the Republican-passed legislation, that’s going to make it harder for Black people to vote, that says, “Black people, we want it to be harder for you to vote.”
JJ: Right.
DAB: But we all know that’s going to be the impact, and that that was the intent behind the law. So the notion that you have to have a law say, “We discriminate against Black people,” before we can find the law actually discriminates against Black people, defies logic and history.
JJ: And everyone—“everyone,” I use the term loosely—but people agree that Black people are behind, are disadvantaged, whatever their explanation for that is. But then when it comes time to intervene, to allow—not help, but allow—to stop preventing Black people getting ahead, it becomes a whole different conversation, that’s about the intervention and its unfairness. And I just wanted to ask you: Why have previous policy responses failed to adequately address the wealth gap? And then, what sort of responses could?
DAB: So we have a lot of research on the wealth gap, and we have proposals for how to address it, but part of the problem is, you have the left and the right seeing different causes of it. And I have quarrels with both. The left sees this mainly as a function of historical discrimination that is brought into the 21st century; the right sees it as bad behavior on the part of Black Americans, right?
JJ: Mmm-mm.
DAB: So the left gets it wrong in this instance: Yes, it was historical discrimination, but the reason why wealth doesn’t work the same way for white Americans as Black Americans today is because of choices white people make.
So let’s take homeownership: Most white homeowners live in neighborhoods with very few Black Americans. That’s how they like it. That’s what the research shows. So progressive whites who live in neighborhoods with virtually no Black neighbors are part of why homeownership builds more wealth for white Americans than Black Americans, because Black Americans typically live in racially diverse or all-Black neighborhoods, and the homes are not valued as greatly as the exact same home in an all-white neighborhood.
JJ: Mmm-mm.
DAB: Why? Because white prospective homebuyers don’t want to live in those neighborhoods, so they’re not valued as high. So that’s not historical discrimination; that’s 21st century today discrimination by white homeowners.
JJ: Right.
DAB: On the other side, we have the right that says, “Well, Black people just need to act more like white people.” We need to get married; we need to buy homes. I’ve already told you why buying a home isn’t the ticket to wealth for Black Americans the way it is white Americans.
But getting married: My research shows that when white people get married, they’re more likely to get a tax cut. How? Because the tax law favors married couples with one single wage earner—one person who works in the paid labor market, the other person who works at home—that couple gets a tax cut. Couples like my parents (my mother was a nurse, my father was a plumber), they made roughly equal amounts: They don’t get a tax cut—and for decades, they paid higher taxes.
So you have conservatives saying, “Black people, you just need to get married.” And my research shows, well, when we do, we don’t get a tax cut.
So part of the road to a solution is really understanding the problem. And one of the key pieces that I make in my book is the system of America for building wealth is designed for white wealth. It’s designed for how white Americans engage in their activities, whether it’s marriage or buying a home, in a way that Black Americans simply cannot replicate. And until we come to terms with our racist wealth-building system, no solution is going to fix it.
JJ: Let me ask you, finally, you’ve been working on this for a while, and you’ve seen the interest in the topic, or even the belief that it is a topic, shift.
DAB: [laughing] Yes.
JJ: After George Floyd’s murder, you say in this Bloomberg Businessweek piece from March, “Suddenly people wanted to talk about race and tax.” I don’t want you to burn any bridges with reporters, but I am curious, when you talk to media, where do you have to start? Do you find people disbelieving? Are they ready to see that this is real? And it doesn’t have to be media, but just the general public—do you feel like the moment is right to push this forward?
DAB: I do, and I will say this: Post–George Floyd, the reporters who have called me have been terrific, and have been in a listening mode; they have not been in an argumentative mode. Pre–George Floyd, white reporters that I’ve talked to, that I’ve tried to talk to about race, have been very dismissive. And they’re different people; those people did not come back to me post–George Floyd, right? The people who came to me were all new white reporters who I hadn’t talked to before, who actually saw the moment and wanted to get better informed. So that’s kind of heartening, to be honest with you. I haven’t had the pushback.
And I will say, over the years, the audiences that gave me the most comfort were the general public audiences. They were hungry for what I had to say, and curious, and were listening and attentive. It would be white academics who didn’t want to hear anything I had to say. So the general public has always been an encouragement for me in doing this work.
JJ: We’ve been speaking with Dorothy A. Brown, Asa Griggs Candler professor of law at Emory University School of Law. The book is The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans—and How We Can Fix It; it’s out now from Crown. Thank you so much, Dorothy Brown, for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
DAB: Thanks for having me.
If Dorothy Brown would have kept her mouth shut regarding her commentaries, she could have made some good points. Here’s a case: “But we all know that’s going to be the impact, and that that was the intent behind the law.” No, we don’t all know what the intent is. Why can’t Republicans have motivations that aren’t intended to be harmful to blacks? I am perfectly fine if anyone, who is legally allowed to vote, votes. I want to restrict illegal voting. To me, that comes at a small price: voter ID and no mass mailed voting ballots. I couldn’t care less if that affects any one group or any one person. That is the price for security. Dorothy Brown thinks that blacks cannot find out hot to get an ID? How dumb does she think blacks are?
I do think that some laws may help out whites more than blacks. She made good points there. That doesn’t mean that somebody thought, “I’d really like to help whites, but not blacks.”
It’s too bad she couldn’t keep her racist ideology to herself. She might be persuasive otherwise.
You want to throw up a bunch of roadblocks to illegal voting, even though it happens about once a blue moon and even though when it does happen it can only affect an election the size of the election for the local dog catcher? Makes perfect sense. A million tons of water to put out a small campfire is a great idea!
And, by the way, multiple states have targeted urban blacks with their voting restrictions. I see no reason to trust that they won’t do it again. North Carolina’s whole voting scheme was struck down a couple years ago because of it. And now the GOP is openly embracing the idea that they think the less people that vote, the better.
You wanna buy into the lie, that’s your business; but go peddle your “it’s not racist! it’s racist to think blacks can’t get an ID” BS elsewhere. You could give a shit about how these voting measure affect anyone, despite the repeatedly demonstrated disproportionate impact they have on the urban poor.
Tell us, why can’t blacks get an ID?
They can. Everyone can with enough time and effort. But the playbook the GOP runs and will continue to run (because they don’t like the fact that the more people in cities that vote means they lose elections) is to make it as time-consuming and as obstacle-filled as possible.
The urban poor move a lot, relative to most other populations. That means they gotta keep their ID’s up-to-date. So there’s more time and effort required for them, on average. GOP-controlled states will cut hours and close ID locations to areas that serve the urban poor, throwing up more roadblocks. They’ll close polling places in those areas too, leading to longer lines on election day and discouraging more of them. They’re throwing up as many obstacles as possible in order to solve an imaginary problem. Why is THAT a good idea? It seems pretty stupid to me; would you be happy if they were gonna spend this kinda time, effort, and money to create the State and Federal Bureau of Easter Bunny Operations?
It’s a numbers game they’re playing. They know that if they ramp up the time and effort required to get ID’s and vote, it’s gonna have a disproportionate effect on the urban population that they don’t think should be voting at all; it’s the ONLY reason they’re doing this. The vague concerns about “widespread election fraud” are an absolute lie– as their own investigator who looked for it for 30 years concluded.
How often do most blacks vote? Once every 4 years? Are you saying that getting an ID once every 4 years is too time consuming?
John,
I hear what you are getting at, but maybe the better question to be asking, in terms of voter participation, is the following:
What plausible reason do we have to believe that any substantive change will occur, even if we increased or made voter participation easier for the poor, if the system itself is already hosed and rigged to favor only one group – the rich, white ownership class?
This is the one thing I’m not hearing you acknowledge in your analysis.
Worded a little differently; What reason, do we even have to believe that anything will change if higher numbers of urban poor and people of color vote, when the system itself is where all the problems are?
If the system is already rigged against poor people, especially poor people of color, what possible substantive change will ever occur for poor people, especially poor people of color, if they play by the rules within the system? Sounds like we need a whole new system to me.
I’m just spit balling here, but maybe the real problem, is a need to reform the entire system first. Otherwise, all we’ll keep getting is “symbolic change,” or bread crumbs, but never any long-term and meaningful change to people’s life’s circumstances.
You’d have to be in total denial to ignore how income inequality in 2021, especially along racial and class-based lines, is worse today than it was in the 1970’s, in the U.S.
Even when they show up to vote, poor people of color have only the two nihilistic choices, the lesser of two racist parties. What usually happens is we either get full-on lunatics like Nixon, Reagan, Bush 1 and 2, and Trump, or we get milquetoast, right-of-center politicians, like Carter, Clinton and Obama, none of these clowns made things better, or changed a damn thing about the prospects of poor people, especially poor people of color, in the U.S.
The only way the U.S. will ever realize meaningful “change”, is if it’s population comes together and radically reforms, or overthrows the entire damn system.
If electoral politics are already hella skewed to benefit the rich whites while ignoring the poor blacks, is that democratic? I don’t think so.
The Electoral College, The U.S. Senate both are racist, undemocratic institutions that both need to be subverted or done away with altogether, or nothing is going to change.
If the system itself is racist and corrupt, what difference will it make to the poor and especially the poor people of color? None.
It’s like how do you want your continued indifference and suffering; (A) from a party of overt white nationalists – the GOP or (B) the double talking, snake-in-the-grass, Democratic Party of covert racist meritocratic kleptocrats?
Just saying.
Given federal elections, state elections, and local elections, not to mention primaries and general elections, a civically engaged person is voting much more than once every four years. Federal elections happen every two years, so if you vote in both Congressional and presidential primaries that means two federal votes every two years. Some states run their elections in odd years; again, if you vote in both primaries and general elections, that’s two votes every year. Local governments elections are added to that; they may or may not be held at the same time as the state elections; for that matter school board, municipal, and county elections may or may not be held at the same time.
Lol, yeah, that represents the majority. You didn’t mention school boards and HOAs. I don’t envision some person moving every six months being engaged politically. You’re grasping at exceptions
For Janet,
You want to throw out vote-by-mail huh? Washington state has been doing vote-by-mail for almost a decade and here is a quote that your kind of phony crusader against voter fraud, straw-man argument, cannot deny:
“Among roughly 4.5 million distinct voters in Washington state between 2011 and 2018, we estimate that there are 14 deceased individuals whose ballots might have been cast suspiciously long after their death, representing 0.0003% of voters.”
– from a stanford (dot) edu paper titled: “Are Dead People Voting By Mail? Evidence From Washington State Administrative Records.”
You apologize for the GOP, a party with a history of racist behavior, and claim to be a crusader for election security when, what you are really advocating here, is a tamping down on democracy.
Do you really think that impacting the rights of millions of people for a few bad actors, is a “small price to pay?”
Must be nice to be you. Obviously you are one who’s never been illegally kicked off your state’s voter rolls, or threatened with termination from your job, if you left work early to make the three hour window to go vote.
It is astounding to me that people can be so apathetic, nihilistic and ignorant of the facts of empirical reality.
You should really go read the paper titled “Jim Crow 2.0?: Why States Consider and Adopt Restrictive Voter Access Polices,” by Keith Gunnar Bentele / Erin E. O’Brien. It was written back in 2013. In brief this is what they found out about laws that restrict voter accesss, “Our results indicate that proposal and passage are highly partisan, strategic, and racialized affairs.”
Oprah Winfrey would object.
Janet: How often do most blacks vote? Once every 4 years? Are you saying that getting an ID once every 4 years is too time consuming?
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I’m saying that throwing up obstacles to getting ID’s and making it time-consuming has the effect of (surprise, surprise) making it difficult and time-consuming. It doesn’t matter how often you vote if you move, say, every year and gotta jump through hoops every single time.
And Congressional elections are held every 2 years. Brush up on your civics.
Who said there aren’t more elections than the presidential? Quote it
To Janet,
I have one simple question for you:
Do you believe “An injury to one is an injury to all?” or do you think we are all in our own little worlds and there is no such thing as the collective will?
Nope, first reply as to when somebody in this thread ONCE said that there aren’t more elections than the presidential elections.
FIRST, you’re going to admit that you created a strawman and were dishonest in that representation. Then we can discuss things further.
Janet,
You’re mistaking me for John, I’m the user named “Mud,” no biggie.
Trying to figure out what you meant by “nope,” whether it meant “nope” you don’t believe “an injury to one is an injury to all,” or “nope” as in – you refuse to answer?
To Janet,
You said –
“I don’t envision some person moving every six months being engaged politically.”
This is classic circular reasoning, or begging of the question. You are using their chaotic life’s circumstances to blame them for their own inability to engage the system that could allow them to change their chaotic life’s circumstances.
It’d be like asking the following question:
Why is it that people whose lives are so chaotic, they move every six months, are not able to step outside all that chaos to go vote? What?
The sad fact that poor and powerless people are not engaged politically and civically, because of their life being chaotic already, is pretty damn convenient for the powerful shot-callers wouldn’t you say?
How the powerless have been reduced to only being able to react to systemic failure, instead of having any electoral opportunity to change the system, plays right into the hands of those who don’t want to give up any of their power within the system. How do you not see this?
True story; because no one Dunkin’ Donuts franchise would give Maria more than 20 hours a week, she did not qualify for employer based medical coverage. She had to use up most of her waking hours driving up and down the New Jersey Turnpike between three different Dunkin’ Donuts to string enough weekly hours together to qualify for The Affordable Care Act. Her schedule got so chaotic at times, that she had to carry a spare gas can in her car. Maria was so squeezed, she didn’t even have enough time to stop to fill up her car for gas. Police found her dead body in a Dunkin’ Donuts uniform at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. Apparently the spare gas can in her car had turned over at some point, and she didn’t notice the fumes (probably because she’d gotten used to a little bit of fumes coming from the can) and she died of asphyxiation while trying to catch a catnap between shifts at Dunkin’ Donuts.
I wonder if she was politically engaged? Most likely not, she couldn’t even put enough time together to fill up her damn car with gas.
With your hand waiving about voter suppression laws, essentially this is what you are saying:
“A person robbed of their ability to politically engage because of a life mired in instability from our corrupt system, we should make it harder for this poor and powerless person to politically engage.”
This is so obviously ridiculous and ignorant, if it weren’t so profoundly sad. That people like you have bought into the lies, disinformation and propaganda created by our corporate masters, is not a good sign.
By dismissing the onerous effect that voter suppression laws have on the poor and urban communities, you are tacitly approving of futures laws and limits on the right to vote in general. This means that one day ultimately, even your ability to cast a ballot, will be affected by a system of voter suppression too.
The rich and powerful have always used exploitative policies on the poor and powerless as a kind of beta test, where do you think they came up with all of the ideas in the PATRIOT Act? The state sanctioned violence workers, ie; law enforcement and the military industrial complex learned everything they knew, from what they did to protesters during the civil rights movement.
But you go ahead Janet, keep on hand wringing and acting like it won’t affect you one day too. History shows otherwise.
Who accused you of thinking or saying that “there aren’t more elections than the Presidential”? Quote it.
You can’t. But that’s not stopping you from rolling out that particular red herring and playing the victim, apparently.
But you did say that getting a new or updated ID once every 4 years isn’t– in your privileged little world– too much of a hassle. You’re missing the point: the GOP is gonna make sure it’s enough of a hassle so that they can discourage or turn away at the polls millions of otherwise eligible voters nationwide. And there’s no way you can say with a straight face “it’s for election security!” because, as amply and repeatedly demonstrated (and you’ve never even once hinted at any counter-argument to it, by the way), there’s absolutely no reason to worry enough about election security that you should be willing to risk disenfranchising millions.
John,
Does it REALLY matter that every citizen votes, when the system itself is already rigged? I find it highly remarkable, how we got sucked into focusing on a tiny part of the above interview, while completely ignoring the systemic rot Dorothy pointed out.
You wanna massively change the system wholesale, that’s your business. I don’t. So I’m not gonna argue for it or address it. You’re advocating it, you support it.
But in the meantime, while you’re railing against the system and most likely failing to attract people to your ultimate cause, I think it makes more sense to have more voter participation than less. And these GOP measures are most definitely aimed at having less.
If, in the end, you get your wish and scrap the whole system and replace it with some election utopia– then great. But that’s your fight and not mine. I’m just fighting to make the current system somewhat better (insofar as more participation in democracy is “better”) because more people will be able to participate.
Thanks for replying John. These comment sections can be a real headache can’t they? I left five comments, for one reply, figures.
I think you might be misunderstanding me brother. To me, it sounds like you want to make voter participation easier? And I’m trying to tell you – “Wait A Minute!”, “Hold up!” or “Time-Out!” , while asking “if the game is rigged from the outset, what difference does it make if everybody votes?”
No one can answer me this. I don’t know, maybe they don’t think the system is screwed up from the git-go? I guess if you think everything is just fine the way it is, then yeah, you are not going to see how fubar* everything really is, and will be so naive as to think just by adding more voters you will get a different outcome.
*F@¢&ed Up Beyond All Repair
I also asked you to explain your evidence, what’s your proof that adding more people to a rigged game will produce a “better” outcome?
In summary my points are:
1) Wait! Time-Out everybody, this game is rigged, and we avoided talking about the rigged game to argue about voter suppression.
2) Adding more people to the voter rolls is useless, if when they vote, nothing about the game at its core changes.
You ever heard the legend of Sisyphus? There’s a word out there that fits for what I think you are trying to do “Sisyphean.” A Sisyphean task is one that is pointless and unproductive. Flapping our gums about voter suppression is a ruse, a distraction, so people don’t examine the underlying situation.
You are so busy trying to argue for more voters, you haven’t even stopped to ask yourself the deeper question: (this question would be for you to ask yourself here) “How do I know that making voting easier will give us a plurality of parties?” “What proof do I have that adding more voters to a corrupt and fixed system will somehow make the system un-rigged?”
I’m trying to get you to ask yourself a question from a position of plausibility. You don’t seem to get this, also, why do you want to keep the system as is? Seems like you want to maintain the status quo, Dorothy just told us all how messed up it is, even if black people play-by-the-rules, but you don’t seem to care about that….why? Dude, it is hella obvious the status quo is rotten as hell. We are not going to achieve resolution by voting alone.
I get where you are coming from John (or at least i think i do), but I don’t think you are listing or paying attention brother. That we are still talking about certain classes and races being in control and on top, while the majority of us out here struggle, in 2021 is sad AF.
My contention is that we are focusing our energy on asking and arguing about the “wrong” questions.
You implied it when you said to brush up on my civics. You’re dishonest in your arguments
Janet,
If you could change one thing about the way things are in the U.S., what would it be?
Bullshit. You flat out speculated (based on nothing) that most blacks probably only vote every 4 years. Don’t come crying to me when your bullshit gets called out.
No, I simplified. You overcomplicated. Presidential elections bring about 54% turnout. Mid terms 37%. Off year 27%. You’re trying to argue that blacks have difficulty registering because they move. The truth is most people don’t vote in those elections. Of course, why let facts get in the way of your argument?
This interview pisses me off. Here we are in the 21st century still talking about the racial divide. It reminds me of the very first “Extra!” piece I ever read, way back in 1996, titled “The Martin Luther King You Don’t See On TV.”
Somebody needs to come along and write a 21st century People’s Manifesto, an influential set of ideas, that acts as a kind of antithesis to the “Powell Memo.” To me, the Powell Memo was like the offshore earthquake that brought on the tsunami of systemic change that cancelled all the gains of the Civil Rights and Labor Movements. It’s almost as if all of our crumbling bridges and potholed roads lead back to that one piece of ridiculous Corporatist propaganda.
Janet wrote: No, I simplified. You overcomplicated. Presidential elections bring about 54% turnout. Mid terms 37%. Off year 27%. You’re trying to argue that blacks have difficulty registering because they move. The truth is most people don’t vote in those elections. Of course, why let facts get in the way of your argument?
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OK, fine have it your way. But even assuming those turnout numbers are correct and stay accurate across race/class/location/other variables: Shouldn’t black people and the urban poor have the same opportunity to vote (without it being a massive hassle) that privileged lily-white suburbanites get? Particularly when the reason these hassles are being thrown up in the first place is to fight an imaginary election fraud monster?
Only 37% turn out for the midterms you say? Well, maybe that’s because we don’t make voting as easy and convenient as it should be.