Chicago Sun-Times, In Tax Season, Green Isn’t the Only Color That Matters:
Tax season is upon us, and Dorothy Brown has a message: Green is not the only color that matters.
She’s an Emory University professor who documents racism in American tax codes. Her book “The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans – and How We Can Fix it” is ground-breaking. True, Uncle Sam wants everyone’s money. But even in a system that many think is broken for myriad reasons, taxes can be punishing because of race.
Throughout the book, Brown lays out how those policies are an invisible mechanism for inequity. On the surface, most people don’t think taxes discriminate. Taxes are seen as color-blind, but they affect housing, jobs and higher education. All of which contribute to the racial wealth gap.
Brown went into tax law thinking she could escape race. As a Black woman, she quickly learned otherwise. Brown first came to this work when she did her parents’ taxes and understood that the concept of “horizontal equity” was incorrect. …
Her solutions are bold and creative, such as completely rethinking tax deductions. Without getting into the weeds of tax policies, Brown’s research accentuates another point: Race- neutral policies inadvertently make whiteness the default. Nowhere in the tax code is race mentioned by name. And so-called race-neutral policies permeate all sorts of aspects of our lives, including in Chicago.
Intentionality is key to reversing the harm of racism and understanding how certain policies only benefit one group of people or exclude another group. With the tax code, the people making the laws don’t understand day-to-day realities of Black Americans, or for that matter, non-white Americans. And that can be applied in just about any institution or system in this country.
