There is a unique emotional and financial burden for African Americans around tax day. If you are not white, married, a man, a homeowner, and/or a wealthy corporate executive, the tax system has historically been a cinder block on your finances. This is a topic examined in great detail in Emory University law professor Dorothy A. Brown’s recent book, The Whiteness of Wealth. Brown writes that U.S. tax policy has hampered, and at times erased, African Americans’ ability to generate wealth, even when accounting for the various forms of tax reform passed over the years. It’s not that tax policy is written with explicit discriminatory dimensions, but rather it has been drafted in ways that structurally advantage white households, especially those who live outside of central urban neighborhoods.
“Once I looked at the history of taxation in America, it became clear why so many tax policies have drastically different impacts on Black and white families,” Brown writes in the book. “They were created during a time when Black families paid into the system without having the same legal rights to live, work, marry, vote, or receive an education as their white peers.”
