A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy
“Important
reading for those who want to understand how inequality is built into
the bedrock of American society, and what a more equitable future might
look like.”—Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist
Dorothy
A. Brown became a tax lawyer to get away from race. As a young black
girl growing up in the South Bronx, she’d seen how racism limited the
lives of her family and neighbors. Her law school classes offered a
refreshing contrast: Tax law was about numbers, and the only color that
mattered was green. But when Brown sat down to prepare tax returns for
her parents, she found something strange: James and Dottie Brown, a
plumber and a nurse, seemed to be paying an unusually high percentage of
their income in taxes. When Brown became a law professor, she set out
to understand why.
In The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown draws
on decades of cross-disciplinary research to show that tax law isn’t as
color-blind as she’d once believed. She takes us into her adopted city
of Atlanta, introducing us to families across the economic spectrum
whose stories demonstrate how American tax law rewards the preferences
and practices of white people while pushing black people further behind.
From attending college to getting married to buying a home, black
Americans find themselves at a financial disadvantage compared to their
white peers. The results are an ever-increasing wealth gap and more
black families shut out of the American dream.
Solving the
problem will require a wholesale rethinking of America’s tax code. But
it will also require both black and white Americans to make different
choices. This urgent, actionable book points the way forward.
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