How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans--and How We Can Fix It
by Dorothy A. Brown
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2021
288 pages
Genre: History, Current Affairs and Religion
Publication Information
A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy.
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.
"[A]n illuminating exploration of how U.S. tax policies exacerbate the Black-white wealth gap...Brown enriches her detailed data analysis with personal anecdotes and brisk history lessons. Policymakers will benefit from this expert look at a rarely discussed, yet seemingly fixable, piece of the racial inequality puzzle." - Publishers Weekly
"An eye-opening look at race-based economic biases, with reasonable steps to undo them." - Kirkus Reviews
"The inequities of the American tax system are laid bare for all to see, along with the ongoing negative effect on Black income and wealth. Readers interested in racial, social justice, and financial issues will not want to miss this eye-opening title." - Library Journal
"In this urgent account, Dorothy Brown incisively unpacks how racism is embedded in our nation's tax system, enhancing White wealth at the expense of Black Americans. The Whiteness of Wealth is 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 and Stamped from the Beginning
"This enlightening book is a vital companion to The New Jim Crow, The Color of Wealth, and Evicted, for how it reimagines everything you thought you knew about U.S. social policy." - Tressie McMillan Cottom, MacArthur Fellow and author of Thick: And Other Essays
"This book is a tour de force. With clarity and conviction, Dorothy Brown reveals how U.S. tax policy sustains and deepens the wealth gap between black and white Americans. As I read The Whiteness of Wealth, I found myself shaking my head as I eagerly turned the pages and shouting 'damn' with each revelation. If we are finally to address the long history of racism in this country, we must grapple with the arguments of Brown's powerful book. This is a MUST read for these troubling times." - Eddie S. Glaude Jr., New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again and Democracy in Black
This information about The Whiteness of Wealth was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Dorothy A. Brown is an Asa Griggs Candler Professor at Emory University School of Law. A graduate of Fordham University and Georgetown Law, she received her LLM in Taxation from New York University. A nationally recognized scholar in the areas of race, class, and tax policy, she has published dozens of articles, essays, and book chapters on the topic. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR, and her opinion pieces have been published in CNN Opinion, Forbes, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Born and raised in the South Bronx in New York City, Dorothy Brown currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.
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