Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stantovik the cover this week.
Speaker 1: When Dorothy Brown, a tax lawyer at Emory University, first
Speaker 1: discovered the U. S tax code, she assumed it was
Speaker 1: a universe governed by intricate rules where race wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: in tax law. She thought the only color that mattered
Speaker 1: was green. Well, in the years since, she has come
Speaker 1: to believe the opposite, that while U. S tax laws
Speaker 1: may appear to be color blind, they still discriminate against
Speaker 1: Black Americans. In her forthcoming book, The Whiteness of Wealth,
Speaker 1: Brown argues that generations of lawmakers have optimized the system
Speaker 1: for white people, with the result that, in the US
Speaker 1: is supposedly progressive, in race neutral tax code, black people
Speaker 1: end up paying more than white people with the same incomes.
Speaker 1: So does all this mean the writers of these tax
Speaker 1: laws were racist? The question of intent is really irrelevant.
Speaker 1: According to Brown, It's hurting Black Americans, whether Congress meant
Speaker 1: it to or not. That's what she says. Tax code
Speaker 1: so white. Dorothy Brown has spent her career documenting racism
Speaker 1: in a tax system that's supposedly color blind. By Ben Steverman.
Speaker 1: Growing up in the Bronx during the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: Dorothy Brown couldn't escape racism. It was all around her father, James,
Speaker 1: a plumber, being barred from joining the local union, her
Speaker 1: mother Dottie, having to battle prejudice teachers, including one who
Speaker 1: marked down Dorothy's sister's grades so the precocious child wouldn't
Speaker 1: upstage her white classmates. Or the white cop beating a
Speaker 1: handcuffed black man in the back seat of a cruiser,
Speaker 1: something she once observed while waiting to cross the street
Speaker 1: as a teenager. Brown thought she'd found a way out,
Speaker 1: a loophole in American racism. Taking an accounting class, the
Speaker 1: self described math geek discovered the U. S. Tax code,
Speaker 1: a universe governed by intricate rules where race wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: in tax law. She thought the only color that mattered
Speaker 1: was green. The assumption carried her through an early career
Speaker 1: as a tax attorney, an investment banker, and then a
Speaker 1: political appointee and President George H. W. Bush's administration. After that, though,
Speaker 1: Brown spent a quarter century trying to prove the opposite,
Speaker 1: that although tax laws may appear to be color blind,
Speaker 1: they still discriminate against Black Americans. Now the ASA Griggs Scandler,
Speaker 1: Professor of Law at Emory University. Brown is preparing to
Speaker 1: publish a book that's the culmination of years of research,
Speaker 1: titled The Whiteness of Wealth, How the Tax System impoverishes
Speaker 1: Black Americans and How We can fix It. It arrives
Speaker 1: at an opportune time. After decades during which the sixty
Speaker 1: one year old Brown, says mainstream tax and policy experts
Speaker 1: either dismissed, attacked, or ignored her. Her ideas appeared to
Speaker 1: be finding an audience. People are starting to pay more
Speaker 1: attention to her work and what she's been telling us
Speaker 1: for a while, says Chia ching Huang, executive director of
Speaker 1: New York University's Tax Law Center. Last summer, after the
Speaker 1: killing of George Floyd ignited protests around the country, Browne
Speaker 1: got more calls from reporters than she had received in
Speaker 1: her entire career. By the time President Biden promised on
Speaker 1: his first day in office to identify and dismantle systemic
Speaker 1: racism perpetuated by all federal departments, staffers on Capitol Hill
Speaker 1: were already consulting Brown about the Internal Revenue Services impact
Speaker 1: on racial disparities. Suddenly, people wanted to talk about race
Speaker 1: and tax She says, with the whiteness of wealth, Brown
Speaker 1: has turned a notoriously boring topic into a surprisingly accessible
Speaker 1: and lively two hundred and eighty eight page book, relying
Speaker 1: on examples from real families, including her own, to guide
Speaker 1: readers through the intricacies of a tax code provisioned for
Speaker 1: just about every milestone in a person's life education, marriage,
Speaker 1: home ownership, child bearing, death, and inheritance. Generations of lawmakers
Speaker 1: have optimized the system for white people, she argues, with
Speaker 1: the result that in the US is supposedly progressive and
Speaker 1: race neutral tax code, black people end up paying more
Speaker 1: are than white people with the same incomes. The challenge
Speaker 1: for Brown's research has been all the greater because the
Speaker 1: I r S doesn't take race into account when it
Speaker 1: analyzes its giant trove of tax data, so she had
Speaker 1: to laboriously stitch together information from dozens of other sources
Speaker 1: to prove her book's thesis. The best evidence that the
Speaker 1: system is unfair to black people is the sheer size
Speaker 1: and persistence of the racial wealth gap. The median white
Speaker 1: family has a net worth eight times the typical black
Speaker 1: family's wealth, according to Federal Reserve figures that's the same
Speaker 1: size gap as in despite higher incomes, educational gains, and
Speaker 1: extraordinary progress by individual black people, including to the highest
Speaker 1: office in the land. The book also serves as something
Speaker 1: of a primer on how wealth works in America, showing
Speaker 1: how the rich pass assets to their children and why
Speaker 1: those starting from the bottom face such a difficult climb.
Speaker 1: Brown devotes her final chapter to advice for black readers
Speaker 1: try ring to navigate a system that disadvantages them at
Speaker 1: every turn. Black Americans need to be defensive players, she writes,
Speaker 1: choosing strategies in their educations, careers, and family lives that
Speaker 1: compensate for oppressive practices and policies. She also pushes for
Speaker 1: major tax changes to erase biases toward whites and to
Speaker 1: assist all people, especially black ones, who are trying to
Speaker 1: build wealth. Never again should politicians discuss tax reform without
Speaker 1: considering race, she says, I literally want to change how
Speaker 1: America talks about tax policy. One afternoon in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: Brown pulled out an essay she'd been looking forward to
Speaker 1: reading by her friend and mentor, Jerome Culp, the first
Speaker 1: professor of color to receive tenure at Duke university's law school.
Speaker 1: She'd been feeling isolated at her first academic job with
Speaker 1: white colleagues, who, she says, seemed clueless about race at best.
Speaker 1: And here was Culp arguing that race should no longer
Speaker 1: be over looked in important areas of the law. There
Speaker 1: may be an income tax problem that would benefit from
Speaker 1: being viewed in a black perspective, he wrote, by way
Speaker 1: of example. But until you look, how will anyone know?
Speaker 1: Brown called Culpe and promised to try. It took several
Speaker 1: years for her to publish her first research on the question,
Speaker 1: focusing on the taxation of married couples. Black Americans are
Speaker 1: more likely to be single, and if they're married, it's
Speaker 1: more likely both spouses will be working. These considerations wouldn't
Speaker 1: have mattered when the income tax made its debut in
Speaker 1: because all earners were treated the same, regardless of marital status.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen thirty, a rich white shipbuilder named Henry
Speaker 1: Seaborne persuaded the U. S. Supreme Court to lower his
Speaker 1: tax bill by imputing half his income to his wife.
Speaker 1: Congress eventually went along, and ever since, couples with only
Speaker 1: one high earner have paid less. Brown realized this policy
Speaker 1: had meant higher tax bills for her parents. The tax
Speaker 1: code is a treats a plumber and a nurse who
Speaker 1: are paying for childcare and commuting expenses with after tax
Speaker 1: dollars the same or worse than it does a banker
Speaker 1: earning their combined salaries whose spouse stays home with the kids.
Speaker 1: In the next twenty years, Brown went on to systematically
Speaker 1: catalog other ways in which when black families like her
Speaker 1: own tried to hoist themselves up the economic scale, the
Speaker 1: u S tax system pulled them down. Her colleagues, who
Speaker 1: were overwhelmingly white, expressed skepticism. However, Dorothy, everybody knows your
Speaker 1: work is irrelevant because Black people are poor and don't
Speaker 1: pay taxes, she says, one professor told her rudely, laying
Speaker 1: bare an assumption she's confronted countless times. Four fifths of
Speaker 1: black households don't fall below the poverty line. Brown's early
Speaker 1: published work cost her lots of professional grief, recalls her
Speaker 1: friend Michelle Dickerson, a law professor at the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: At Austin, people thought you were just trying to be controversial,
Speaker 1: that you're just making stuff up. Those on the left
Speaker 1: asked if this was about class, not race, Conservatives posed
Speaker 1: a different question, wouldn't these disparities disappear if black taxpayers
Speaker 1: just acted more like white ones. Brown's answer to both
Speaker 1: is that your class may change, but your race can't,
Speaker 1: no matter how differently you behave. Blacks graduate from college
Speaker 1: with more debt, do not get jobs as easily as whites,
Speaker 1: are not paid the same wages as they're equally qualified.
Speaker 1: White peers are steered toward lower paying jobs and have
Speaker 1: an unemployment rate twice that of whites, yet are more
Speaker 1: likely to provide financial support for extended family, she writes
Speaker 1: in her forthcoming book. These present day disparities are piled
Speaker 1: on top of a shameful history of Black Americans being
Speaker 1: purposely excluded from landmark federal legislation and programs for whites.
Speaker 1: There were government interventions that created a middle class, says
Speaker 1: New School economics professor Derrick Hamilton's, an adviser to Senator
Speaker 1: Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, who considers Brown on a mentor.
Speaker 1: He points to the Homestead Act in the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: and much of the New Deal and the g I
Speaker 1: Bill in when blacks were able to amass pockets of
Speaker 1: wealth it's been vulnerable to confiscation, theft, and terror. He adds,
Speaker 1: citing the devastation wrought in black neighborhoods by predatory subprime
Speaker 1: lenders as an example. Brown argues that tax policy adds
Speaker 1: insult to injury by magnifying the financial toll of blackness.
Speaker 1: The tax treatment of housing is a textbook case. Interest
Speaker 1: paid on mortgages is deductible, but there's no comparable perk
Speaker 1: for renters who are disproportionately black. Also, white homeowners tend
Speaker 1: to pocket gains upon resale, which are largely tax free.
Speaker 1: In contrast, black homeowners are very likely to lose money
Speaker 1: on their investment because homes don't usually appreciate much in
Speaker 1: diverse neighborhoods that are shunned by white buyers, and losses
Speaker 1: aren't tax deductible or consider tax incentives. The federal government
Speaker 1: offers on four oh one case and other tie to
Speaker 1: retirement savings plans, which add up to more than a
Speaker 1: quarter trillion dollars per year. According to the Tax Policy Center,
Speaker 1: only about half of US workers have a retirement account,
Speaker 1: and they're disproportionately white. Meanwhile, black people are far more
Speaker 1: likely to have jobs that fail to provide for a
Speaker 1: one case and other corporate benefits such as healthcare and
Speaker 1: flexible spending accounts that are heavily subsidized by the tax code.
Speaker 1: These discrepancies are nothing new. Brown's father, locked out of
Speaker 1: the plumbing union for the first twenty years of his career,
Speaker 1: was employed by a small private company that offered no
Speaker 1: retirement or healthcare plan. Now, though the gap between different
Speaker 1: classes of workers might be widening with the rise of
Speaker 1: the gig economy incorporations outsourcing more worked contractors, Brown is
Speaker 1: wary of the trend, seeing it as a new form
Speaker 1: of occupational segregation that's ensnaring a disproportionate number of black workers.
Speaker 1: Other factors prevent Black Americans from saving and taking full
Speaker 1: advantage of perks in the tax code to white parents
Speaker 1: and checks to their children for college tuition or the
Speaker 1: down payment for their first home. Money in black families
Speaker 1: tends to move in the other direction, meaning successful black
Speaker 1: professionals are far more likely to support parents or other
Speaker 1: family members. Problems such as these are so pervasive and
Speaker 1: stubborn that they're invulnerable to magic bullets proposed by both
Speaker 1: the left and the right. Brown says policies geared towards
Speaker 1: boosting black homeownership, for example, could channel even more Black
Speaker 1: savings into investments that ultimately prove unprofitable. Education, so often
Speaker 1: floated as the key to economic advancement, can indeed boost earnings,
Speaker 1: but it also often saddles graduates with debt. According to
Speaker 1: Federal Reserve data from black non Hispanic households had student
Speaker 1: loans compared with twenty for white non Hispanic households. Here, too,
Speaker 1: tax policy adds insult to injury. While homeowners can usually
Speaker 1: deduct all their more gug interest, student loan holders can
Speaker 1: only deduct dollars or zero if their income exceeds eighty
Speaker 1: five dollars a year. Brown is often asked, does all
Speaker 1: this mean the writers of these tax laws were racist?
Speaker 1: The question of intent is really irrelevant, She says, it's
Speaker 1: hurting Black Americans, whether Congress meant to or not. For
Speaker 1: all that Brown knows of racism, the lived and the learned,
Speaker 1: she can still find herself shocked by the damage it inflicts.
Speaker 1: One summer afternoon, she was in her three bedroom dream
Speaker 1: house on Martha's Vineyard, the island get away from many
Speaker 1: black professionals and celebrities. She was working toward her other dream,
Speaker 1: the book about the tax code she'd been contemplating for
Speaker 1: a decade, when she came across a startling statistic, six
Speaker 1: of Black Americans who start college never finish it. After
Speaker 1: seeing the number, she shut her laptop, went to the
Speaker 1: beach and stared at the ocean for a couple hours.
Speaker 1: Something about all those dreams denied and the contrast with
Speaker 1: her own experience hit her hard. This is more messed
Speaker 1: up than I even knew, and I can't take it,
Speaker 1: she thought. She almost gave up on the project. When
Speaker 1: Browne was growing up, racism was a constant. Given how
Speaker 1: banks treated black buyers, Purchasing a home would have been
Speaker 1: impossible for her family if her father hadn't gotten help
Speaker 1: from his white boss, and the children's educational advancement might
Speaker 1: have been thwarted had James and Dotty repeatedly blocked on
Speaker 1: their own career paths not been determined to give their
Speaker 1: two daughters a better future. For a while, Dorothy and
Speaker 1: her sister attended a racially diverse elementary school, where they excelled,
Speaker 1: But after Dotty learned from another parent that Dorothy's sister
Speaker 1: wasn't being graded fairly, she lied about their address and
Speaker 1: had them transferred to another school, where they found more
Speaker 1: supportive teachers. Something my mother taught us was you're no
Speaker 1: better than anyone else, and no one else is better
Speaker 1: than you. Brown says, I didn't feel racism would limit me.
Speaker 1: I knew I'd have to deal with it, but I
Speaker 1: didn't think it was hopeless. Still, she abandoned her original
Speaker 1: plan to be a civil rights attorney like her hero,
Speaker 1: Their Good Marshal. She didn't want racism to be the
Speaker 1: focus of her professional life too. It's too personal, it's
Speaker 1: too hurtful. It's too painful to hear these stories. I
Speaker 1: have enough stories. A stroke of luck helped her avoid
Speaker 1: the student debt that burdens many other black professionals. Her father,
Speaker 1: who was eventually hired as a union plumber by the
Speaker 1: New York City Housing Authority, briefly lost that job during
Speaker 1: the city's mid seventies fiscal crisis. The layoff helped Brown,
Speaker 1: who graduated from high school at sixteen, qualify for a
Speaker 1: full scholarship to Fordham University, which she could attend while
Speaker 1: living at home. A law degree from Georgetown University and
Speaker 1: a degree in tax law from n y U followed
Speaker 1: a federal clerkship led to a job at a boutique
Speaker 1: law firm that handled municipal bonds. Then she was hired
Speaker 1: away by a client, the investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert.
Speaker 1: The famously cutthroat and aggressive firm made huge profits on
Speaker 1: the junk bond boom, and it would later collapse in
Speaker 1: scandal after the conviction of executive Michael Milkin. Brown recalls
Speaker 1: that a managing partner had this piece of advice, Dorothy,
Speaker 1: if you want loyalty by a dog. Brown moved to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. In nineteen eighty nine to work at the
Speaker 1: U s Department of Housing and Urban Development as a
Speaker 1: political appointee in the first Bush administration. From the presidential race,
Speaker 1: she had concluded that neither party was good on race.
Speaker 1: She says she gravitated to the Republican Party because it
Speaker 1: called for shrinking the role of government, and she believed
Speaker 1: the government was one of the more racist actors out there.
Speaker 1: Her dalliance with the GOP carried on for years before
Speaker 1: she switched parties to support Barack Obama's election in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Brown's first academic job was at George
Speaker 1: Mason University's right leaning law school, now named for the
Speaker 1: late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Working on predominantly white campuses,
Speaker 1: Brown says she has dealt with disparaging comments from faculty,
Speaker 1: disrespectful students, and other instances where she felt treated differently
Speaker 1: because of her race. In two thousand and one, when
Speaker 1: she was up for a job at Washington and Lee University,
Speaker 1: a Virginia institution named for a Confederate general, she presented
Speaker 1: her work and was interrupted so many times that faculty
Speaker 1: members later apologized for their colleagues rudeness. Dorothy, you were mugged,
Speaker 1: but you managed to hang onto your purse, said one
Speaker 1: friend who was there. In past jobs, Brown says the
Speaker 1: profit motive, the fact that she could help close a
Speaker 1: deal or untangle attacks quandry had seemed to moderate her
Speaker 1: coworkers racial biases. Academia felt different, but she couldn't always
Speaker 1: be sure when the friction had something to do with
Speaker 1: her race, and if it did, when to say something,
Speaker 1: and when to bite her tongue. Brown calls this racism triage,
Speaker 1: where you reserve your energies only for the worst incidents.
Speaker 1: To cope, she relied on a small network of black
Speaker 1: women law professors at other schools, whom she'd call asking
Speaker 1: is this me? Or is this messed up? When incidents occurred,
Speaker 1: Brown pushed back, using the political and strategic savvy she'd
Speaker 1: learned in earlier jobs. It would take two rounds of
Speaker 1: voting by the Washington and Lee faculty, but she eventually
Speaker 1: got the job there, and she thrived those opposed to
Speaker 1: her out of themselves early on. She says, I didn't
Speaker 1: ever have to worry about them again. In two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Brown jumped to Emory University in Atlanta, a more prestigious
Speaker 1: school that also had a complicated history on race. Tenure
Speaker 1: protection allowed her to push forcefully for more diversity in
Speaker 1: the law school. I'm always the woman from the South Bronx,
Speaker 1: she says. I am very direct. I don't put up
Speaker 1: with a lot. I don't really care if you don't
Speaker 1: like the tone. In twenty thirteen, Brown was recruited for
Speaker 1: a powerful job in Emery's administratation, and, though reluctant to
Speaker 1: give up her research and teaching, she served for three
Speaker 1: stressful years. In the wake of protests from students demanding,
Speaker 1: among other things, more faculty of color. She ran a
Speaker 1: fund to hire diverse faculty and set up initiatives to
Speaker 1: mentor them. Colleagues say they recognize that Brown's outspokenness can
Speaker 1: be balanced by a measured approach to important and difficult work.
Speaker 1: She may seem impatient, but she also believes in taking
Speaker 1: it one step at a time, says Claire Stirk, who
Speaker 1: recently stepped down as Emory's president. By the end, she
Speaker 1: can make an argument that becomes very hard for people
Speaker 1: to not accept. Biden's election could allow Brown to take
Speaker 1: her research to a new level. Just hours after being
Speaker 1: sworn in on January, the President signed an executive order
Speaker 1: creating a cross agency group with a mandate to address
Speaker 1: systemic racism in the U. S. Government. Their duties will
Speaker 1: include gathering data to track the effects of pol sees
Speaker 1: on disadvantaged groups. There's no reason this should remain in
Speaker 1: the dark, ages, says Brown. Strict rules should be put
Speaker 1: in place to make sure the data isn't misused. She
Speaker 1: adds she's also clear to that end that she isn't
Speaker 1: advocating for the I R S to add a race
Speaker 1: checkbox to the ten forty form. There are workarounds, such
Speaker 1: as using surveys and matching anonymized data sets with the
Speaker 1: right data and the right priorities, says Brown, The U.
Speaker 1: S could do a better job of using its tax
Speaker 1: code to help close the racial wealth gap. Other policymakers
Speaker 1: are thinking along the same lines. You've got this tool
Speaker 1: that is potentially powerful for reducing inequality, including racial disparities,
Speaker 1: says In y Ushang. One of the questions she's asking
Speaker 1: is why isn't it doing more. Brown's own reform plan
Speaker 1: would strip the tax code of exemptions and deductions that
Speaker 1: steer advantages to white Americans. All income should be taxable,
Speaker 1: she says, no more exclusions for gifts inheritances or property sales.
Speaker 1: Proceeds from investments should be taxed at the same rate
Speaker 1: as wage income, and marital status shouldn't affect taxes. There's
Speaker 1: only one deduction that she would add to the code,
Speaker 1: a living allowance deduction that would prevent or cut taxes
Speaker 1: on low earners. By requiring everyone else to pay progressive
Speaker 1: tax rates on all their sources of income. The U
Speaker 1: S could afford to lower rates and get the same revenue.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court would probably strike down any race based
Speaker 1: tax credit introduced as a form of reparation to descendants
Speaker 1: of slaves, Brown says, so her next best choice is
Speaker 1: an annual tax credit for taxpayers whose wealth is below
Speaker 1: the US median. The credit would help all poorer Americans
Speaker 1: trying to build wealth in a country where it's gotten
Speaker 1: more difficult to move up the economic ladder on earnings
Speaker 1: from work alone, But because the typical black family has
Speaker 1: a net worth of twenty four thousand dollars compared to
Speaker 1: a median wealth of one two thousand dollars for all Americans,
Speaker 1: it would disproportionately aid Black Americans. None of Browne's favored
Speaker 1: remedies look likely to become law in a Congress where
Speaker 1: Democrats barely have a majority, but after watching attitudes toward
Speaker 1: racial justice shift last year, she's optimistic. We are well
Speaker 1: positioned to start making the kinds of demands that the
Speaker 1: wealthiest white Americans have made for decades, she says. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, Brown's new book has plenty of practical pointers
Speaker 1: for Black Americans. Take advantage of a four oh one
Speaker 1: k if you have one, If you'd rather buy a
Speaker 1: home in a diverse neighborhood, which is understandable, Try not
Speaker 1: to sink your entire nest egg into that purchase investing
Speaker 1: in stocks is likely to provide a better return despite
Speaker 1: a racist financial system that hasn't seen Black Americans as
Speaker 1: potential customers. Finally, don't despair or blame yourself for failing
Speaker 1: to get further along financially. The reality of how ordinary
Speaker 1: white Americans build wealth is hidden, leaving black families bewildered
Speaker 1: about their inability to achieve the financial security of their
Speaker 1: white peers. She writes why wealth snowballs over a lifetime.
Speaker 1: A tuition payment by dad, a job at the family business,
Speaker 1: a small inheritance from Grandma, and soon even apparently middle
Speaker 1: class young adults have amassed enough that they're able to
Speaker 1: return the favor to their children as they age. This
Speaker 1: system has been humming along for centuries. As Brown puts it,
Speaker 1: whiteness itself and the legacy of advantages that comes with
Speaker 1: it is the magnet that attracts wealth. And that's this
Speaker 1: week's cover story. It's an especial edition of Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week magazine devoted to equality, looking at it from all
Speaker 1: different angles. Find more in the current issue, which is
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