Be Just Like…Us? All the Ways This Does Not Work.

The upshot of so many remedies to the racial wealth gap comes down to this: Blacks should be like whites. Go to college, get a good job, work hard, get married, buy a home, pass down an inheritance. These things have secured the financial stability of so many white people, including me and my family.

Dorothy Brown, in The Whiteness of Wealth asks, "If Blacks replicated white behavior, would the outcome be the same?". Then in engaging and accessible language (we're talking tax law here), she lays out the many and surprising ways why the answer is resoundingly NO.

Some specifics that woke me up:

• Earnings from the stock market are taxed at a lower rate than earnings from wages. Think about who invests in the market versus who works for wages.

• White home ownership leads to astounding appreciation while Black homeownership leads to reduced property values.

• Blacks tend to spend accumulated wealth on the care of family members or college; whites pass their property to younger generations tax-free.

I continue to look around me and see the ways Dorothy Brown's conclusion makes sense: "The benefit comes from being white, not just acting white."

April 2022 Back to Blog Home

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