Everything is Racist: ‘View’ Plugs Academic Pushing to Reform Systemically Racist Taxes

May 19th, 2021 9:05 PM

The View wants you to believe that literally, everything boils down to racism in this country. Their guest, Wednesday was Dorothy A. Brown, a tax law professor at Emory University whose new race-baiting book “The Whiteness of Wealth,” claims the U.S. tax system, among many other sectors of society, was rigged against black Americans and must be changed. 

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg introduced Brown’s book as if it were Gospel truth:

Systemic racism has been a frequent hot topic with us. But an eye-opening new book examines just how many other systems are stacked against black Americans. So here with a wake-up call is tax law professor at Emory University and author of "The Whiteness of Wealth: How the tax system impoverishes black Americans and how we can fix it…

Only the three most liberal hosts, Joy Behar, Sunny Hostin, and Whoopi Goldberg asked their guest questions. Hostin asked Brown to explain what she “discovered” when becoming a tax law professor. Brown presented her central argument that everything boils down to racism against blacks (no other races were mentioned in the entire interview):

When black and white Americans engage in the same activities, whether it's getting married, whether it's getting a home, whether it's getting a job, tax policy subsidizes how white Americans engage in the activity, but penalizes how black Americans engage in the activity.

She explained how though the IRS doesn’t ask for race on your income taxes, yet she did “detective” work to find out ways the tax code put black Americans at a disadvantage, telling a story about how she once made the same income as her parents’ combined income, yet she wasn’t paying substantially more in taxes. But then she contradicted herself in her next sentence (Click "expand"):

So I was doing my parents' tax return. My income was equal to my parents' combined income. My mother was a nurse. My father was a plumbe and I worked on Wall Street. Under our tax system, my income being higher I should be paying a lot more taxes than them. I wasn't. I was paying more, but not a lot more….

It wasn't until I became a law professor and read an article that said how do you know there wasn't a race problem with taxes that I began to figure out why my parents were paying so much. The IRS doesn't publish statistics by race which forced me to become a kind of detective. What I discovered is my parents paid too much in taxes because they were married to each other. What our tax policy does, is give a tax cut to married couples with a single wage earner, but penalizes married couples with two wage earners like my parents. 

Yet, Brown failed to explain how this only pertained to black Americans. The rest of her examples relied on absurd generalizations and stereotypes to make her case that college education and home ownership were also biased against blacks because they had less wealth from an unfair tax system. Along the way, she made strange assumptions about whites, such as arguing white kids who to college have trust funds from their grandparents and don't take out student loans, and if black families move into white neighborhoods, whose homes retain their value more, their racist white neighbors will, of course, harass and call the police on them.

But Brown's stereotyping and circular logic didn't faze the enamored View hosts, who praised their guest’s “fantastic” and “astounding work.”

But Brown’s book wasn’t harmless, it’s a bold socialist call for redistributing wealth, by boiling everything down to race. She has sympathetic ears in the media, making the rounds just this week on PBS and MSNBC alone. She testified before Congress last week to try to make her case and is also petitioning the Biden administration to make race a factor in changing the tax code.

In fact, Whoopi Goldberg ended the interview helping Brown push this exact agenda:

"Knowing all of this, how do we start leveling the playing field and what can viewers at home do and -- you know it's a million questions. What can we start to do to level the playing field?" the co-host asked.

The professor suggested the first thing would "for the IRS to publish statistics by race." She went on to plead with the Biden administration to take her work into consideration for tax reform, and pleaded with whites to tell their stories about how they were born privileged to back up her arguments (Click "expand"):

So President Biden has issued a racial equity order but nothing is being done in treasury right now. So I'm optimistic about the president's racial equity order, but I'm pessimistic because treasury has done nothing. What can your viewers at home do? Well white Americans can tell their stories. They can say I was able to buy this house because my parents gave me a downpayment or I graduated from college debt free because my parents paid for it or my grandparents gave me-- had a trust fund. White Americans need to tell their story and dispel the myth that it's a meritocracy and all black Americans have to do is work harder. What black Americans can do in a system stacked against us is be intentional. Make a decision about where to buy a home knowing, if you buy in a white neighborhood, the financial investment is good, but you're going to have other problems. If you buy in the black neighborhood, not as good a financial investment, but you'll have other benefits. 

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Read transcript portions below:

The View

5/19/2021

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Systemic racism has been a frequent hot topic with us. But an eye-opening new book examines just how many other systems are stacked against black Americans. So here with a wake-up call is tax law professor at Emory University and author of "The Whiteness of Wealth: How the tax system impoverishes black Americans and how we can fix it," Please welcome, Professor Dorothy A. Brown. 

SUNNY HOSTIN: …Tell us what you discovered. 

BROWN: When black and white Americans engage in the same activities, whether its getting married, whether its getting a home, whether its getting a job, tax policy subsidizes how white Americans engage in the activity, but penalizes how black Americans engage in the activity. 

GOLDBERG: This has been going on for a very long time. This starts at the beginning when tax laws started because they didn't include black people. So they're not written with us in mind. Knowing all of this, how do we start leveling the playing field and what can viewers at home do and -- you know it's a million questions. What can we start to do to level the playing field? 

BROWN: Well the first thing we need is we need for the IRS to publish statistics by race. This book was only written because I became a detective and stuck with it for over two decades. This shouldn't be dependent on a single academic decides to lead this charge. 

So President Biden has issued a racial equity order but nothing is being done in treasury right now. So I'm optimistic about the president's racial equity order, but I'm pessimistic because treasury has done nothing. What can your viewers at home do? Well white Americans can tell their stories. They can say I was able to buy this house because my parents gave me a downpayment or I graduated from college debt free because my parents paid for it or my grandparents gave me-- had a trust fund. White Americans need to tell their story and dispel the myth that it's a meritocracy and all black Americans have to do is work harder. What black Americans can do in a system stacked against us is be intentional. Make a decision about where to buy a home knowing, if you buy in a white neighborhood, the financial investment is good, but you're going to have other problems. If you buy in the black neighborhood, not as good a financial investment, but you'll have other benefits.