Why Is Wealth White?

IF 0.4 4区历史学 Q1 HISTORY

SOUTHERN CULTURES Pub Date : 2022-12-01 DOI:10.1353/scu.2022.0047

J. Ott

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:Racial wealth inequality is no accident of history. Rather, it is the intended result of the southern Democrats in Congress who controlled federal tax policy throughout most of the twentieth century. Beginning in the 1930s, champions of white supremacy, such as Senator Pat Harrison (D-MI), Senator Walter George (D-GA), and Senator Harry F. Byrd, Sr. (D-VA), turned to an ostensibly race-neutral provision of the US income tax code—the preferential treatment of gains from investment—to uphold their (im)moral economy of “whites-only” wealth. After 1965, these segregationists’ successors—particularly Senator Russell B. Long (D-LA) and Senator Lloyd Bentsen (D-TX)—furtively rebuilt and shored up the structure of racial inequality with additional tax breaks (called “tax expenditures”) for investors. Our income tax system embodies—and immortalizes—a Jim Crow–era moral economy of “whites-only” wealth. Thanks to pro-investment tax expenditures, the racial wealth gap has widened over the last four decades as the very richest American households—the white 1 percent—compounded their wealth, at the expense of everyone else.

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为什么财富是白色的?

摘要：种族财富不平等并非历史偶然。相反，这是国会中南方民主党人的预期结果，他们在20世纪的大部分时间里控制着联邦税收政策。从20世纪30年代开始，白人至上主义的拥护者，如参议员Pat Harrison（密歇根州民主党）、参议员Walter George（佐治亚州民主党）和参议员Harry F.Byrd，Sr.（弗吉尼亚州民主党），转向了美国所得税法中表面上与种族无关的条款——对投资收益的优惠待遇——以维护他们“仅限白人”财富的道德经济。1965年后，这些种族隔离主义者的继任者，特别是参议员拉塞尔·B·朗（洛杉矶民主党）和参议员劳埃德·本特森（德克萨斯州民主党），通过为投资者提供额外的税收减免（称为“税收支出”），暗中重建和支撑了种族不平等的结构。我们的所得税制度体现了吉姆·克劳时代“仅限白人”财富的道德经济，并使其永垂不朽。由于支持投资的税收支出，种族财富差距在过去四十年中扩大了，因为最富有的美国家庭——1%的白人——以牺牲其他人的利益为代价，增加了他们的财富。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

SOUTHERN CULTURES HISTORY-

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： In the foreword to the first issue of the The Southern Literary Journal, published in November 1968, founding editors Louis D. Rubin, Jr. and C. Hugh Holman outlined the journal"s objectives: "To study the significant body of southern writing, to try to understand its relationship to the South, to attempt through it to understand an interesting and often vexing region of the American Union, and to do this, as far as possible, with good humor, critical tact, and objectivity--these are the perhaps impossible goals to which The Southern Literary Journal is committed." Since then The Southern Literary Journal has published hundreds of essays by scholars of southern literature examining the works of southern writers and the ongoing development of southern culture.

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