In Funding White Supremacy, Robert B. Williams shows how current federal policies have perpetuated and expanded the racial wealth gap in the United States. Through the lens of stratification economics, Williams explores how twelve tax expenditures buried in the federal tax code shower over $1 trillion annually to mostly wealthy, white households, while federal estate and gift taxes have been systematically dismantled. The book reveals how these policies originated in a period of overt racial oppression and have evolved in the modern, post-Civil Rights era, not only contributing to the expanding racial wealth gaps over the last fifty years but how they have also fostered the growth of white wealth at the expense of Black wealth. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how federal policies contribute to the vast and expanding racial wealth gap at the core of the American system of white supremacy.
Robert B. Williams is the Stedman Professor of Economics at Guilford College. He is the author of The Privileges of Wealth: Rising Inequality and the Growing Racial Divide (2016).
1. Recognizing the Wealth – Race Nexus; 2. Understanding How Households Get Ahead; 3. Looking Back; 4. Revealing Tax Expenditures; 5. Inspecting the Leaky Bucket; 6. Exploring Past Roots; 7. Finding the Leaks; 8. Assessing the Higher Education Ladder; 9. Ending Malign Neglect.
'This brilliant book comes about precisely when its title is likely to invite bans and derision from the ruling elites in the United States. The unimpeachable documentation and careful analysis of the origins and roots of racist federal and state tax policies will be eye-openers for serious scholars examining wealth inequality.' Samuel Myers, Jr., Professor, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota