#17 - The “Black Tax”: A Grand Theft of Historic Proportions

[00:00:00] Gotta pay the tab. You gotta pay the tab! Music Hi, I'm Tony Tolbert. And I'm Adam Radinsky. Welcome to Pay the Tab, where we make the case for reparations, one story at a time. Each episode, we expose the story of racial injustice.

[00:00:25] Then we explore creative ways to make it right. It's been long enough, America. It's time to pay the tab. Music So, Adam, what's up with these stories we've been told about black people and taxes?

[00:00:42] You know, there's all kinds of stuff out there in the air about, you know, the government spends just boatloads of money to take care of black people. We don't pull our weight. We don't pay our fair share. You know, you hear these racist tropes of so-called welfare queens,

[00:01:01] freeloaders like we're all just looking for a handout living off the government. Yep, keep going. We can keep going, right? And that's the BS that's put out there, right? Yeah, I mean, throughout not just our lifetimes, right, but going all the way back. Way back.

[00:01:13] This stuff is just like we are so indoctrinated, right, to believe this shit. If you just see news reports and watch TV and movies and just anything in our culture, you're going to be hit with this and it's going to get into your blood, right?

[00:01:26] And without questioning it. Yeah, I mean, we are bombarded with these false myths and it just gets into our system and come to find out that this stuff is all 100% opposite of the truth.

[00:01:41] That when it comes to taxes, in fact, black Americans have paid way more than their fair share of taxes and white Americans have paid way less than our fair share while getting more of the services that taxes pay for. Go figure, right? I mean, who knew?

[00:01:57] And meanwhile, the folks at the very top, the 1%, right, and their companies with their tax loopholes, their fancy-dancy lawyers, and the government in their pocket have shafted all of us. Absolutely, just plundered from all of us.

[00:02:17] Absolutely, and for sure. And you talk about welfare queens. They're the real welfare queens. Yes. Right? The rich, living off of us, looting billions of our money, putting it in their pockets.

[00:02:30] Black America has gotten and continues to get the short end of the stick in terms of schools, public services, infrastructure, parks, access to clean air, and a bunch of other benefits. Right, like everything that local tax dollars pay for. They're supposed to pay for.

[00:02:46] So there's a new book out that goes into all this stuff and really lays it out in amazing fashion. It's called The Black Tax, and it's by historian Andrew Karl. And this book shows us how the local property tax system, which none of us really know much about,

[00:03:01] At all. has robbed black people out of hundreds of billions of dollars. Billions of dollars. Yeah, and stolen most of the land that was owned by black Americans throughout the 20th century. I mean, this is some shocking shit that I think we had no idea about. Right?

[00:03:17] Really didn't have any idea. And certainly not to the extent, but no, didn't know it was like this. The book covers three main ways that the tax system has been used or abused to rob black people. Right? The first scam was just straight overtaxing. Plain and simple. Right?

[00:03:34] Going back to the reconstruction. Right? So going back to the 1860s. So black neighborhoods have been assessed that way over their value. Meaning black people had to pay taxes way more than what they should have been paid.

[00:03:45] Right, like they're saying your house is worth this amount for tax purposes. For tax purposes, even though in reality it was worth less. Right, thanks to the racist real estate system. Exactly. And homes in white neighborhoods were assessed at way below their actual value.

[00:04:01] The complete opposite of what it should have been. And then the second scam that he talks about in the book is that once the money is in, how the local tax money is spent is also completely crooked and unfair.

[00:04:13] So black areas have been grossly underserviced with local tax money that they had been paying for. When it comes to all the services you were talking about from schools and everything else, those dollars have gone to the white neighborhoods while leaving the segregated black neighborhoods in the dust.

[00:04:31] And of course, thanks to our history of Jim Crow and redlining and restrictive covenants and restrictive covenants, all of the built-in segregation that our government has perpetuated throughout our history, these neighborhoods are separate. Right?

[00:04:45] And it's easy for the local tax authorities to know where to spend and where not to spend if they want to do it in this fashion. And then the third aspect of this whole scam is just a straight up stealing of land, homes and property.

[00:04:58] Which is shocking. Yeah, I mean like it's disgustingly shocking. So black people have lost their homes and their land through this corrupt tax system that we're going to talk a little more about that set up. It's designed to steal people's properties. Right?

[00:05:13] That was the whole intent behind it. Right. That there's this whole group of predators who make their business by preying on people's tax debts. Right.

[00:05:24] So if somebody misses a small payment or something or a little bit late, the laws are set up so that that property can be snatched away really quick. And these folks were making that be their business. Like they were looking for opportunity to scoop up folks properties.

[00:05:38] And sometimes the debt was $20. Right. $100, $200. We're not talking about thousands of dollars. Yeah. We're not talking about people that were delinquent for years. We're talking about people who made payments year after year after year, maybe hadn't even received notice that they owed any money.

[00:05:53] That they owed anything. Yep. And like he talks about in the book, this is all left up to the local officials who can kind of do whatever they want. There's no oversight. And for so much of our history, black people couldn't even vote.

[00:06:05] So it's like these people could just do whatever they wanted. And they targeted black Americans with impunity. And black folks had very little opportunities to push back, although there was some opposition. Right. So this didn't just happen once in a while. This happened all the time.

[00:06:19] And it was the whole industry built around this targeting black people, particularly as their properties began to be more valuable. And the results were not just felt by the people who were scammed in, but continuing today. Right.

[00:06:34] Descendants who were not entitled to take advantage of those properties handed down from generation to generation. Properties taken out of the family. Just snatched up.

[00:06:44] So we sat down with Andrew Carl to talk about his new book and all the ways our tax system has been set up to rob from black Americans. Andrew Carl is professor of history and African American studies at the University of Virginia.

[00:06:56] He specializes in the history of race and inequality in America with a focus on housing and real estate, land use and local tax systems. We hope you enjoy this interview with Andrew Carl. Andrew Carl, welcome to Pay the Tab. Thank you for having me.

[00:07:16] We're really excited to talk to you and to talk all about your new book, The Black Tax. One hundred and fifty years of theft, exploitation and dispossession in America.

[00:07:26] So, you know, Tony and I have talked on our show quite a bit about the racial wealth gap in America and ways that black Americans have been shut out of the wealth building process and just just kept back for centuries in our country.

[00:07:42] But I have to say your book really is explosive for us. This is a this is a new angle.

[00:07:48] The whole idea of the massive theft of land and money from black Americans over our whole history and especially using this tool of local property taxes, which is speaking for myself. I never knew much of anything about local taxes or how they worked.

[00:08:09] But you lay out in the book how, you know, ever since the 1860s and continuing today, black Americans have just been completely ripped off by our taxing system.

[00:08:20] And but before we get into it, just to lay out is as we understand it, you you have three main areas where our tax system has has just served to rob black Americans of their money and property. Number one would be the overtaxing of black people, right?

[00:08:39] Of the paying way more than their share of property taxes. And then the next thing is with the tax money that's there, black people getting underserved.

[00:08:51] Right? So the resources and services and schools and so forth are funneled disproportionately to the white neighborhoods and the black neighborhoods get left out.

[00:09:04] And then last but not least, you talk about how black people's land and homes have been actually stolen from them over the years repeatedly using this this thing called a tax sale, which I know we'll get into.

[00:09:19] So this is this is a lot of new stuff for us. And I know there's a lot to talk about today. Yeah, no, I think, you know, you really captured the sort of three elements of my study nicely.

[00:09:30] I mean, it really does focus on both how taxes are administered in this case, how property is assessed and then where it is. Where do those dollars go? You know, how is how are public dollars distributed? And then lastly, how how are tax policies enforced?

[00:09:48] And when it comes to property taxes, you have these laws that, you know, if you don't pay your property taxes on time, you'll have a lien placed on your home. You know, that will accumulate and in many instances, you can lose your property over that.

[00:10:03] And that's you know, these have all been sort of manipulated and abused over time to really disadvantage black Americans and compound inequalities in housing, education and wealth in America. Yes. So let's let's dig into each of these three areas.

[00:10:19] One is that just as you mentioned, the over taxing of black folks, right? Overvaluation of properties in black neighborhoods paying higher tax rates. And it sounds like a good part of this was at the hands of local officials, right?

[00:10:37] Local tax assessors who had huge authority, almost unchecked, somewhat arbitrary authority that they could wield at their discretion. Give us a sense of kind of how that played out at the local levels where it ended up that black folks are playing paying much higher tax rates.

[00:10:54] After reconstruction is overthrown, you begin to see in the South, you know, these two simultaneous developments happening. You know, African Americans are accumulating land at a remarkable level.

[00:11:05] I mean, again, in spite of, you know, without any assistance from the state and from the federal government, you know, they never got the 40 acres and a mule.

[00:11:11] But nevertheless, you know, in this in the half century after emancipation, African Americans built up a significant land base in the South upwards of 16 million acres. But as they were doing so, whites are, you know, white southerners are regaining control over state and especially local governments.

[00:11:29] And with those powers, you know, local tax officials are steadily, you know, sort of working to shift the local tax burden onto African Americans. And one way of doing so was by over assessing the value of their land relative to white owned land.

[00:11:46] And so that became, again, a way in which it was often subtle.

[00:11:50] But nevertheless, when you begin to dig into the numbers, it had a significant impact in not only sort of, you know, making land ownership more burdensome and less profitable for African Americans and also making it harder to hold on to.

[00:12:04] I thought you're saying like people often didn't even know what their land was assessed at. Right. It was a very stealthy thing. Yeah. I mean, the whole process of property assessments is shrouded in mystery and it has been and remains to this day.

[00:12:16] Another prong of this that we found interesting was how the assessment process could be weaponized, right? And used against activists and organizers, including Martin Luther King, apparently.

[00:12:27] Yeah, I mean, this was a part of the book that I wrote, you know, showing how during the civil rights movement, you know, local taxing powers were one of the weapons that were being used against local movements, organizers and communities that were engaged in a protest.

[00:12:43] In one instance where a community in Mississippi engaged in a year long boycott of local businesses, the town retaliated by just going through the tax books and doubling the assessed value of every African American owned home in town.

[00:12:55] And now it's again that was not like disguised in any way. I mean, that was meant to sort of send a message. And we're not talking about insignificant amounts, collectively speaking, right?

[00:13:05] I mean, we understand from your book that the total amount of loss is somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred and seventy five billion dollars. Yeah, we're looking at least in the sort of hundreds of billions of dollars over time.

[00:13:16] And just to be clear, we're still talking about the first of these three scams, right? So this is just the assessment. So just talking about assessments. Yeah, just over assessing black property, which as you say, people were able to, you know, get a total of about 16 million acres.

[00:13:31] You're saying after the Civil War, two hundred and seventy five billion just for the over assessments by these local. Yes, that's crazy. So let's segue to the second prong, the underserving of black neighborhoods, right?

[00:13:45] Where in many cases little or no services provided. Can you give us a kind of brief history of how that, you know, how that went down? Yes. So I mean, you know, local taxes are used in service to spend on local services.

[00:13:58] And especially when we're talking about local property taxes, we're talking about public schools. We're talking about local infrastructure, whether it be water sewers, streets, sidewalks, libraries, you know, police and safety.

[00:14:14] I mean, all the sort of things that local governments are we placed in the hands of local governments that the revenue source. And so one of the things my book looks at is this long history of the kind of maldistribution of local tax revenues.

[00:14:28] And this again is we sort of are familiar with this history intuitively. I mean, again, we look back to the sort of Jim Crow era, southern cities and towns, you know, the sort of paved streets turned to dirt when you went on to the black side of town.

[00:14:44] They were lacking in the sort of basic goods and services. They were prone to sort of experiencing public health crises and environmental problems that were the direct result of these policies of neglect.

[00:14:56] These areas were lacking in the kind of basic kind of sanitation that cities were providing, but it's time and investing heavily in.

[00:15:04] And just to give you a couple of examples here, you know, one, you know, I looked at many of these southern cities and towns as they were, you know, spending heavily and building out infrastructure.

[00:15:14] They would even if they were providing things in black neighborhoods, they were doing so on the cheap and often vastly inferior ways.

[00:15:20] So I was finding examples in southern towns where, you know, if they were laying water lines, your water mains into neighborhoods, extending water services to homes, they would put narrower water mains in black neighborhoods, which meant in turn that there was lower water pressure in these neighborhoods, which then in turn meant that these areas, if a house fire broke out, it was harder to combat.

[00:15:45] And so, you know, in one town I found that you could draw a direct line between the fact that they put six inch water mains in white neighborhoods and one and a quarter inch water mains in black neighborhoods.

[00:15:57] And as a result, you know, in one year seven houses burned to the ground in this black neighborhood, you know, that firefighters, and they also, they also put the fire hydrants further apart. Everything was done on the cheap, black neighborhoods.

[00:16:10] So, and again, at the same time as these neighborhoods were being, you know, the homes were being overtaxed. Yeah, right. These have real life and death consequences. No joke. And the untold amounts of damages and losses, right, that also contribute to the wealth gap.

[00:16:25] Of course, because it drives down the value of these homes and neighborhoods. It makes their properties worth less. I mean, all this sort of, you know, accumulated harm that results from these policies and neglect.

[00:16:36] One other thing from your book that you really brought out was we're not just talking small southern towns, right? I mean, this is in the north as well, right? Because our segregation is so complete in this country throughout our history, really due to laws and so forth.

[00:16:50] Yeah. And I mean, and again, this is, this is sort of strewn across black history and sort of shaping the politics and organizing and activism in ways that I don't think is worth it. Previous histories have not really fully appreciated.

[00:17:02] I mean, to give an example, I mean, if you look at say, you know, the underlying causes of unrest that led to, you know, uprisings in mass, you know, sort of organizing in northern cities.

[00:17:12] I mean, so many of those issues came back to matters of public spending and the priorities of local governments.

[00:17:18] I mean, to give one example here, you know, public schools in the north, you know, where, you know, segregation was just as thorough in Chicago as it was in many southern cities and towns.

[00:17:28] Yet it wasn't, you know, again, it was sort of by the way in which school lines followed the color line in housing.

[00:17:35] Well, one of the sort of effects of this was is that, you know, in Chicago, you had by the 1940s and 50s, especially, you know, during the second wave of the Great Migration, African-American neighborhoods became severely overcrowded because African-Americans could not live in white neighborhoods.

[00:17:51] You know, they were being sort of herded into these racialized ghettos where housing conditions were deplorable.

[00:17:58] You know, again, like, you know, all compounded by the city's policies of neglect, you know, not picking up trash services, not cleaning streets, all these things that are sort of making conditions worse.

[00:18:08] But also when it came to schools, because, you know, the city's school system was, and this is not just in Chicago, but in cities around the country, were so determined to not sort of allow for African-American school children to attend schools in white neighborhoods.

[00:18:23] Even if those schools were under- Undercrowded. Undercrowded. So instead, you know, what you had in Chicago was, you know, almost 50% of African-American children were attending schools that had to go on double shifts. So they were going half day.

[00:18:37] They were getting a half day's worth of schooling while their parents were paying full freight in terms of their taxes for those school systems. And this, again, was very serious long-term consequences.

[00:18:48] You know, just to give you one number here, during the first six years of schooling for a child who was attending a school on a double session where they were only going to school half a day, that's the equivalent of two and a half years of education stolen from them.

[00:19:03] What's the price of that, right? I mean, part of what we try to do here and pay the tab is figure out like what's the full tab.

[00:19:10] And it's all not just monetary, but what's the lost opportunity, lost future earnings, you know, like how does that impact the course of someone's life? Right. So it's paying way more than your share of the taxes and then not getting the benefits of that. Getting way less.

[00:19:24] That's like a double punch. Yeah, it's crazy. The other element here that I think is important, especially when we're talking about the urban north in the post-World War II era, is the fact that cities, especially now as suburbs are growing,

[00:19:38] they're kind of competing with suburbs for whites' tax dollars and particularly seeing the decline of white homeowners within urban areas is leading to a deterioration of the tax base.

[00:19:49] And so one of the ways that they are trying to sort of retain middle class white families was through lower tax assessments. You know, and this was and they were often doing this in competition with suburbs, which were also offering white homeowners favorable tax assessments.

[00:20:04] So this was a kind of, you know, a hidden benefit of homeownership for generations of white Americans that was not available to black Americans. Yeah. And I know we're going to get a little bit later when we get into some of your ideas.

[00:20:15] We'll talk about ways that the system could be changed. But you do talk about how cities are in this mess in the first place, right? Because the federal government is not stepping in to make things work fairly and equally for our society, right?

[00:20:28] So you get all these broke cities and these places north and south with histories of discrimination and segregation, and they're just running rampant with it.

[00:20:38] Yeah, I think, you know, really, one thing that we need to sort of call attention to is the costs of devolving all these responsibilities down to localities instead of treating these as national priorities and national problems that need addressed.

[00:20:54] I mean, if we understood, if we understand something like education as a right in America, then we have a system that really just does not deliver that sort of those rights to many Americans just based simply on where they live.

[00:21:08] And the fact that if you live in a poor community with a small tax base, you're not going to have the revenue you need to be able to provide a basic education to the people living within those communities.

[00:21:19] Yeah, yeah. Well, let's talk about the third scam, which is just the flat out snatching of people's properties, right? This is the part that is maybe craziest of all that you describe.

[00:21:33] And so if we understand this, you know, this is when a black American will have a piece of property or a house, you know, some type of a property that is subject to taxes and somehow through the laws very intentionally,

[00:21:49] their properties are taken away by a scam of, like you say, tax liens and tax sales. But maybe you can explain for us, just kind of give us an overview of what exactly this is and how it worked,

[00:22:02] because I think we were a little surprised to hear about this. Yeah. So this again has been a real problem that's been hiding in plain sight for generations and has quietly sort of resulted in losses of great harm.

[00:22:16] So basically, if you don't pay your property taxes, the county or city or whoever the taxing authority is will place a lien on your home, which again is like a cloud on a title. So it kind of constrains what you can do with it.

[00:22:29] But in the majority of US states, what they will do after that is they will sell that lien to private investors at what are known as tax sales.

[00:22:40] So essentially, you know, at these tax sales, they sell the lien or what they call a lien certificate, which is for the amount of taxes owed. And then, you know, the county or city gets the revenue that they are owed.

[00:22:54] And then this private investor gets to then charge interest attached fees onto that debt. And the interest can be extreme. I mean, in some states up to 48 percent over the life of the debt.

[00:23:06] And then if you don't pay those, you know, those that interest in those fees, they can take your property. Now, the other thing as well, again, is that in some instances, and I kind of go back to kind of the Jim Crow era,

[00:23:20] you know, in the South where you would just have African Americans who were really excluded from many of the sort of formal channels of legal rights.

[00:23:27] This just sort of created a sort of it was open season oftentimes for those who are in the business of stealing land and tax sales could be one of those mechanisms,

[00:23:35] whether it be a tax bill that just simply didn't arrive in some or maybe a tax bill that was paid but never was registered.

[00:23:44] And then lo and behold, property ends up at a tax sale. And before someone knows what's even going on, they're being dispossessed of their property. And this happened far more often than we really fully appreciated.

[00:23:58] Yeah, I know you talk in the book about case after case where somebody maybe owed $10, $20, $50, a couple hundred dollars of a tax bill that never got sent or they didn't get it or they were a little bit late or these very mild,

[00:24:14] minor things. And often the system was intentionally rigged, right? So people wouldn't find out and the laws were written in these crazy ways.

[00:24:22] Absolutely. And I think that was one of the ways in which African American homeowners became a particular target of these types of investors because on the one hand they were,

[00:24:32] you know, these because of the financial constraints that black families often face, the fact that they were being overtaxed to begin with made them more vulnerable to falling into tax delinquency,

[00:24:44] which in turn as well. And then it also made it oftentimes harder for them to settle those debts quickly. And because of the way these laws were designed, the longer it took them to settle those debts, the more profits the investor made.

[00:24:58] I mean, in many states the interest rate would jump every six months. So it'd go from 12% to 24%. So all of a sudden, you know, again, if some if, you know, if a homeowner fell delinquent on their taxes, and the day after that lien was sold,

[00:25:10] they settled their debt, you know, and oftentimes, you know, if a white person found themselves in this circumstance, they might go to a bank and get a loan or do something and have access to other financial resources to be able to take care of this problem quickly.

[00:25:23] Many African American families or homeowners did not have that access to those options. And in turn, it made it harder for them to settle these debts and the longer it took, the more profitable it was to the investors.

[00:25:36] And if they couldn't, then they can take their property for, you know, essentially the price of a single tax bill. So all these factors in turn made these investors, it made them, you know, really target black neighborhoods and see these as like not only providing greater volume,

[00:25:51] but a greater return on investment. Maybe you can just briefly tell us the example of Evelina Jenkins, that's a homeowner, black homeowner in South Carolina that you go into in the book and sort of what happened to her as an example of what you're talking about.

[00:26:04] This is one of the worst. I mean, this was just such a horrible, you know, horrible heartbreaking injustice. So Evelina Jenkins, you know, she had inherited, you know, land along the sea islands, including an entire island, an entire barrier island off of the coast.

[00:26:21] She had a family of about a hundred people, you know, and she was born in the middle of St. Helena Island, which is close to the town of Buford, not far from Hilton Head.

[00:26:33] This was land that had been in their family since the 1880s. I mean, these are, you know, again, just the sort of first generations of black home owners in the South.

[00:26:42] So they were living in these remote parts of the county and didn't travel into town often, and they entrusted, in this case, she entrusted someone to pay her taxes for her.

[00:26:52] And this was actually not that uncommon. And so it's actually something that later sort of organizers who are trying to save black land would warn people against doing.

[00:27:02] And so, but she had entrusted a person who would, you know, a white man who had sort of befriended her to take her taxes to town for her. And he deliberately did not in order to then have the land fall into tax delinquency.

[00:27:17] And then also without her knowledge, because, you know, again, these were just kind of advertised at the county courthouse, you know, the list of tax delinquent properties,

[00:27:26] oftentimes families who were especially, you know, sort of living outside of the sort of main circuits of information, you know, just simply wouldn't know about this.

[00:27:34] It was her land was quietly sold at a tax sale to that person who had been who she had entrusted to pay the taxes for.

[00:27:41] And then he just sat on it for like decades. I mean, this was actually something a journalist who had kind of also gone in and looked at her story after I'd dug around was able to find more about how, you know,

[00:27:54] he just kind of sat on this property. He held title to it for decades. Like 30 years, right? Yeah. And she didn't even, she had no idea. You know, he just he and he continued to collect those taxes from her every year.

[00:28:06] And he kind of as he later said, you know, he treated it like rent, you know, essentially he owned the land, but he was holding on to it until that moment where it really had, you know, he was holding it as a speculative investment.

[00:28:17] And she didn't know that he owned the land, right?

[00:28:19] No, no, she didn't know until and she didn't know until she was evicted. And it was, you know, and it was in the 1960s again when this whole area is exploding and, you know, real estate development that he, you know, he sold he sold it to a developer.

[00:28:33] And, you know, one morning she was told she had that she had to leave her home that she didn't even own the land that she had inherited. And, you know, again, like she died penniless living in a mobile home on her daughter's property.

[00:28:47] She literally had to watch as the developers were, you know, moving onto the island that she once owned. And, you know, today that, you know, that island, Horse Island, which is right off of the South Carolina coast, homes there command upwards of $1.5 million.

[00:29:03] You know, that land was once entirely in her family. Let's talk a few numbers here because this is some of the stuff you also lay out in the book of those those tax sales through various scams of taking someone's property.

[00:29:19] I think you estimate that of those we talked about the 16 million acres, right? That black Americans had gained in the late 1800s, early 1900s.

[00:29:28] And you estimate that black Americans lost about 11 million acres in the 20th century, which is you point out it's not entirely because of these tax sales and so forth.

[00:29:38] But it sounds like a very large portion of that is because of the way our tax system is set up. Right. Yeah.

[00:29:45] I mean, it was. Yeah, I mean, either directly or indirectly, either lost at tax sales or that rising tax bills forced families to either sell land or, you know, sell it under duress for a fraction of its value or lose it in other ways.

[00:30:02] But then also even for those folks, you know, whether they be a homeowner living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s or whether they be, you know, a family owning land in, you know, Mississippi.

[00:30:13] You know, even if they were able to hold on to their property after a tax sale, you know, even if they were able to settle their debts.

[00:30:19] I mean, the financial losses that they took in doing and just holding onto their property were massive as well because, you know, one thing it's worth noting. I mean, the majority of the profits that these tax buyers make is not from taking property.

[00:30:33] It's from the interest in fees, you know, this exorbitant amount of sort of, you know, debts that you can sort of charge to these tax delinquent. It's like a whole industry. Absolutely. I mean, it's a billion dollar industry today.

[00:30:46] I mean, it's a huge industry that extracts the vast majority of its profits from financially distressed, low income households and disproportionately black and brown homeowners. What we gather is that those 11 million acres that black Americans lost in the 20th century are worth over 300 billion today, just the land.

[00:31:07] Right. And you were talking earlier about the conservative number of 275 billion for the overassessments and, you know, overpayment of taxes, not to mention not getting any services for it.

[00:31:19] So we're looking at over 600 billion right now in just actual money lost, right? Just actual theft of money taken through these systems. Plus then, you know, we have to talk about the gains to, you know, the wealthy, whether it's a speculators or just the white neighborhoods collectively.

[00:31:36] Right. Where the white Americans collectively gained untold amounts of wealth and value right through the taking of whether it be the properties, the over services. So it sounds like what we're hearing from you is this local tax system is a big part of the racial wealth gap.

[00:31:57] Yeah. And I think it also sort of really points us to, you know, how these sort of mechanisms work and how they each sort of feed off of each other.

[00:32:06] You know, these sort of inequities within housing markets, you know, the limited capacity for African American homeowners to build wealth through homeownership because of the racist devaluation of property in black neighborhoods, which also in turn is, you know, sort of compounded by the racist over taxation of those same properties,

[00:32:25] which then devalues it further still and then makes those same homeowners more vulnerable to falling into tax delinquency. So all these sort of systems interlock, you know, you can't really tell this full story.

[00:32:36] You can't really grasp the way in which the wealth gap was built over time and continues to grow today. If you don't look at how local tax systems work and how they are actually sort of implicated in many of these problems that we've already identified.

[00:32:51] I mean, we know that housing and real estate markets have been a causal mechanism of wealth inequality and the kind of racialized advantages and disadvantages that Americans face today. Well, tax systems are very important part of this.

[00:33:09] We know about, you know, educational inequality, the retreat from the promise of equality with the Brown decision that all these sort of, you know, these vast sort of disparities and educational access and outcomes.

[00:33:22] Well, you can't tell that story without looking at the funding source and the funding source or local property taxes.

[00:33:27] So again, you know, these are the sort of ways which begin to kind of piece together what's going on here to demystify these problems and to actually sort of begin to pin down some of the sort of causal mechanisms.

[00:33:38] So let's, you know, let's go back a little bit to the scam right in how black folks were overpaid overpaying taxes and in essence subsidizing white properties in white neighborhoods.

[00:33:51] In order for that to have operated, there needed to be some underlying myths, if you will, some underlying assumptions. One main one being that black people don't pay their fair share of taxes that, you know, we're living off the government.

[00:34:05] Government overspends, you know, on black communities when it was just just the opposite. So can you like elaborate on that and also explain how that's really rooted in a notion of white white supremacy?

[00:34:15] Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a myth is really as old as, you know, African-American property, you know, African-American freedom itself.

[00:34:23] I mean, really, you know, from the moment we see reconstruction governments being formed and actually trying to come up with a progressive tax system and robust funding for the vast needs of formerly enslaved populations in the South, you begin to see this myth being deployed.

[00:34:43] I mean, really, you know, one of the kind of organizing tools that white supremacists were using to overthrow reconstruction was to kind of bring together, you know, the wealthy planner class with sort of poor whites like small landowners by their shared identity as taxpayers.

[00:34:59] You know, there were taxpayer leagues that were being formed, kind of an early precursor.

[00:35:06] Yeah, yeah, an early precursor to the Tea Party, you know, in a sense like actually trying to organize white people around a shared identity of as taxpayers and doing so through creating this myth that like their money was being used to then support these African-American populations who themselves were not, you know, contributing anything on their own.

[00:35:28] And that, as I sort of argue, as I show in the book, that sort of myth then became foundational to what I call the Jim Crow fiscal order, meaning that, you know, it became the sort of means to then justify and rationalize just these, you know, not only the segregation of public education, but just the gross disparities and funding for them.

[00:35:49] All the kinds of ways in which, you know, African-American communities were just simply not getting, you know, not even close to a fair share of public revenues when it came to, you know, the goods and services that local governments were spending on.

[00:36:03] All that was justified. And you, you know, you go back through the records of how whites sort of, you know, explained these disparities, and they would say, well, you know, black people don't pay any taxes, so therefore they should be grateful for whatever crumbs drop from our table.

[00:36:16] And then meanwhile, of course, as they are sort of, you know, justifying this on this myth, they are relentlessly and in every opportunity finding ways to shift the tax burden onto those black populations.

[00:36:29] And so again, like through over assessing their neighborhoods. And it gets updated and sort of dusted off and trotted out in the 1970s when Ronald Reagan's running for president and, you know, sort of, you know, spinning these wild tales about welfare queens and all, you know, folks who are living high on the hog at taxpayer's expense.

[00:36:49] I mean, all of these are just kind of racist tropes that have a long history in America. And ultimately, again, like, you know, we are still sort of living in that sort of, you know, living with these myths today.

[00:37:01] And essentially playing poor working class white folks off against, you know, black people. Exactly. And that's, I mean, really one of the sort of most insidious aspects of what was, you know, there were really real opportunities at various points in this history.

[00:37:16] And I talk about instances where, you know, trying to actually bring together, you know, poor white populations with African Americans who were all both being disadvantaged by a system that, you know, shifted local tax burdens onto lower income populations.

[00:37:31] More so on black populations, certainly. But, you know, whites were not, you know, many white families were not doing well by this system as well.

[00:37:40] But yet, you know, once you start to racialize the sort of seeming advantages and disadvantages, then whites seem to think that they have something to hold onto, something to gain from this system rather than actually kind of joining together and fighting against the, you know, fighting for a better system that actually taxes the wealth at the top.

[00:37:58] There you go. Yeah, that's the oldest trick in the book, right? Mm hmm. Professor Carl, thank you for joining us. We appreciate being in conversation with you. Your book was a riveting read. The book was just fascinating.

[00:38:13] Fascinating. The black tax, one hundred and fifty years of theft, exploitation and dispossession in America. Yeah, we applaud you for digging into this conversation, sparking some really great thought about how we move forward in your words, how we make our society more just and fair for everybody.

[00:38:31] You know, that's that's the goal. So we really applaud your efforts and will be rooting for you and watching it. You know, your next projects as they unfold.

[00:38:39] Yeah, we really appreciate you joining us, Professor. And keep keep up the great work. You're putting out really important stuff that we all need to know about.

[00:38:47] Well, no, thank you for having me on. And I can say the same for you. I mean, this is a really important series you're working on. And I think I really appreciate the opportunity to come and talk about my work and to be in conversation with you about these real critical problems.

[00:39:00] And I think, you know, it's really, you know, it's a real pleasure to be able to have a chance to talk about it. Wow. That was a whole lot there. You know, I don't even know where to start. Yeah, yeah. The scope of this of this whole scam is just so crazy.

[00:39:20] I mean, you think of like how many people for how many years have just lost their homes, lost their land and specifically targeting black Americans over and over and over. It's just like it's crazy.

[00:39:32] So the good news is that Andrew Carl has some really great ideas, some suggestions for what we can do as a country to turn that situation around. Yeah, exactly. How we can fix this totally crooked tax system.

[00:39:44] So he basically breaks down three main ideas for how the system desperately needs to be fixed. The first one is a federal equity program, which basically involves the federal government making sure that local communities across America have the funds to give their residents programs of what their tax dollars are intended for.

[00:40:03] Shocking novel proposal.

[00:40:05] Right to actually do things fairly. And it does have to be done at the federal level. He's absolutely right, because when you leave things up to the local cities and states, not only is there all kinds of corruption and racism and so forth, but you also have cities who are often broke and are doing whatever they can to make a quick buck by courting the white suburban voters.

[00:40:25] And it's always at the expense of the black community. So under the federal equity program, it's really very simple that the funds that are raised from taxes go to communities that need them the most. Unlike our current system where it's really just the richest neighborhoods, thanks to redlining and governmental racism that get all the services.

[00:40:45] So this way, the US government steps in and makes sure that that the funds are given out fairly. You know, black Americans can start getting the services that they've been paying for with tax dollars all this time and stop being penalized for the segregated housing system we've always had.

[00:41:00] Yes, yes. And this is how it's done in most wealthy countries in the world. Second program that Professor Karl has recommended is having a universal home tax exemption. What this would entail is that people would only have to pay tax if the value is over the median home value for that particular region, for that particular city.

[00:41:20] So property taxes on their home. Property tax on their home would only be assessed, would only be required to be paid if their home value was above the median level for that particular city. Right? Right? So which makes sense, right? So people who have really big, fancy, expensive properties will pay some taxes.

[00:41:38] Right, the people who have benefited from redlining and the racist real estate system and all that. All that, all that. And people who are at the median or below wouldn't pay property taxes at all, which is how it should be, right? Exactly.

[00:41:51] Exactly. And so if your house is worth less on the market because of the history of racism, now here's finally a benefit from that, which is you're below the median value. Right. It's a bummer that, you know, that's where you're at. But at least now here's some catch up, if you will, or at least a break from a system that has screwed you. Who's to argue otherwise?

[00:42:11] Exactly. Exactly. How can you argue with that? Right. And of course, this will benefit all Americans who have a house that is less than the median value in your area. So poor folks who have a home that is worth less will all benefit. Right. So both of these programs would be radical ways to change our system of unfair taxation.

[00:42:31] There's a third thing he talks about, which is very strong and equally radical that we desperately need in this country. And that's the federal wealth tax. Yes. We've heard a lot about a wealth tax from a lot of different sources and you know more and more over time. But it's really a very basic, basic thing. The wealthy in our country are not paying taxes.

[00:42:52] They're certainly not paying their share.

[00:42:54] Nowhere near their share, but in many cases the very wealthiest with their loopholes and their lawyers and all that. Not paying anything at all. Not paying anything. Right. And with the tax shelters and offshore this and that. So we desperately need to change the money that's coming in.

[00:43:08] And you know, how do you pay for all these progressive new changes that we've been talking about? With the wealth tax. Why don't we start with that? And Andrew Carl talks about that in his book as well. Like let's take just a really conservative approach and just look at maybe a 50% tax on all wealth over $10 million per person. $50 million, maybe a billion dollars per person.

[00:43:31] Hold up. Hold up. Hold up. $50 million sounds like a good hell of enough money.

[00:43:35] I don't know. You could say $1 million, but yet you have to draw the line somewhere for starters. Even if we say a billion dollars, right? You take all the billionaires in America, have to pay a serious tax on their wealth over a billion. Right. Keep your billion.

[00:43:51] Yes. But give us some fair taxes. You know how much we could pay for with that? I mean, it's crazy. We have plenty of money as a society to pay for all kinds of things. We just need some justice here. We need to stop the insane looting and hoarding by the wealthiest in our country. And we can do a lot of things.

[00:44:09] Yeah. You know, as part of that, you know, Andrew Carl says that biggest part of reparations for these crazy harms is just a radical transformation of the whole system of taxation. Right. Right. Got to change the whole system.

[00:44:24] We're just tinkering here and there, not closing this one little loophole. But it really needs to be blown up and built up from the ground up. If we're talking about true justice for everybody.

[00:44:34] Yeah. I mean, this, you know, we're talking about, you know, justice and reparations for black Americans. But in the process, everyone who's been screwed by our current system will be benefited.

[00:44:43] Exactly. Exactly. And I think he's exactly right. We need to first and foremost start with let's nip this stuff in the bud. Let's stop the bleeding. Let's take our system and change it where it is so that going forward, there can be more equality and more justice with our money.

[00:44:58] And I think we totally agree with that. Yes, but that's not the only thing right now. You're also to talk about reparations to black Americans and that has to also mean massive cash payments for all these centuries of pillaging and looting by the wealthy.

[00:45:15] Absolutely. There's a lot of money that's due to be paid and it can't it can't only be about changes in the future. Right. There's a big tab.

[00:45:23] Yeah, it's called pay the tab for a reason. Right. There's got to be some some catch up. So let's talk about some of the numbers. It's time to pay. Pay the dab.

[00:45:33] Let's just talk about the damage to black folks over the over the centuries from having to pay excess taxes. Right. Just those over assessment just talking just over assessments. Professor Carl calculated this in the neighborhood of actually an excess of two hundred and seventy five billion dollars.

[00:45:51] Second prong talking about the value of the acreage, the properties that were lost that were not transferred down because of this tax lien scam that these scumbags were able to like scoop up.

[00:46:06] So this is land that would that's taken away land that was taken away. That was not then passed down to descendants. Eleven million eleven million acres lost in the 20th century alone worth over three hundred billion dollars in today's dollar.

[00:46:20] So between just these two prongs, we're talking about the neighborhood of six hundred billion dollars just just off the cuff. Right. Just off the bat.

[00:46:28] He also points out that, you know, all of this, all of these numbers we're talking about these many billions of dollars is really just the beginning.

[00:46:37] Because when you talk about what white America collectively got from the under assessment of taxes, the over servicing of all these local services from schools and everything else, the generational wealth that's been built up by white America.

[00:46:54] While black America is getting robbed, white America gets to build up its wealth through this corrupt tax system as well.

[00:47:01] Whether we knew about it or not, it's going on. And as he says, I mean that that's just untold amounts of money that we're talking the trillions, the trillions of dollars, which is a good chunk of the racial wealth gap we have today.

[00:47:15] Right. Which by me, you know, folks who study this, you know, that's the true measure of the tab. And you know what we get asked so much in speaking about reparations is, OK, these are all great ideas that all make sense.

[00:47:28] It's fair. But how is it ever going to happen? How can we our system is so corrupt. Capitalism is so entrenched here. How are we ever going to make real change? And, you know, I think we agree strongly with what Professor Carl talks about, which is solidarity.

[00:47:43] Yes. It keeps coming up right. Solidarity across all these fake lines that have been drawn.

[00:47:49] So called racial lines across class lines. If we just take, you know, the 99 percent staring down the one percent as far as how our society is run, there's a lot of change that can be made.

[00:48:01] And that's what the powers to be are I think are so afraid of. And that's why they try to keep us all pitted against each other. That's what they've been doing for hundreds of years. Right.

[00:48:10] And, you know, we as a collective have have fallen prey to that. Right. Right. So what can we do to to spread this solidarity and try to get, you know, a change in perspective in our society?

[00:48:21] Yeah. Be be in conversation with with folks in your friend group and your family group. You know, and understand that, you know, we collectively have much more in common as far as these things go than we then we are divided.

[00:48:35] Right. And it is this top one percent who want to keep us divided, who want to keep playing on these various fake, you know, fake lines.

[00:48:44] Absolutely pitting us against against one another so they can keep hoarding off the top and, you know, laughing all the way to the bank.

[00:48:52] Yeah, exactly. And one thing I notice the older I get is that things in the world are actually so much more simple than they want us to believe.

[00:49:00] You know, whether it be stuff going on domestically, internationally, the powers that be have a real scam going here and they're all making a lot of money and hoarding it. And if you know the rest of us can start calling it out.

[00:49:14] Yeah, I would say like you say, share this share these things in conversation, you know, when the topic of reparations comes up or taxes or spending or do we have the budget?

[00:49:25] There's some pretty strong answers for a lot of these big questions that we just need to start talking more about. We can do this. We can do this. Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us on Pay the Tab.

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