An eye-opening look at race-based economic biases, with reasonable steps to undo them.
Black Americans endure endless injustices and indignities—not least of which are the inequities built into what is supposed to be a neutral tax system.
Brown went into tax law, she writes, because she imagined that “as far as tax law was concerned, the only color that mattered was green.” Her effort to escape racism didn’t work as expected. Over the years, she has worked to uncover biases—both intentional and not—in the federal tax system. For instance, the joint tax return system was the product of a ploy on the part of Henry and Charlotte Seaborn, a wealthy White couple who filed a suit that went all the way to the Supreme Court. They lived in a community property state, and when Henry declared that half of his income was his wife’s and their marginal tax rate should be half what it was, the IRS rejected the claim until the justices ruled in the Seaborns’ favor. But what of states where community property was not the law? “This was a violation of the horizontal equity principle underpinning the progressive tax system,” Brown writes, and it penalized Black married couples who, unlike Whites, earned roughly equal pay and could not lower their tax burden by transferring it to their partner. Similarly, notes the author, mortgage interest deductions benefit White holders disproportionally, in part because home values are lower in marginalized communities. “Homeownership is not a straightforward wealth builder for black families,” writes Brown, “because the only guaranteed return on their investment is to buy in a community where they will be a small and vulnerable minority.” School loans are another realm of difference, leading Brown to propose that wealthy institutions such as Yale be taxed to fund scholarships. Among her other remedies are taxing inheritances and, more daringly, eliminating exclusions so that “all income is taxable,” thus doing away with inequitable shelters that favor White over Black taxpayers.
An eye-opening look at race-based economic biases, with reasonable steps to undo them.Pub Date: March 23, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-525-57732-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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