In 1976, Supreme Court Justice Byron White recognized that tax statutes may have a disparate impact based upon race. You may ask how this is possible given that the Code is race-neutral on its face. There is nothing in the Code that explicitly says blacks pay more, whites pay less. This is still America – isn't it? I submit, because this is America, one could intuitively expect to observe racial disparities in the implementation of our federal tax laws, which date back to the Sixteenth Amendment and the Revenue Act of 1913.

CURRENT TAX POLICY AND RACE DISCRIMINATION IN THE LABOR MARKET

My charge was to suggest a change in the Code that would work toward the goal of achieving racial equity in the twenty-first century. I believe there is no greater culprit that prevents the achievement of racial equality in this country than the systemic racism found throughout the paid labor market. My proposal therefore will be to use the federal tax laws to disrupt the wage discrimination faced by workers of color.

I would like to begin by giving you some background statistical information that I suspect is all too familiar. For 1995, the Census Bureau reported median weekly earnings for white males, of $566, for black males $411, for black females $355, for Hispanic males $350, for Hispanic females $305. The unemployment rate for whites was 4.9% for 1995, for blacks was 10.4%, for Hispanics 9.3%.