Centering Black Women in Policy Would Lead to a More Inclusive, Equitable Economy 

Black women have been critical to America’s economic progress since its inception, but even with their countless contributions, DC and national policies and practices continue to exclude Black women from economic prosperity. Centering the well-being of Black women^[1] in fiscal and economic policy would allow lawmakers to address historical racist harms while building a future where everyone has what they need to thrive. That’s the central thesis of author Whitney Tucker’s Black Women Best Framework Points the Way to Equitable and Just State Tax Reform, a new report out of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).  

The Black Women Best framework was conceived by Janelle Jones, the first Black woman to serve as Chief Economist at the US Department of Labor. It posits that if Black women—who have faced centuries of exclusion and harm—can thrive in the economy, then the economy must at last be working for everyone. It encourages a comprehensive examination of the barriers Black women face in our economy and society, like access to education, housing, and employment, and the creation of policies to remove those barriers.  

The CBPP report also builds also on previous work by the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls, which used the framework as the basis for a national legislative agenda to reduce economic precarity and increase prosperity for Black women. In this agenda, the DC Fiscal Policy Institute’s executive director Erica Williams and Tucker laid out ways to center Black women in tax policy by taking aim at income and wealth concentration among white people and redistributing those dollars through the tax code and investments that advance Black income and wealth building. 

Tucker’s new piece offers four recommendations for prioritizing Black women’s economic security and stability at the state level, including through tax policy. DC lawmakers would do well to use this framework to guide its “policymaking to produce economic systems free of structural exclusion and inequity.” The recommendations include:  

1. Using revenue policies to promote income stability for Black women. This means states pursuing tax policies that push back on the racial and gender discrimination that has held down Black women’s incomes, despite their high labor force participation, like Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs) and Child Tax Credits (CTCs). These credits can boost income to help Black women provide for their families, while reducing poverty and related stress, to the benefit of all.  
2. Shifting how revenue policies influence wealth-building. This means diverting resources from policies that subsidize wealth building for the already wealthy to policies that redress past racist policies and practices that have prevented Black women and their families from accruing wealth. This could include decoupling from the federal mortgage interest deduction, which skews toward high-income and wealthy tax filers, and investing in expansion of renter and homeownership supports for those with low incomes. It also could mean ending extraction of income and wealth through criminal legal fees and fines. 
3. Enacting bolder, fairer, more equitable revenue-raising policies. This means pursuing more progressive revenue raisers from high income, high wealth households that are more likely to be white to make public investments that lift Black women, and others disproportionately experiencing economic struggle. This could be higher top marginal income tax rates, progressive property taxation based on home value, stronger estate and inheritance taxes, and stronger taxation of capital gains. 
4. Removing barriers to raising additional revenue. This means ending limits on revenue raising that stem from our racist past. Some of the earliest state and local tax systems in the US, located in the South, explicitly employed revenue limits as one of many tools to oppress Black people in the backlash to Reconstruction. These policies were later adopted by states and localities across the nation, like various types of caps on property taxes and supermajority requirements to raise taxes—all of which have worked well to preserve white wealth and limit investment in Black, brown, and low-income communities.   

DC has adopted many of the policies recommended in the Black Women Best report, but has much more work to do to achieve the goals of the framework. For example, DC is set to have the most robust EITC in the nation and recently adopted a modest CTC that can be strengthened in the years to come. DC has the least regressive tax system in the country, largely because of efforts to reduce taxes paid as a share of income for the lowest income families and its graduated tax rates. Furthermore, DC has made efforts to make its property taxes more progressive through a new higher rate on home value over $2.5 million. DC also has used revenue to support transformative programs that lift Black women and their families like the Pay Equity Fund, “baby bonds,” DC’s property tax circuit breaker, and the Home Purchase Assistance Program.  

However, the District is home to deep racial, gender, and economic inequities that were centuries in the making: In the DC area, white households hold 81 times the wealth of Black households. Meanwhile, the DC tax code privileges white wealth and prevents the District from being able to adequately fund programs that support Black women. In DC, the top 5 percent of earners pay a lower share of their income in taxes than the bottom 95 percent combined. Furthermore, DC caps the growth in property tax assessments, and the cap on growth is particularly low for senior homeowners, regardless of need.  

DC can strengthen the Black Women Best policies we have adopted. We can boost the CTC and property tax circuit breaker, invest more deeply in homeownership opportunities for Black women, tax high value homes more robustly, and strengthen taxation of other forms of wealth that are highly concentrated in the hands of a few. We also can reform criminal legal fees and fines and explore other ways to center Black women in our policy and practices. Through the Black Women Best framework, policymakers can fund a sustainable and more equitable future for all of DC.