Is Now A(nother) Teachable Moment? Honoring the Legacy of Dr. William E. Spriggs

Abstract

The sultry, simmering summer of 2020 seems simultaneously seconds and centuries ago. In May of that crisis laden year, Minneapolis police officers murdered George Perry Floyd, Jr. on a concrete sidewalk while a neighborhood crowd tried and failed to intervene. Demonstrations erupted across the globe, giving rise to racial justice protests on par with the civil rights movement. Four police officers were fired and convicted of various crimes including federal hate crimes related to George Floyd’s murder. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division opened an investigation into the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department and, in June 2023, issued a scathing report finding pervasive evidence of racism. Included in the report was a finding that “officers were six times more likely to use force against Black members of the public than against white people,” and that Black and Native Americans were 6.5 and 7.9 times more likely, respectively, to be stopped by officers than their white counterparts. The report also noted in its introduction, “The metropolitan area that includes Minneapolis and neighboring St. Paul—known as the Twin Cities—has some of the nation’s starkest racial disparities on economic measures, including income, homeownership, poverty, unemployment, and educational attainment.”

The violent video of George Floyd’s murder not only displayed rampant racism, but also exposed brazen white privilege. The grotesque indifference and inhumanity on display in the recording has been broadly viewed as a tipping point across disciplines. Consistent with the DOJ report, many scholars note the interconnectedness of police brutality and other injustices, especially economic injustices. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, racial justice embodies economic justice, including the rights to a fair and dignified living, education, healthcare, food, and housing security, regardless of race, occupation, or socio-economic status. Among the world leaders who added their voices to the choir demanding a racial reckoning was Dr. William Edward Spriggs. Dr. Spriggs, an internationally renowned and prominent economist, professor, and former department chair of economics at Howard University, chief economist for the AFL-CIO, and Assistant Secretary of Labor for Policy in the Obama administration, penned an open letter titled, “Is now a teachable moment for economists?”

Consistent with his life’s work of calling out and fighting racial discrimination, Dr. Spriggs’s letter discusses racism and racial injustices broadly and specifically in economics and among economists. But as is evident to any reader, the letter provides eye-opening lessons for all economic justice scholars, including tax policy scholars. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, “[w]e are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” This Essay will discuss several truths from Dr. Spriggs’s letter and related scholarship as “a(nother) teachable moment” for tax scholars and policymakers to “ask the big questions about understanding the institutions that created our massive inequality” including tax systems. Given recent research concluding that the IRS audits Black taxpayers at least 2.9 (and as much as 4.7) times more often than non-Black taxpayers, and likely even higher than their white counterparts, now is the time to call out and stop racial injustice in our tax systems and institutions.

Keywords: discrimination, diversity, economics, tax policy, racial inequity, tax injustice

JEL Classification: B00, A00, J00, K34, K00