With all the talk about white privilege, institutional racism etc etc, I'm wondering about how liberals on this board feel about instituting a white privilege tax (I'm assuming no conservative would support it). Such a tax could be a modest addition to one's income tax liability. For instance if someone owed 2,500 dollars in federal income tax, a white tax payer could pay an extra 5 or 10% of that figure. If a white tax payer was so privileged that they didn't owe any federal income tax, then perhaps they could have a 5 or 10% reduction in whatever refund/credit that they would have otherwise received.
Some other avenues might be a reduction in food stamp benefits if they went to a white household, or perhaps an extra property tax assessment on white homeowners. Anyway, it would be intriguing and full of political drama to see attempts to get such measures passed in liberal enclaves. Perhaps a place full of white left-of center voters like Boulder, Madison or Portland Oregon might be a nice place to try and get such an idea rolling on the municipal level.
Of course there would be many whites who would try to get exemptions. Jews might try to opt out, saying only WASP's should be so treated, but that of course would open up the whole white Catholic and white Eastern European can of worms, with people trotting out their personal impoverished ancestors tales, perhaps a pogrom escape story, maybe some discussion of fleeing servitude in Russia or Austria-Hungary, fleeing the draft in Prussia (my family's case), or various other attempts to cast a more nuanced look at the whole white privilege issue.
Personally though, I think its a discussion worth having, and it would give people a chance to really put their money where there mouth is.
This is the wrong approach. It would breed intense resentment that would probably worsen race relations overall on all sides.
Racism cannot be "solved" with economic solutions that 'punish' anyone. They must medium-long term and based around decreasing discrepancies in both opportunity as well as economic outcomes (for example... we have to both make meaningful educational avenues available to minorities while also reducing poverty for everyone)
The benefit of reducing poverty without considering race is that non-whites are disproportionately poor so just addressing the issue will increase equality between races/ethnicities while also keeping poor whites from being shat on (which is a legitimate concern).
It's not like we can say "it's poverty, stupid"... cuz that's not the ONLY factor. But it is the angle we can take to both increase the livelihood of everybody while concentrating that increase on minority communities.
It's important for those privileged white people to understand that this will also mean better outcomes for them.
Paul Wellstone was an intelligent man that often knew the precise thing to say long before it needed to be said. One of his most famous quotes is very prescient in its time and is perfect for the state of things in 2016...
"We all do better when we all do better". And that's what we should be all about.
