In this episode, Budget and Policy Center Communications Specialist April Dickinson speaks with our friend Mike Mitchell, Director of Policy and Research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a national organization committed to advancing a vision for strong, broadly shared prosperity, and true opportunity for all. Mike talks about the racist history of taxes in the United States, what inspires him in his work, and the vision that he has for his kiddo’s future. -- CREDITS: Theme music by Revanth Akella Logo by Eileen Jimenez Introduction by Communications Specialist April Dickinson GUEST BIO: Mike Mitchell is the Director of Policy and Research at the Groundwork Collaborative. Previously, he was the Senior Director and Counselor, Equity and Inclusion with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where he led the organization’s efforts to incorporate a greater equity and inclusion lens into its research and analysis. Before that he served as a Senior Policy Analyst with the Center’s State Fiscal Policy team, focusing on state higher education policy and state-level tax policy. Mike holds a B.A. in economics and political science from the University of Connecticut and an MPA from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. In his spare time, Mike loves taking walks with his wife and daughter. You can follow him on Twitter at @MikeDMitchell2. RESOURCES: Groundwork Collaborative Budget & Policy Center Brief: Washington's tax code is an untapped resource to advance racial justice TEXTS: American Taxation, American Slavery by Robin Einhorn Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 by Eric Foner The Whiteness of Wealth by Dorothy A. Brown Poem: Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives by William Martin -- TRANSCRIPT: [00:00:00] Mike Mitchell: I think for my kiddo, I just want to work really hard to build a future where even if she strives for just an ordinary life, all the things that she deserves just by existing – good schools, good health, a clean environment, freedom from racial oppression – all those things are just taken care of so that she can just have a chance at living an ordinary life and find the wonder and marvel just in that. [00:00:29] April Dickinson: Welcome to WA Possible, a podcast about what is possible for economic justice in Washington State. This podcast is presented by the Washington State Budget & Policy Center, a research and policy organization working to advance progressive state budget and tax policies that promote racial equity and economic dignity. At the Budget & Policy Center, we dream of a brighter future where everyone has a home to rest in, families can afford child and elder care, and people have enough money to buy the food and resources they need. On WA Possible, we talk with partners, advocates and our staff who are helping make this vision a reality. We know that economic justice is possible here in Washington State because we are building toward it together. I'm April Dickinson, communications specialist at the Budget & Policy Center, and I'm the host for this episode. To ensure that policies developed in the future are equitable and achieve their goals for justice, it's helpful to understand the historical context and persistent racism already embedded in so many government systems. That's why we invited our friend Mike Mitchell to talk about racism in the tax code, something he has been studying for many years. That was him speaking at the top of the episode. Mike is the director of Policy and Research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a national organization committed to advancing a vision for strong, broadly shared prosperity, and true opportunity for all. We are lucky to have known Mike for over ten years and to watch him continue to grow in his work. He was a state policy fellow with us at the Budget & Policy Center back in 2012 and 13 (you can still read some of his research on our website) In 2019, he spoke on this topic at our annual policy summit Budget Matters. And now in 2022, we got to connect with Mike again for our podcast. In this episode, Mike talks about the racist history of taxes in the United States, what inspires him in his work, and the vision that he has for his kiddo’s future. Let's get to the interview. [00:02:32] April: All right, Mike, thank you for joining me on WA Possible. I appreciate you making some time. Today, we're talking about the racial history of our tax system in the United States and in Washington. And you've really brought a lot of historical context to some of the conversations we've had in the past. You have been talking about the racist history of the tax code for quite some time, but a lot of our listeners might be like, really? The taxes are racist? What is that all about? So, if you wouldn't mind painting us a picture of what that really means, what that looks like, and how it's shown up in your work. [00:03:06] Mike: Yeah, sure. So, I think the first thing that's really important for grounding people when you're talking about the tax code and structural racism is to take a step back and just get people thinking about what policy is, right. And for a lot of us, when we think about public policy and we think about housing policy or education, I think it's easy to see the ways in which individual policymakers’ or communities’ values get embedded in those policies. Right? The same is true for tax policy, too. For some reason, we think of it as dollars and cents. But it's the same mechanism of values and prejudice and stereotypes that inform how we create tax policy, just like we do others. So, if you can understand that, I think it becomes a little bit easier then to understand the ways in which racism, structural racism, white supremacy have formed or have helped to form and shape tax policy both at the federal and state level. I think that's the first thing that I would really encourage listeners to try and understand and embrace. And then it's just exploring the history of tax policy and specifically for myself, state tax policy, where you can see the myriad of ways in which lawmakers – who, for a long, long period in this country, the population of lawmakers, was really restricted to being white men – looked to use tax policy to enforce the racial caste system that we've had in this country. And you can see that in primarily in the South, we see it originating, but then you can see the ways in which those policies actually migrate across the country. So if we're talking about supermajority requirements, which you're no stranger to in Washington state - [00:05:08] April: Yeah, those are fun. [00:05:09] Mike: Oh, very fun. Very fun. But these supermajority requirements were originally constructed in a lot of places in the South to be a firewall to prevent tax increases that would have would have gone to supporting this coalition of poor Black and poor white southerners in their attempts to rebuild the South after the Civil War. But these supermajority requirements really restrict that ability for that population to do that and protect wealthy, property-owning whites in the South. You can see that in property tax limits. You can see that in some of the first modern sales taxes where you have these ideas around people who are just kind of leeching off the system, who aren't paying any taxes either through property taxes, but you can use the sales tax to get at it. And of course, the rhetoric and the policy is largely targeted at Black folks. So, I think if you can entertain that idea that these systems, these policies are shaped by these preconceived notions and these prejudices, these stereotypes, then really we're just walking through history and understanding the ways in which prejudice and white supremacy informs tax policy. [00:06:32] April: And you mentioned that values are part of the foundations of that, but I think sometimes it's also helpful to remember who was in power then and whose power and wealth was being protected. Right. Like, our communities are a lot more diverse now, but they're still not diverse enough. There's not enough representation in those institutions of power. [00:06:56] Mike: You know, I will say there were these years, especially directly right after the Civil War, where there was an effort of reconstruction. And if you read Eric Foner’s book on this, there's this really interesting section, where he talks about this era where you have this alliance between Black lawmakers and poor whites. And they created a coalition where they are actually trying to rebuild the South in a way that does include people who have historically not really been thought of, outside of kind of white, property landowners. Right. So there's this rare, very brief, rare moment where states are really investing in education, where public health takes a leap forward. There are programs to feed the poor that are popping up all over the South. And it's this really interesting question of what could have happened if that momentum had persisted? What would the South look like today? is a really interesting question. But unfortunately that era ends really quickly, in part because, to fund all of those very ambitious social programs, you have to raise taxes. And when you raise taxes, that got a lot of these, wealthy white folks angry. And then the violence starts and you have what they call the redeemers who use terrorism, essentially white terrorism, to end this reconstruction period, retake power. And then, as I was just saying, put in place all of those restrictions and firewalls that prevent any chance of any real reconstruction taking place again. And then you're totally right. I mean, once the redemption era is fully taking hold, you're talking about legislatures that are entirely white or predominantly white and are really illegitimate in the sense that, they're using everything they can from white supremacy terrori
