State Looteries by Henricks and Embrick is a must read for anyone interested in financial justice for all. While implicit bias is often thought of when we discuss the criminal justice system and mass incarceration, rarely is it even considered when we discuss tax policy. That is why this book is so important. It provides a behind the scene look at how a seemingly neutral thing, like state lotteries, can impact taxpayers differently because of their race. Read it and weep.
- Dorothy A. Brown, Vice Provost and Professor of Law, Emory University
If we really want to comprehend where todays economic justice stands so far as race is concerned, perhaps we should look no further than tax law. Henricks and Embrick do just that in State Looteries. With both plain English and piercing analysis, they capture the subtleties of how race and racism shaped the emergence of state lotteries over the past 50 yearsa truly fundamental shift in the tax code. This is among the best cases yet for racially-conscious public policy that says enough is enough.
- Kimberl W. Crenshaw, Director of the Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, Columbia University and Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
State Looteries provides a devastating and comprehensive examination of the sustained use of public policies to destroy and expropriate black wealth in America. This is a critical study that helps us understand the origins and persistence of todays enormous racial wealth gap.
- William A. Darity, Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and Director of the Samuel Cook Center on Social Equity, Duke University
Capitalism pays workers the lowest wages the market will sustain, and then devises ingenious ways to bilk the lower classes of their sparse dollars. State Looteries shows how the state is implicated, under the false pretense of sending deserving students to college, not only in looting the poor but also of stealing their dreams for deliverance.
- Stephen Steinberg, Distinguished Professor of Urban Studies, City University of New YorkQueens College and Graduate Center
State Looteries
Fifty years ago, familiar images of the lottery would have been strange, as no state lottery existed then. Few researchers have uncovered the obscure role lotteries play in the changing composition of American taxation. Even less is known about what role race plays in this process. More than simply taxing those on the social margins, the emergence of state lotteries in contemporary American history represents something much more fundamental about state fiscal policy. This book not only uncovers the underlying racial factors that contextualize lottery proliferation in the U.S., but also reveals the racial consequences that lotteries have in terms of redistributing tax liability.
Kasey Henricks is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
David G. Embrick is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut.
Routledge Advances in Sociology
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
173Social Movements in Violently Divided Societies
Constructing Conflict and Peacebuilding
John Nagle
174Challenging Identities
European Horizons
Edited by Peter Madsen
175Cool Nations
Media and the Social Imaginary of the Branded Country
Katja Valaskivi
176Thanatourism and Cinematic Representations of Risk
Screening the End of Tourism
Rodanthi Tzanelli
177The Decent Society
Planning for Social Quality
Pamela Abbott, Claire Wallace and Roger Sapsford
178The Politics and Practice of Religious Diversity
National Contexts, Global Issues
Edited by Andrew Dawson
179So Paulo in the Twenty-First Century
Spaces, Heterogeneities, Inequalities
Edited by Eduardo Marques
180State Looteries
Historical Continuity, Rearticulations of Racism, and American Taxation
Kasey Henricks and David G. Embrick
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Kasey Henricks and David G. Embrick to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Henricks, Kasey, author. | Embrick, David G., author.
Title: State looteries : historical continuity, rearticulations of racism, and American taxation / by Kasey Henricks and David G. Embrick.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Series: Routledge advances in sociology ; 180 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016017509 (print) | LCCN 2016028731 (ebook) | ISBN 9780415717649 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315869803
Subjects: LCSH: LotteriesUnited StatesHistory. | RacismUnited StatesHistory. | TaxationUnited StatesHistory.
Classification: LCC HG6126 .H46 2016 (print) | LCC HG6126 (ebook) | DDC 975.3/80973dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017509
ISBN: 978-0-415-71764-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-86980-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Few events can better show how precious life is than the threat to have it taken away. More than 10 years ago, close friends and I stood in a courtroom where our fates would be determined. We were youths not fully comprehending the ramifications of our actions, knowing the law but too stubborn to obey it. I remember the disappointment in my mothers eyes when she picked us up from the juvenile holding facility, her tears running down her face, drowning any words to be said. My fate was no longer in her hands, but in those of the prosecuting attorney.
Though he would determine our futures, at the time it seemed like they had already been chosen. As kids growing up on the wrong side of the tracks in a poverty-stricken Southern city, there was no money for college and few job options aside from fast food. When many in our graduating class were applying for college, I was checking help wanted ads and wondering how my family would make rent. Seeing my mom work 80 hours a week at the local Pizza Hut, I became keenly aware that character, hard work, and dedication did not make our American Dream come true. I knew what class oppression was about because this was my experience.
