Black Tax

I recently watched an episode with Oprah where she has Trevor Noah on Super Soul to discuss his book "Born a Crime" and at one point in the discussion he mentioned a term that resonated with me. It was one of those terms you may have never heard before, but I could somehow tell what it meant because it so accurately described itself. The "Black Tax", as used by Trevor and many others relates to having to continue to pay for the historical sins of the past. Here is his example.

“Growing up with a black mum in apartheid South Africa gave me a very different experience. Simply put, a mixed child walking around with a black woman wasn’t something one saw every day and being her son was indeed a crime. My mum however, was determined that I didn’t feel such pressures and went out of her way to give me a life that truly started with a blank slate.”

The "Black Tax", is a term that has been used in America to mean paying more for things simply because one is black. Just a note, this doesn't always just refer to finances. 

This example I completely understand. I was born a mixed child from a black single mother in Jamaica that was third generation free slave. And the rest of my maternal heritage were slaves in Jamaica with the full African slave experience. My husband has the same situation and we determined to stand in the gap and pay the “black tax” for our children as well. We coined the term “Firstlings” to describe our situation for payment of the black tax. We were the first in our families to accomplish many things. We unfortunately did not have the privilege of climbing on the steps that were created before us by parents and grandparents. This has greatly shifted our educational, social, spiritual, economical and fundamental status. We should have been able to at the minimum begin life at ground zero and work our way up like most other people.

In truth and actuality, the "Black Tax" over the years has been compounded, and we felt like we began at a deficit minus 100. This is the privilege that we are given for being born into a history of colonial oppression, curses to our family line and injustice that has never been fully addressed. 

My husband and myself have used our opportunities and finances to bring our family back up to zero, because the generations who came before us have been raped, robbed and pillaged.

We are the pioneers who made it out of the “ghetto” or “Egypt” and have not truly been able to enjoy the spoils. We have been trying to get “Egypt” out of us and get our children into the promised land. 

 As pioneers from a black family we have had to spend prayers, time, money, and resources ensuring that our loved ones live a "regular" life. This has been a hard journey and an experience that we corporately share with many other black people in Canada, America, South Africa and other places that have suffered from systemic racism. 

Imagine this scenario; you are playing a board game and every time you pass “Go” instead for getting $200 like the other players you somehow get the snakes and ladder experience and have to begin all over again.

I end sharing a quote from Trever Noah that explains many of the effects of the “Black Tax” and “Privilege”. 

“If you think of it like this — you know a lot of the time when you hear people having conversations about white privilege, male privilege and so on, I think sometimes what gets lost is with the word “privilege” comes the connotation of having a good time. You know, people go, “What privilege? I may be a white man but I’m poor. I may be a white man but I’m suffering.” And that is completely true. And sometimes I go, “Maybe in the labeling, it’s almost like it could have gone the other way and it’s like, is it a black disadvantage? Or is it a female disadvantage?” Because we cannot deny that there are certain handicaps that come with these certain labels you know that exist. If you look at the effects of what you’ve lived through in your life, you cannot deny that they compound. You cannot deny that they grow over time. So people who say things like, “Get over it, slavery’s done” or “Get over it, apartheid is over,” then I go, “You cannot get over it because it ending is merely the beginning of your journey.” And so, you think of it like this—in my family, I was the first person in my family who was allowed to go to a white school or a school that was considered white. My grandparents were not taught the things that other people’s grandparents were taught if they were white in the country. And so now, even if we’re not talking about financial inheritance, we’re talking about now educational inheritance. My grandfather and grandmother couldn’t bequeath to me an education that they would have learned because they didn’t get it. My mother, self-taught for many things. She was lucky in that she encountered a missionary and that’s where she learned things that the government wasn’t teaching to many black people. So, there you see someone equalizing or get her back to zero, which is where everyone should be able to start from.”

My prayer will be that as we continue to have conversations such as this one in mainstream that the ears and hearts of all involved will begin to deal with the truth around the feelings that we have so long ignored and pretended that they don’t exist.