Congressional Black Caucus Proposes White Tax-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has proposed that white people should have to pay a “black tax” or a “white tax” for not having enough melanin in their skin and benefiting from white privilege.
The Truth:
The Congressional Black Caucus has not proposed a “white tax” or “black tax” on people who have don’t have enough melanin in their skin and have benefited from “white privilege.”
That rumor appears to have started at TheBlackSphere.com, a self-described party of the “Tea Party community,” on February 20, 2017, under the headline, “Congressional Black Caucus Introduces Bill: Tax People for Being White,” that begins:
It’s time for white people to pay the “black tax.” That’s the tax for not having enough melanin in their skin, ergo gaining from “white privilege.”
Yes, once more white America suffers the guilt of people who haven’t been slaves or oppressed in any way. The Congressional Black Circus, most more wealthy that 99 percent of our readers race-bait in order to keep the gravy train running.
To support those claims about the so-called “white tax,” the story links to a Washington Examiner article about how Democratic Congressman John Conyers of Michigan had introduced a bill proposing a committee to study whether or not black people should receive reparations for slavery.
However, the Examiner article mentions nothing of a “white tax” or a “black tax,” and TheBlackSphere.com article is a classic example of online publishers making a bold or controversial statement in a headline and then failing to provide any sources or proof to back up that statement in the body of the story.
In reality, Congressman Conyers had introduced the same bill, H.R. 40, to establish a committee to study reparations for the decadents of slaves every year since 1989. The bill’s introduction states that its purpose:
To acknowledge the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery in the United States and the 13 American colonies between 1619 and 1865 and to establish a commission to examine the institution of slavery, subsequently de jure and de facto racial and economic discrimination against African-Americans, and the impact of these forces on living African-Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies, and for other purposes.
Again, Conyer’s bill does not call for reparations. It merely calls for the acknowledgement of “the fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery” in the United States from 1619 to 1865, and the formation of a commission to “make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies.”
The Congressional Black Caucus has not proposed a “white tax” or a “black tax,” which is why we’re calling these rumors “fiction.”