Governance, Trust, and Anti-Blackness

Solana Rice:
… Our federal government doesn’t work for us, that our federal government is against black people. And it’s hard to refute that. It’s really hard to refute that.
Hello everyone. Welcome to Racism is Profitable, a podcast about race and the economy. Welcome to our new season in 2023, and it’s Black History Month, Jeremie.

Jeremie Greer:
What’s up y’all? What’s up y’all?

Solana Rice:
I’m joined by my co-founder, co-executive director, Jeremie Greer, and we have a very special guest today, Devin Barrington-Ward.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Hey y’all. What’s up? I know it’s a new voice. I’ve always wanted to be in radio. This is like a childhood dream come true. Look at this.

Jeremie Greer:
Your voice just went down at octave, Devin. You’re working that radio voice.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Why did you have to call me out like that? No, it’s great to be a part of the podcast. I went from being a listener to now I’m on the podcast. Listen, anything is possible, y’all.

Solana Rice:
Devin is our new Communications Director at Liberation in a Generation Action, and Liberation in a Generation. And we’re so pleased to have you with us on the team, on the squad. We thought we’d just have a quick convo today.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah. First, before we get started though, Devin, tell us about yourself. Tell the folks about you. We know a lot about you, but tell folks about you. And I love where you talk about your why. Just talk a little bit about that before we get started.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Okay, cool. So yes, Devin Barrington-Ward, longtime community organizer, based in Atlanta, Georgia. But I spent time in a lot of different places. So I’m like Carmen San Diego, catch me if you can. I might be in a city near you.
But with that being said, I have dedicated my life to community organizing and building liberation in this lifetime, not the next. And I got my start doing this work with, y’all might have heard of her, her name’s Stacey Abrams. And this was in 2006 when she was first running for office and she saw me in my local high school. I was this know-it-all kid. I was on the speech and the debate team, and she was like, “Well, if you want to take some of those debate skills to go canvas on people’s doors, not necessarily debate, but tell people why they should vote for me, I got a job for you.”
And so from there … And shout out to Stacey Abrams because she helped me buy my first car that summer as a teenager. She was paying a living wage then in 2006.

Jeremie Greer:
All right, shout out to Stacey.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Yeah, big. That’s my big sister. So yeah, we went from there, I had the opportunity to manage a campaign for a state senator. I went to the state senate and was the chief of staff down there, and worked in other areas. I was a lobbyist for an early childhood education group with a group of black folks that were running daycare centers in Georgia and pre-K schools, making sure they got their fair share. And then I continued to work for elected officials for whatever reason, hoping that maybe I’ll find an elected official that I agree with more than I don’t. And I went to DC, and I worked at the DC City Council.
I got to work with Marion Barry. I didn’t work for him, but I got to work with his office a lot. And he just was just a great jokester and so told me so many good stories. And then that was when I made the commitment that I was like, actually, I’m done working for elected officials because I’m not really seeing no results for the black people that I care about. And it really tapped back into a spirit that was always there.
My great-grandfather is one of Jamaica’s national heroes. His name is Paul Bogle, and he’s a rebellion leader who led the 1865 Morant Bay Rebellion. And I think about that because he also started with trying to get an audience with the elected officials and those in government at the time about the conditions that people were experiencing in his parish in Jamaica. And he was denied that audience. And a lot of times now people dress up the denial of an audience for people who are demanding a change to their material conditions in ways that feel better. But is exactly the same thing, which is we will pacify you, we will string you along, but we won’t give you what it is that you’re looking for.
And so I found this amazing organization, BYP100, Black Youth Project 100, and got involved, started doing prison abolitionists work with them, re-imagining public safety, defunding the police, got involved with the movement for Black Lives, my first movement for Black Lives conference we de-arrested someone. And I was like, yes, I’ve got the abolitionist bug. We’re doing this. And so went to Atlanta. We did a lot of HIV policy work in between there with a group called Impulse Group, and went to Atlanta and started on this campaign to close the Atlanta City Detention Center and turn it into a community center named after Dr. John Lewis.
And then that led me to y’all. And so here I am building Liberation in a Generation with these amazing folks here. And so I’m excited that an organization this exists because it is so necessary. And when I told people I was working here, they’re like, of course you would be working [inaudible 00:06:08] Liberation in a Generation, of course, but what else would it be called?

Jeremie Greer:
That’s right. That’s right.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
That’s how I landed here.

Jeremie Greer:
All right, so before we get to it, I got to ask you a question because it’s February, black history month, but the Super Bowl just happened. And I’ll say the biggest thing though that set me off was the Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk hanging out in the booth together, which was reminding me, “Yep, this whole thing is a big bash of white supremacy.”

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Yes. That was like the Legion of Doom.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah, that was my …

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Legion of Doom, just hanging out in the VIP box. Oh, God. But I did not watch most of the game, but I saw the highlights and I was like, “Oh, this was a football game.” But I know people were really mad about some of the calls that were made and all of those things, but I was like, “Are y’all mad about Elon Musk and the Fox News Harbinger of doom? Y’all should really be mad about that.”

Jeremie Greer:
You actually wanted to talk about something today. You read an article that you wanted to talk about. I wonder if you could share that with the folks so that we could dive into it.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Yeah. So I read this article that was in the New York Times, and it essentially was just talking about how black folks in this country are more likely to be I audited by the IRS. And that just sent me in a tizzy for a variety of reasons. One, because we know that the racial wealth gap in this country is real. I live in Atlanta where we have one of the highest income inequalities in the country, and we’ve had that as a title for over five years.
And so while I see Atlanta as a place where you do see black folks thriving economically, it’s also a place where you don’t. And the black folks who are, quote unquote, thriving economically are oftentimes some of the first or maybe second generation of black people to actually be doing well economically. And so to imagine that these folks are being subjected to more audits by the IRS, to more government oversight than corporations that are not paying their fair share, really, really made me mad. The other thing that I thought was interesting was that you are more likely to be audited by the IRS even if you are not a six figure earner. Right?

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
And so I thought that that was absolutely insane. So one of the things that I thought about was a question around what was the return on benefit to you, IRS, to go after somebody who don’t have no money. Meanwhile, millionaires, I mean, they ain’t seen the IRS in years. They don’t even know what the IRS means. Right? Trump didn’t pay taxes for years. And so the idea that people who are making less than six figures, people who are barely surviving, with inflation, with all of the other things that are stressors on black and brown folks’ income to be subjected to essentially the IRS being weaponizes against them, was something that really grinded my gears.

Solana Rice:
Yeah. And I want to talk a little bit more about what the article brought up. For one, it references a lot of great studies that are from years past. So we know that this isn’t anything new. It talks about the fact that black Americans are between three to five times more likely to be audited, even when compared to other folks getting the earned income tax credit. So I thought what was so interesting, to your point, Devin, that the IRS has set up the algorithm for auditing, because let’s be clear, this is just a computer led thing, but it’s people that set up the algorithm to do the audits. They set it up so that it would audit easier, more direct, less complicated tax returns. So it’s like, “Oh, the people that have the easiest tax filings …

Jeremie Greer:
Who get one wage.

Solana Rice:
Yeah. One wage, one employer, maybe two. Those are folks with low incomes. And it also turns out even among the people that are low income, still black people were more likely to be audited. And what it raised for me was a fear that we can easily come to the conclusion that our federal government doesn’t work for us, that our federal government is against black people. And it’s hard to refute that. It’s really hard to refute that.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
It is. I mean, I thought when I saw this, I was immediately, in my head, I was like, there’s these redneck IRS agents who are typing on the computer laughing, giving each other high-fives around how they made this algorithm to screw over more black people. And so while I’m sure it’s not that simple, although I don’t work at the IRS office so I can neither confirm nor deny, what it does do is, again, feed into the continued conversation that black people have around our warranted mistrust of the government.
That even when it boils down to not only will we not receive due process under the law, not only will we not have these institutions that are supposed to be serving us serve us in ways that actually benefit our community, not only will we not see our tax dollars invested in ways that benefit black folks, we will actually see this institution be used to make the lives of black people more difficult. And so how do we square that with the necessary advocacy and policy work that also has to be done to shift this institution to be one of the ways that we aid black folks in shifting their material conditions, our material conditions, in our communities.

Solana Rice:
Yeah. Jeremie, can we rely on the federal government?

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah.

Solana Rice:
What do we do?

Jeremie Greer:
Before I get to that one, I want to double click on this algorithm thing, because y’all, when the robots turn on us, they going to kill a lot of black people.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Oh, listen.

Jeremie Greer:
Because …

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Elon Musk cars already been hitting black folks. They don’t even see us as human beings.

Jeremie Greer:
Yo, there’s going to be some Bull Connor Terminators out there, because they are writing these algorithms to not like us for real. So that was just my thing there. But I think what is the piece around algorithms that I want to highlight is, white supremacy always finds a way to hide itself. And right now it’s hiding itself in these algorithms. Because it’s like, can’t get a loan, algorithm. Can’t get a job, algorithm. Can’t get an apartment, algorithm. It’s all these algorithms. Why are the police in our neighborhood and not the other neighborhoods? Algorithm. It becomes the thing that people point to describe what we see as racism. They talk about the algorithm I think in like every other paragraph in this article rather than just saying, this shit is racist, this is racism at work.
As far as trust for government, like yo, it’s, again, Moe Mitchell talks a lot, all the time, about governance and this is about governance. The thing that why I say I think there’s progress in here is the reason that we know this, and the reason that the treasury to partner partnered with these Stanford researchers to do this report that was covered in the New York Times, was because Joe Biden put out an order for every government agency to do an audit of their programs around racial justice and racial equity. And they did.
So this research was a part of that order, and it’s referenced in the article. So why I say that I think we trust government, we trust government as long as we’re involved in the governance. And Joe Biden ran on that he was going to do that. Black folks helped him get in the office. We could say, look, Joe Biden hasn’t delivered on a lot of stuff, but he delivered on that promise. And here we are. At least we know now. Because as Solana mentioned, this has been going on for a long time, but it’s never been about race. This is the first research that really … We’ve always known EITC recipients get audited more than other people. What this research did was said, yes, EITC recipients who are also black are audited. And that’s where I think that we can trust government as long as we’re involved in the governance.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Absolutely. You can’t build anything or operate anything that impacts us without us being involved. And so I think that that is what this illustrates is that our involvement, or lack thereof, will shake out what some of the outcomes look like as it pertains to whether or not government actually engages in this type of self-reflective research to identify where it is hampering down or continuing the racism, the systemic racism.
I think the other piece though, Jeremie, about the algorithms though, is that what aggravates me about algorithms and data and all of these different pieces that oftentimes the folks who are developing these algorithms will say, “Oh, well algorithms are not racist. Oh, well we did it based on the data so that it will not be viewed as being racist.” And it’s like, when are we finally going to acknowledge that algorithms can be used to justify racism?
And it ends up being done that way more often than not. And I think I’m seeing a future podcast conversation around racism that’s baked in within algorithms and AI because it’s absolutely a thing. I mean, we’ve already seen it with the way that tech companies allow certain content from white supremacists to be out in the public sphere and content from black folks that are literally just saying that black lives matter be viewed as controversial and a problem. The algorithm doesn’t develop itself. People develop the algorithm. So who are the people that developed this algorithm? And I also am just one of those people that don’t believe that somebody did not tell them that this algorithm is racist.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah. Well, I mean, you’re right, because the thing that we know is proportionally as related to the population, the large proportion of EITC filers are black. It also notes in the article that people who are audited are typically people that don’t have business income, and black people tend to not have business income. So there’s like all the …

Solana Rice:
At least that we’re reporting.

Jeremie Greer:
Right. There’s all these little metrics that are like that you tick down and you’re like, “Oh. Well, black people, black people, black people, black people.” Which then skews these algorithms and direction, and I agree, I think you hit the nail the head of it. People know this when they’re creating these algorithms. You could create an algorithm that targets people like Donald Trump and his folks, people that invest in the stock market, people that own shares of businesses. There’s ways. People that own more than one home. There’s ways to target rich white people, but they’re choosing to target these folks instead. The other thing I want to say about the EITC that I think people should know is it is also really confusing. So when people are getting audited and then they’re clawing back these benefits, it is because the credit itself is very confusing.
You have to have earned income, and people may have earned income from multiple sources. Some of them may be W2s, which means it comes from an employer. Some of it may be 1099, which means you’re like a contractor, which includes Uber drivers. And you have to have children. You have to be the primary caregiver of children. Now I can think of a lot of black kids that maybe their grandmother takes care of them on Tuesday and Thursday, mama takes care of them on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Dad takes care of them over the weekend. So who’s the primary caregiver?

Solana Rice:
Who’s the primary, yeah.

Jeremie Greer:
You can only list one on your taxes. If two people list that kid and his social security number, it gets audited. So there’s also complication that’s built in here, and rather than auditing people, the IRS could be doing education, which means people are getting … So it’s not just the audit, it’s also the reaction. The reaction is punitive rather than educational. Because it’s not like people are scamming the government. It’s just really fucking confusing.

Solana Rice:
Yeah. It also makes me wonder, are they actually testing these algorithms for …

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Yes.

Jeremie Greer:
Of course they are.

Solana Rice:
Who’s most likely.

Jeremie Greer:
Why would you run them if you couldn’t test them?

Solana Rice:
Exactly. It seems like that’s a concrete recommendation, which is like once you develop the algorithm, just do a basic check of demographics that would likely model out who’s probably going to get caught in these audits. It seems like it’s pretty … Because you know what, if we were doing this to seniors, and it was just seniors …

Jeremie Greer:
It would stop.

Solana Rice:
It would stop.

Jeremie Greer:
If it was old white ladies, this would stop. It would stop.

Solana Rice:
We wouldn’t do that. Right? So it’s just a matter of, now that we know, okay, what is the way forward? So I’ll be really curious to see what the administration does with this information now that they have it. Because it’s one thing, like you said, Jeremie, that we now have the information, it’s another one to actually use it to course correct.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
One thing the article references is that the Inflation Reduction Act and some other legislative measures are now giving the IRS more tools and authority to go after corporations and higher income earners for taxes, which is a move in the right direction. But also I oftentimes think of, and I know this may not be necessarily popular amongst all folks, but I think about that first or second generation of black folks who are high income earners, who are folks who are owning businesses, who hopefully are employing black folks and paying them a living wage. To any of the black capitalists that are out there listening you can still change your ways. It’s not too late. But with that being said, I think about how will that also be inclusive of an understanding where people have had opportunity to build wealth for years, generational wealth, and people who are just now getting that opportunity, and how do they get caught up in these new policies that are targeting high income earners?
Because I do think that the way that we should be doing tax collection and all of those pieces should also be inclusive of some level of race equity. People who are first having the opportunity to build wealth for their families, and they’ve been denied that opportunity for many years because of systemic racism, are now going to be subjected to the same auditing policies that … I don’t even know if Lehman Brothers is around anymore, but whatever equivalent financial services firm or investment firm, are they going to now be held to the same standard or to the same scrutiny that folks who have had years to game the system have? It’s still, even moving in this new direction, I still believe that if we are not intentional, those who are earning higher income, which is different from wealth, will still be caught up in this cycle of being targeted by the IRS, which will prevent more black and brown families from being able to build wealth for their families, which is important. Everyone should be able to have the opportunity to do that in this country. And we know that that’s not the case.

Solana Rice:
Yeah, no, that’s a good point in that we don’t have enough ways to target wealth versus income, right?

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Yes.

Solana Rice:
We just don’t track it as much. And I’m so glad that we had this conversation.

Jeremie Greer:
That’s another conversation tax policy.

Solana Rice:
Oh yes. I know. We’ve got so many in the hopper.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah.

Solana Rice:
I’m glad that we had this conversation though, because as we started to talk about what is the future that we’re trying to build, we have to contend with the role of the federal government in that building. And while this was so disturbing, you’re right Jeremie, at least we have better information, now we can do real advocacy around the problem, and we have to keep our eyes on the governance prize.

Jeremie Greer:
Yeah.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
We do. I think the other piece of this conversation, because we talked about the political dynamics to some extent, but there are, here in Georgia, Republicans have already pounced on that and have said, “Well, this problem would be eliminated because Speaker McCarthy on his first day introduced legislation to cut thousands of IRS agents, and these IRS agents are out here targeting black folks, and the Democrats are claiming to have black people …”
Now those of us who are involved in this type of work regularly know that that’s a pile of shit. For folks who are not necessarily involved in this work and see and understand the dynamics and the insidiousness of what Republicans are proposing behind this cut to the IRS, it’s not to benefit black folks, it’s to benefit their rich donors who don’t want to pay taxes. So that’s the other piece of the conversation that they’re not talking about. But this potentially could have political consequences for the Democrats if they are not being intentional about the ways that they are going to reform the algorithm, end the algorithm and build something new, or just take the recommendations of black folks like me who are like, I don’t think that black people should be paying taxes, but that’s whole nother segment.
That’s all. I feel like once you make your first, if you make a half a billion dollars, because I don’t believe billionaires should exist either. Then if you black, well, yeah, you got to pay taxes. But other than that, no. But that’s my personal view. That’s not LibGen’s view that’s Devin Barrington-Ward’s view on that.
I just think about we knew that this was an issue because if you are in a area there are lots of black people and you listen to black radio or black television and one of the commercials that’s constantly playing is tax relief commercials, because we know that black folks are being targeted by the IRS. This study really confirmed what we had already knew that black folks had known without having to read a study, or read another article, because this is their lived experience. I have family members who cannot leave the country because of the challenges that they have with the IRS.

Jeremie Greer:
That’s right. I just want to double click on the McCarthy, because it’s funny, because the IRS are really the police of rich people, and it’s funny how they fine defunding those police, but they don’t want to defund the ones that police us. So I just wanted to point out that irony there. But yeah.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Like when Marjorie Taylor Greene said defund the FBI, I was like, girl. So we finally on the same page? Wow.

Jeremie Greer:
Girl, we together on that.

Solana Rice:
Well, thank y’all. This was a great conversation. Stay tuned for more, y’all.

Jeremie Greer:
Peace.

Solana Rice:
Bye.

Devin Barrington-Ward:
Later.

Solana Rice:
Thanks for listening. For more information, check out our list of episode resources and visit us at LiberationInAGenerationAction.org. Shout out to our producer and audio editor, Nino Fernandez, the design team at TrimTab, and the LibGen Action Communications Team. Like what you heard? Help us make some noise by telling two friends about the Racism Is Profitable podcast. Until next time, y’all. Peace.