Dorothy A. Brown is a professor of law at Emory University. She is the author of the forthcoming book “The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans — and How We Can Fix It,” from which this essay is adapted.
John, who is Black, and his wife, who is Japanese American, purchased a family home in a suburb of Atlanta in 2004.
When he was interviewed for my book, John — who asked to be identified only by his first name to protect his family’s privacy — said the couple chose to buy in College Park, where 80 percent of the residents are Black, because they expected their children to identify and be treated as Black. They wanted the kids “to be in the village of Black community life, and to understand the cadences and relationships that are built there.”
But the family’s time in College Park didn’t last long. Because of the relatively low home values in their neighborhood and the resulting low property taxes, the public schools in the area were underfunded. So after their second son was born, they decided to move to an area with a better-funded school district.
This time, they bought in Candler Park, an area that is 87 percent white and less than 5 percent Black. In 2014, John and his wife sold their College Park home in a short sale for $60,000 — $144,000 less than what they paid for it.
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