State Looteries

"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 today’s 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 years—a truly fundamental shift in the tax code. This is among the best cases yet for racially-conscious public policy that says enough is enough."

- Kimberlé 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 today's 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 York – Queens College and Graduate Center