Dean Presents Global Jim Crow: Taxation And Racial Capitalism At Boston University

Steven Dean (Boston University) presents his forthcoming book Global Jim Crow: Taxation And Racial Capitalism (Oxford University Press) at Boston University today as part of its Congresswoman Barbara Jordan Speaker Series on Race, Law, and Inequality (register here):

What makes some nations rich and others poor? Why do even the most powerful states struggle to tax giant multinationals? One answer to both questions lies in a system of Global Jim Crow created as a response to fears over the rise of sovereign African states in the late 1950s and 1960s. For more than half a century, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has shielded multinationals from taxation, doing its job so well that even the wealthiest states lack urgently needed tax revenues. More than six decades into its existence, the OECD has still never had a majority-Black member and continues to exploit anti-Black racism to preserve its power.

Congresswoman Barbara Jordon Speaker Series on Race, Law & Inequality
Despite the laudable ideals expressed by this nation’s founders, US law has routinely been written, enacted, and interpreted by those in power in ways that reinforce, rather than dismantle, racial inequality. In this sense, law has become one part of the structures in which racism is embedded. This structural racism touches upon every area of the law, and nearly 250 years into this democratic experiment that is the United States, people of color have still not gained full and equal membership in US society. 

In this new speaker series, we invite leading scholars to examine the intersection between race, inequality, and the law; to reveal how US law, as it is currently written and interpreted, falls short of the ideals on which this country was founded; and to offer their insights on how we may pursue fundamental change in our system of laws that will finally deliver on the promise of equity and justice for all.