The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

solely for charitable, religious, or educational purposes, including
fraternal beneficiary associations.” The Revenue Act of 1917
permitted individual donors to deduct from their own income taxes
contributions to tax-exempt organizations. Regulations of the
Department of the Treasury that guide IRS decisions define
charitable organizations that are eligible for tax exemption as those
that, inter alia, work “to eliminate prejudice and discrimination.”
The Supreme Court has ruled that “allowance of a deduction
cannot be permitted where this result ‘would frustrate sharply
defined national or state policies proscribing particular types of
conduct, evidenced by some governmental declaration thereof.’”
Even before the Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing discrimination
was unlawful under Section 1982 of the Civil Rights Acts of 1866.
So although public attention was not focused on housing
discrimination from the 1920s until the 1960s, granting a tax
exemption to institutions that operated in violation of Section 1982
was contrary to “national or state policy” as well as a violation of
the Fifth Amendment.
The Bob Jones case specifically concerned whether a racially
discriminatory educational institution could receive tax-exempt
status. The Court’s ruling was rooted in a recognition of national
policy to eliminate school segregation, but the reasoning equally
applies to government support, through tax policy, for any racially
discriminatory institution.
p. 103, 2 Cote Brilliante Presbyterian Church online; Wright 2002, 77; Long
and Johnson 1947, 82.
p. 104, 1 Miller 1946, 139; Brilliant 2010, 97. Neighborhood homeowners’
associations themselves are rarely tax-exempt; nor are
contributions to them tax deductible. However, businesses seeking
to protect their neighborhoods from integration sometimes
inappropriately deducted contributions to segregation groups as
business expenses. The Seattle Civil Rights Project has posted a
copy of a 1948 leaflet distributed by the Capitol Hill Community
Club of Seattle in which it solicited contributions for legal
expenses incurred in the course of updating racially restrictive
covenants in its neighborhood. The leaflet promises that
contributions for this purpose are tax deductible as business
expenses. I don’t know how widespread this practice was, or if it
was sufficiently common that the IRS should have taken notice.
p. 104, 3 Long and Johnson 1947, 53, 83.