By: Kenya N Rahmaan

President Donald J. Trump has appointed the world’s richest human, Elon Musk, to head the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. The purpose of the new agency is to find and eliminate wasteful spending. If there are going to be trillions of possible savings, there will be trillions available to pay the descendants of Black Americans. There will be backlash to a suggestion of this magnitude because less significant requests for equality or retribution for Black America has resorted in resistance ranging from subtle protests to death.

Of course, every Republican politician, successful and otherwise, has jumped on the bandwagon with their best efforts to not only impress the President but the man with the biggest bag on the planet, allegedly. And who else would find themselves on the top of the chopping block but the historically and currently most vulnerable American citizens, the Negroes. Mr. Kendall Qualls, a former Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota, is no stranger to throwing his fellow Black Americans under the bus when the rewards could mean recognition from bigwigs in the GOP. 

Not one to let the Larry Elders of the world take the spotlight, Qualls is back with his mediocre attempt at portraying Black America as unstructured ragamuffins in need of reconstruction from the government…again. In his latest op-ed for The Christian Post (2025), Qualls writes that the breakdown of the family has fueled devastating consequences across Black America, with ripple effects on surrounding communities. The statement might have delivered a more believable punch if Mr. Qualls had included the factors

contributing to the alleged devastation. Likewise, the sentiment of being concerned for the well-being of Black families is clouded when commentators mention an unwelcome spillover into non-Black communities.

Qualls’ sentiments appear waning for the revival of the Black American family. Most who discuss rebuilding Black communities and revitalizing nuclear family structures use nearly identical talking points as a schtick to undermine Black culture. However, comprehensive solutions, not just repetitive talking points, are crucial for reviving the Black American family. Usually, when someone launches a complaint, possible solutions are included with the problem. Along with the causes and potential remedies, most complainants will ensure the catalyst is analyzed to prevent future disasters.

To be clear, the statement lacks genuineness since the criticisms are exclusive to Black families and not ‘ALL’ families. Mr. Qualls is a self-described Christian who suggests that Black people need a recommitment to the church to restore the two-parent family. While that may solve some problems within religious non-nuclear families, everybody does not rely on the guiding light of the church to dictate their lives. People who do not subscribe to Christianity or other organized religions, for that matter, may not be receptive to joining a congregation to conform to traditional Americanism.

Joining a church is not the only remedy Mr. Qualls suggests. According to the Journal of Free Black Thought (2025), Black people should also denounce the misguided leadership of legacy Civil Rights organizations. The reasons why the Qualls of the world suggest renouncing the legacy of Civil Rights leaders are interesting. He alleges that these organizations have “pursued power, wealth, and status at the expense of the people they are meant to serve.”

Civil rights organizations and leaders are not the only groups and individuals encased in corruption and misgivings when answering the people’s call. History has proven that relying on the wrong community or religious leaders can result in nefarious situations. However, the idea that revoking support for civil rights organizations will somehow restore Black families in America could never fully occur without identifying the cause of the existing problems. The conceivability of holding others culpable for creating family obliteration and forgiving those who have been in control since the founding of the United States of America is inconceivable.

When discussing Black families’ challenges, it’s essential to consider a broader perspective. The late Democratic Senator and former Assistant Secretary of the United States Labor Department, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is often invoked in these discussions. An unknown source is said to be responsible for leaking ‘The Negro Family: A Case for National Action’ report, penned by Moynihan, in 1965, suggested a direct link between the destruction of the Black family and welfare. However, it’s crucial to remember that many other factors are at play in the complex issues affecting Black life.

Unsurprisingly, Qualls evokes Moynihan for providing a ‘groundbreaking’ analysis that predicted the future of broken homes. However, groundbreaking is not what comes to mind for some readers. Suppose welfare and broken homes are going to remain the prioritized topic for Black families for the next 60 years. In that case, there is one government entity that has formulated financial manipulation and damage throughout the nation. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) must face the same scrutiny for the monetary damage caused by its discriminatory policies that have discriminated against non-whites for decades. 

According to the Fiscal Data Treasury (2025), in fiscal year (FY) 2024, the Federal government collected 49.3% of total revenue from individual income. The taxed revenue exceeded a trillion dollars. Of the 1.6 trillion income tax money, Black Americans were the least benefited culture in the country. Take, for example, how the government targets Black Americans in tax-related activities.

The Urban Institute and the Tax Policy Center (2024) report that the individual income tax is progressive, meaning that higher incomes face higher tax rates. On the other hand, much like most other government agencies that collect taxes to benefit all Americans, Black people are least likely to benefit. The U.S. Treasury Department conducted a 2023 analysis, and the findings, reported by Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Lily Batchelder and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis Greg Leiserson of Tax Expenditures, were highly revealing. The tax professionals (2023 ) wrote that former President Biden directed agencies to examine policies and programs to identify whether and how they perpetuated barriers to equal opportunity.

The ability of the government to recognize the lack of equality and the need to enhance programs to assist the people lagging financially and familially indicates that we, as a nation, need to rebuild and not rebuke organizations supporting civil rights. Recognizing and addressing inequality is a crucial step towards a more just society.

Patrick Moynihan warned of Black family disorganization because of high nonmarital birth rates, which, he said, would contribute to a matriarchal society that would weaken the role of the Black man. What is missing from the Christian Post article is information about how the income tax regulations affected Black families during the Golden Age in America.

History.com Editors (2024) explain why historians coined the 1950s as the Golden Age because the U.S. was the strongest military power and a booming economy. Of course, a prosperous economy comes with perks. For the 3.4 million baby boomers born beginning in 1946, their parents could afford new cars, suburban houses, and other consumer goods. (History.com Editors). Nevertheless, some went to War, worked hard if they returned, and remained stuck in the same place they had fought and worked to leave.

Gene Demby, a journalist and podcast host for NPR, and his cohost, Lori Lizarraga, interviewed Georgetown Professor Dorothy Brown. As a tax attorney and author of “The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverished Black Americans and How We Can Fix It.’ Professor Brown was able to fill in the missing information that factors into the financial struggles experienced by African Americans for decades.

One of the topics discussed during the interview was how much taxes are paid by Black people filing taxes as individuals versus married couples. Lizarraga asked about the lower pay and paying more taxes and how these families affect two-family breadwinners. Professor Brown said, “One of the reasons people on the right argue Blacks are living in poverty is because we’re not married, right? Then what you find out is, yeah, when we’re married, our taxes go up.” Paying higher taxes for marrying is a critical reason to avoid contractual nuptials, especially for historically underpaid and overtaxed Black Americans.

Qualls continues describing how Moynihan’s predictions came to fruition on the 60th anniversary of The Report being made public. According to Qualls, 24% of Black children are being raised in single-parent households, and have two parents in the home. While he fails to describe the family structures of the 24% living with two parents, Qualls is sure to remind his readers of the struggle the Black culture experiences. The writer does not discuss the income tax discrepancies but does point his finger at the civil rights organizers.

Professor Brown informs the audience that Uncle Sam taxed every American post-World War II, not just the rich. However, Blacks would not benefit from New Deal provisions. Brown said, “And nobody has offered to give us our money back, right? We are paying for second-class citizenship. We’re paying for separate but equal, right? So we’re paying for discrimination.” The discrimination that Black Americans continue to experience stretches beyond finances, and the government is to blame, not the matriarchy.

According to Brown, “From 1940 to 1950, we saw a minority of white homeowners become a majority of white homeowners with the assistance of federal policy and with Black taxpayers helping to foot the bill.” Nevertheless, Mr. Kendall Qualls and many others refuse to acknowledge the racial injustices that have devastated generations of Black people. In a New York Post.com op-ed from January 2023, Qualls wrote that Progressives convinced Black leaders to fool Americans into believing that the economic, health, and educational disparities plaguing our community are the result of racial injustices, white privilege, and systemic racism. The claim of no racist factors affecting Black families and their financial growth is proven wrong by the tax analysis prepared by the Treasury Department.  

In an Office of Tax Analysis (OTA) ‘first of its kind’ examination, government officials developed a study based on imputed race and ethnicity in tax data (Batchelder & Leiserson, 2023). The purpose of the new investigative technique is to allow tax officials to gather data from several areas from multiple nationalities. According to Batchelder and Leiserson (2023), the new imputation-permitted method allowed the Treasury to conduct tax analysis by race and Hispanic origin and the analysis of tax expenditures by race and Hispanic origin. Moynihan only mentions taxes once in the entire Civil Rights era report, although the government has collected income taxes since the Civil War. Had the details of taxation discrepancies been introduced in the Moynihan Report, the Senator’s ‘predictions’ of the inevitable downfall of Black families, perhaps the tax law would have been written to benefit all Americans.

The words written by Qualls a few days ago, describing how Black men are being treated today by women and government agencies, were expressed in nearly the same diatribe shared by Assistant Labor Secretary Moynihan in 1965. Over half a century later, people worked tirelessly to validate an already popular talking point focusing on the continued emasculation of Black men. When considering that Black families were having more children than other Americans, Moynihan addresses parents’ inability to afford their children. He does not, on the other hand, mention the elevated tax rates Black people paid compared to their white counterparts.

Additionally, the low wages that parents were receiving while trying to keep up with rising costs are attributed less to discrimination and lack of equal pay and more to laziness and welfare dependency within Black communities. Qualls follows behind Moynihan (1965) when he tells the readers that because the father is either not present, is unemployed, or makes a low wage, the Negro woman goes to work.

Society could bury the popular narrative of Black mothers and wives disposing of their unemployed and emasculated husbands as seamlessly as they began by reading other nostalgic accounts of Black history. The first misconception to be corrected is that Black women are too lazy to work, instead choosing to stay home and collect welfare. The truth is that the U.S. government and private citizens alike have required Black people and entire families to work for absolutely nothing before and after emancipation. Beginning in 1865, when the Federal Government formed the Freedman’s Bureau post-Civil War.

One of its primary functions was to assist in acclimating slaves to freedpeople. Many say to leave the past where it lies, but forgetting that is much more challenging when reality mimics yesteryears. The tax codes, like the Black Codes, were created to disenfranchise non-Black Americans. When considering the OTA’s ‘Tax Expenditures by Race and Hispanic Ethnicity: An Application of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Race and Hispanic Ethnicity Imputation’ Working Paper 122, the data translated by the authors is fluid and based on past tax information. According to Julie-Anne Cronin, Portia DeFilippes, and Robin Fisher, authors of Working Paper 122 (2023), when comparing the share of dollars to population shares, the overall benefit of the eight tax expenditures accrues disproportionately to White families. One of the reasons for the disparity is that white families receive better capital gains returns.

According to Cronin et al., the disparity that is driving the preferential rates for capital gains are:

• 92 percent of the benefits of which accrue to White families, the deductibility of charitable contributions,
• 91 percent of the benefits of which accrue to White families, and the deduction for pass-through income, and
• 90 percent of the benefits of which accrue to White families.

With incredible return rates and overall higher wages on average, the discrepancies increased and shrank expeditiously under Jim Crow between

white and non-white families. One would expect the differences to terminate once discrimination within government entities was outlawed. However, research and simply observing life in America has determined that it is a lie; it has not subsided. One could also consider refundable credits as a benefit to Black families if there were a plus side in the relationship between Black Americans and the tax program.

The examiners found that the benefits of the three refundable credits accrued disproportionately to Hispanic families and, in the case of the Earned Income Tax Credit or EITC, to Black families. At first glance, the EITC seems to benefit Black individuals. However, EITC targets low-income earners, many of whom do not have an individual income tax liability (Cronin et al.) When comparing the EITC to the other tax benefits received by white taxpayers, the refund is a drop in the bucket to the financial discrepancies experienced year after year by low-income African Americans.

Nora Cahill and William G. Gale from the Brookings Institute researched the income gap between households based on race. According to the research duo (2024), data show that the median white household has

• at least 10 times the wealth of the median Black household;
• average wealth in white households is six or seven times the average wealth in Black households and
• maintained a substantial wealth gap that has grown over the last 30 years.

When people like the late Walter E Williams compare Black families today with those surviving through slavery and Jim Crow, they are attempting to minimize the devastating result that unpaid and underpaid labor, along with the denial of federally earned benefits, has wreaked on generations of Black people. Instead of acknowledging the theft of money and people, Qualls throws the fault on left-wing institutions who, according to his WaPo article ironically titled, ‘Black families need fathers — not reparations for slavery’ are responsible for “helping destroy the Black family while producing a culture of pervasive victimhood.” https://youtu.be/k5QAyuCiq_g

Instead of acknowledging the damage inflicted upon vulnerable human beings that resulted in poverty and the inability to pull oneself up from the proverbial bootstraps, truth deniers rather repeat the same disheartening yet even more distorted recollection of history. Famous economic scholars such as Williams and his colleague and best-selling author, Professor Thomas Sowell, receive praise when relaying disinformation about Black people. Most conservatives, no matter their nationality, would instead assume any negative recollection of Black people in America that can transfer guilt or any participation in wrongdoing back onto the victims is going to garner a warm reception. The fact that both storytellers are Black Americans solidifies what their audiences perceive as the rational voice of all Black people.

Based on the two Black representatives operating as conservative mouthpieces and their rhetoric trickling down to those who experience less popularity and fame, the misguided and poorly delivered Black history reaches the masses. One of the receivers shared that the most significant cause of Black inequality is not slavery, or redlining, or Jim Crow- it’s our community’s dependency on social welfare programs and the fatherless families they continue to subsidize. (Qualls, 2025).

Think of how much could change if the United States government not only acknowledged but financially compensated the descendants of slaves. If the Trump Administration would declare the savings recouped from DOGE as compensation for all wars (foreign and domestic), social security payments, and loss of generational wealth because of the denial of mortgages and other veterans’ benefits, Black Americans could realize the American dream. After all, our ancestors were instrumental in building the nation into what it is today. The lie of Black fathers experienced methodological absolution of their rightful place as the head of the family has one purpose. That purpose is to divide Black women and men because the blame of the so-called family division cannot assume the rightful place- on Uncle Sam’s shoulders.https://thechildsupporthustle.com/the-truth-about-welfares-man-in-the-house-rule/

Make no mistake, the welfare system in America may have caused dependency on government benefits for a short while. The dependency lasted for far less time than reported and by far fewer Black women and children than Quall and others care to report. Since the inception of the Welfare State and before, two-parent working families were common with or without contractual marriage. Black men and women have worked since the first stepped off the slave ship onto U.S. soil. Additionally, while nuclear families were common among white Americans, Black children were cared for, looked after, and loved by all parents within the community. The village was responsible for the family. https://youtube.com/shorts/h9ScLZ8psYQ?feature=share