I am happy to share the news that my book The Black Tax was named the winner of the Lizabeth Cohen Prize for Best Book on Cities and Political Power and received an Honorable Mention for the Kenneth Jackson Award for Best Book in North American Urban History from the Urban History Association

New reporting on the main issues covered in my book The Black Tax. This piece also echoes my argument on the effects of further cuts to local governments at the federal level: that it will make all of the regressive and predatory features of local tax policy and administration much, much worse.

NYC will resume selling tax liens to Wall St investors on May 20. My piece in Jacobin on what that means for the city's most vulnerable renters and homeowners and what it says about neoliberal local governance in America today.

I'll be talking about The Black Tax and NYC's decision to resume selling its tax liens to Wall Street at Mount Ararat Church in Brooklyn this Saturday at 11am.

NEW: Professor @akahrl.bsky.social, author of "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America," discusses his argument that local property taxes have contributed to the disenfranchisement of Black homeowners. 🎧 Listen here: www.buzzsprout.com/124942/episo...

A lengthy and generous review of The Black Tax in Forbes magazine. Grateful to reviewer Joe Thorndike for engagement with my work

Perspective: @joethorndike.bsky.social reviews "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" by @akahrl.bsky.social, which explores the ways in which local property taxes have been used as an instrument of systemic racial inequality.

Excited to share that The Black Tax has been named a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in History

For 150 years, all over the country, Black Americans have paid disproportionately higher property taxes while receiving far fewer public services, but due to a Depression-Era law, they've been unable to seek redress against discriminatory property tax assessments via SCOTUS. With @akahrl.bsky.social

Important new piece by Brookings, arguing that the same features of local tax systems that disadvantaged the poor and racial minorities and fueled place-based inequality in the past--the subject of my book The Black Tax--will only deepen as the effects of climate change worsen.

Made some news in 2024, among other Kenyon alums

United and Optum declined a request ProPublica made more than a month ago for an on-the-record interview about their coverage of behavioral health care and did not answer our questions, citing the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

This is what's so baffling about so many suggestions for AI in the humanities classroom: they mistake the product for the point. Writing outlines and essays is important not because you need to make outlines and essays but because that's how you learn to think with/through complex ideas.

Excited to share this review essay of The Black Tax in Public Books