Economic Equity and The Double Tax

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman has written an incredible book. Incredible because of just how information is packed into its one-hundred and seventy-five pages, and how the work she does for readers makes advocacy much easier. If not advocacy, then challenging any would-be tech, finance, or fintech bros who are still playing devil’s advocate about the conditions of lives that aren’t white, cis, het, and/or male. The facts in The Double Tax may be news for some (for those folks, please don’t stop talking about this book just because you’ve stopped reading it), but for marginalized folks, specifically Black people, this book will likely offer validation, and perhaps a sense that you’re not alone. I hope it brings a sense of healing with it that I felt while reading some stories as a white trans man.

Reading this book as a trans man, I found many of the stories resonant even though I’m neither Black, nor a woman. It’s a testament to Crenshaw’s enduring intersectionality that when we prioritize Black women and the issues they face, especially economically, the world is better and more equitable for everyone. One of the most important parts of the book was the general focus on policy. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley once said, “Policy is my love language” and The Double Tax shows why there are few other options for Black women. It is not simply a matter of conversations that challenge perspectives but ensuring that perspectives changed also change the systems they frequent. Protecting Black vitalities through policy is the only way to uproot the tendrils of racisms (and their attendant -isms) that make thriving impossible for Black women, and many others. All of the chapters can be turned into advocacy in politics, whether that is local, state level, or federally (or in Canada where I’m reading, local, provincial, or federal). It was a beautiful gift readers were given in its contents.

There are serious facts in this book, but Opoku-Agyeman recounts them with a humor that readers aren’t owed, but that she graces us with. For example, “Perhaps that’s why my smile is tinged with a bit of disappointment whenever I hear about another “first”. It’s not that I am not proud of women of color for breaking barriers. It’s that being the first, the only, or the one–in the year of our Lord 2025–is not a flex. It’s a sign of how little things have changed and how much further we need to go” (p.47). In the same way that I quoted Ayanna Pressley above, I can easily see Opoku-Agyeman being quoted by others because she writes so well. I read a book where a congressman’s review on the back of it said that they wished every Congressperson would read it. I feel the same about this book, but in Canada it would be MPs, MPPs, as well as Regional and City Council members.

There were a few parts of the book that I thoroughly enjoyed and wanted to mention here. As a Canadian reader, I was relieved to see the country mentioned in the section about unions and pay equity. What I appreciated was not the sense of being different from the disparities she writes about in the United States. It was moreso the way she wrote about it so that we are not the exception but a note of different practices leading to different outcomes; Exception is not exemption. It denies Canadians the ability to say that based on it being comparatively better here, we have less work to do. A final highlight (because I’m not going to spoil the contents of this really good book), is the way Opoku-Agyeman talks about days of equality being not about equality, but more about the chasm between true equity and the present status of an issue. I think that corporate leaders doing any DEI work would benefit from reading this book for that fact alone. It would behoove HR personnel and hiring managers, who are not aware of the details of the issues in the depth Opoku-Agyeman presents to familiarize themselves with them. One way this book could be implemented is through a corporate book club where everyone comes together with an ERG (employee resource group) to write policies protecting and elevating Black people in the workplace that are missing, invisible, or haven’t been a priority. Absolutely worth the investment of that time.

When people talk about white feminism as advocating singularly, or white 2SLGBTQ+ rights being one-dimensional (highly recommend also reading Rodrick Ferguson’s book One Dimensional Queer for more information about this because Black trans women face the same struggles as Black cis women, and then some), Opoku-Agyeman’s book shows what those single-issue politics, or in Audre Lorde’s terms, “single issue struggles” leave out in economic terms. Don’t let conversations about reparations, or the contexts in which they can be brought up fool you into dissonance with equitable values. Economic parity for Black people has a long way to go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t get going with Black women leading the way. Capitalism and the economic systems as they are now, are not definitive, nor are they a feature of nature. They are human creations that benefited some in order to create wealth that accomplished a variety of economic and political ends. It is not just that change is possible, but that little by little, policy advocacy, the likes of which Opoku-Agyeman writes about is realistic. Advocacy and change start with education. I cannot think of a better place to start learning about the economics of racism, and how to sow seeds of change, than The Double Tax.