Black Tax: Are Gen-Zers Having It Easier Than Other Generations?

Black Tax isn’t new, but Gen-Z is beginning to have to deal with it, as well as all the social components of navigating survival and building wealth while having to pay back investments in your future. 

Image Credit: Dimitri Bare /Pexels.

In the West, perspectives are different, and many people raise children with the knowledge in mind that they have chosen the responsibility, and that their children do not owe them financially once they go on to live their own lives. Family is family, and emotional support encompasses almost the full extent of what is required by each adult member of that unit. Unsurprisingly, poverty changes things. 

Clinton is a nineteen-year-old, second-year university student who spent most of his teenage years in Otukpo, Benue State. “After finishing primary school, I went over to Otukpo. My uncle had been married for only a few years and both he and his wife were medical professionals working out of town regularly. They had a small child who needed someone to be with at home when they were working, and so I ended up going through high school in Benue State.”

Clinton didn’t know what black tax was prior to his stay in Otukpo. He was aware of the almost-communal nature of personal success in African society, of course, but he hadn’t yet become aware of how pervasive it was or that there even was a name for it. “My uncle got taxed a lot. And I mean, a lot. Otukpo is a village, to be honest. It is rural and underdeveloped. The people there are poor, but they have some children who go to school and get jobs and begin to do well for themselves. Then they tax these people heavily.”

Black Tax is a term of South African origin which refers to money that black persons give their family out of their salary as a matter of obligation, outside of their own living expenses. This family includes parents, siblings, and other extended family.

In a society where family units have to evolve to accommodate systemic poverty, the idea of helping others along becomes fundamental to keeping families aloft. New adults have to support not only their immediate family, but also uncles and aunties and their children, and any living grandparents, while taking on the task of building and supporting a new family and raising children of their own. 

According to Clinton, his uncle had not even become a full medical doctor before he began to field requests from family members asking him for monetary support. “It was overwhelming for him. He barely had his feet under him and was just starting to get a house officer’s salary and already his parents had offloaded the support of his younger siblings onto him, and other things too. The way they seemed to rely on his money, you would wonder how they ever got along without him. But they did. They didn’t really need him to provide that much. They just wanted him to, because it was convenient and they felt it was their right for having a ‘big man’ in the family.”

This weight of responsibility passed on to a new professional while they’re still struggling to establish themselves is what Clinton identifies as one of the greatest obstacles to building generational wealth. “These people aren’t thinking. They aren’t letting you invest or save, or begin to explore avenues to build and sustain wealth. Instead of letting their young people grow and build wealth that lasts, they’re prepared to reap the low-hanging fruit even if the tree dries up.”

Many young professionals find themselves cutting away from home for this reason. “In the end, my uncle stopped giving completely. He’s actually very stingy now. He has quite a number of investments and personal projects, but its very difficult for him to give, even to his wife. It’s almost pathological, but he’s like this because people put so much weight on him that he snapped very violently. He was almost financially wrecked, and I think everything about that time in his life scares him.”

“People feel entitled to your money. If you don’t give it to them, you’re wicked. It’s why Otukpo remains the way it is. Try to build something or start a project to improve the quality of life beyond what simply sharing money around can accomplish, and they’ll frustrate you. People have been kidnapped and extorted by their cousins or old neighbors. My uncle has faced a few attempted abductions, too. This is black tax at the very extreme. You’re paying the tax by force, and to people you really have no personal obligation to help.”

Tolu, a twenty-one years old who maintains multiple streams of income to support her family, tells Kenga. “I know that having just one source of income will not be enough to satisfy the needs of literally all my family members,” she says. Tolu describes how she feels about it as a mixed jumble of often conflicting emotions. “Sometimes, it makes me resentful. Sometimes, I’m happy when I see them happy.” 

Image Credit: Nataliya Vaitkevich /Pexels.

For Tolu, the resentment comes from having to overextend herself. “I have to send my mum money. I have to buy food in the house. I have to pay bills, and give my sister money for her own needs. We have to still go out sometimes, and I pay for that, too. It’s just weird because I don’t have any savings. I literally have no savings, because if there’s a problem in the house, I can’t say, ‘Okay, I’m saving,’ and be looking at the problem. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t know how to just strong my hand. If I see that you need something, or you’re sad about something, I’ll just try to solve it, and I feel like that’s what they use, because my sister just goes around the house moping because she knows I’m going to ask her what’s the problem. Or even if I don’t ask, I’m going to be uncomfortable, and then she’ll come and meet me and tell me she needs whatever and I’ll do it.”

Tolu’s income doesn’t last and, in the race to cover the bases, she usually ends up being the party that loses. “Whenever I get salary or get paid for something, I’m already dividing the money. Like, this is going here, this is going there...”

Now, she tries her best to keep something back and maintain a little agency. “I never really spend money on myself. I never really do anything for myself. Until recently when I really started making a conscious effort to say, okay, this thing, even if it’s just a little, just to buy something for myself or take myself out, I can say that I did it for myself. Because what am I even using the money for? It’s not easy. I don’t like this life. I just imagine the number of things I’d have done with money if I had someone footing these basic bills, and it’s crazy. Sometimes, I cry, like, God, why did you give me this kind of family?”

The fact that it is family, with all the complex but, ultimately, loving relationships that develop between the tight-knit unit, means that it is not easy for Gen-Zers to complain about these things. Tolu cannot maintain her anger for long without feeling guilty for having what she feels are treacherous thoughts. 

“I don’t know,” Tolu says, “My family comes through for me too sometimes. So, I guess I should stop complaining.”

Black Tax isn’t new, but Gen-Z has started to deal with it, and balancing familial responsibility against responsibility to the self is not proving any easier for this generation, especially with the economy as it is.