The argument should be that regressive taxes like soda taxes, much like speeding tickets, affects the poor at a much greater clip. Who cares about a soda tax or a speeding ticket when you make 500k a year? If you make that much and you want soda or you want to speed, you're going to do it. However, if you make 28k a year, the calculation is much different.
In America, poverty and race are strongly correlated (and there's causation, but I digress). Because of that, it's easy, although inaccurate, to use classism and racism interchangeably.
Calling someone racist creates a larger emotional response and is more damaging to social equity than calling someone classist.
Hence calling soda taxes racist.
Also, wouldn't we expect that organizations that are explicitly anti-racist would conclude that because classist policies or laws have racially disparate impacts, addressing them still increases racial equity even if they are ostensibly motivated by race-neutral class concerns?
I would not contend that they were not racist. I wasn't implying that every classist action is actually racist or vice-versa. Just that some are incorrectly labeled for rhetorical effect.
> addressing them still increases racial equity even if they are ostensibly motivated by race-neutral class concerns
Yep, nearly anything that effects class equity in the US will also effect racial equity.
It's funny, I heard my father-in-law parroting this when complaining about soda taxes. I also don't care for the taxes, but I don't see them as inherently racist. In fact, hearing him say this made me think that the characterization of the tax being racist is, itself, racist, as it bears the presumption that various minorities more regularly make the irresponsible personal choice of drinking soda, and this is without any data to prove it.