The End of Racism for Black Women?
We did it! Cue the Beyoncé music. It’s time to celebrate the end of racism — for black women. At least this was one of the potential takeaways from a headline-making study produced by the Equality of Opportunity Project.
The top-notch researchers from Stanford, Harvard, and the U.S. Census Bureau produced a key finding: Racism handicaps black boys in the game of life. As adults, they earn far less than white males for reasons rooted in childhood. But, those reasons aren’t the usual suspects — family income, single versus two-parent households, or high poverty neighborhoods. At least two community factors do matter. They are the prevalence of racism and fathers in communities. This information will be helpful in shaping services and policies that reach boys.
Many noted an important sub-story. The conclusions solely apply to boys. So that must mean that black women and girls are unaffected by racism. What’s that noise? Sighs? Items being tossed across the room? Other sounds reflecting the frustrations of black women whose struggles are too often ignored? Even well-crafted research is limited, revealing only a few pieces of a larger puzzle.
Here are at least 5 reasons why, even with these findings, black women are not “crazy” for thinking racism matters to our lives.
1. Historic Wrongs
The Equality of Opportunity Project study focused on peer groups. For instance, black girls living in poverty were compared to white girls living in poverty. The two groups were found to have similar incomes as adults.
But all things are not equal. Black children are far more likely to be poor in the first place. Today 30 percent live in poverty compared to just 16 percent of white children. This disparity is rooted in history. During the Jim Crow era, black Americans were 2nd or 3rd class citizens, legally excluded from a broad range of educational and employment opportunities. As this era gave way to numerous civil rights victories and LBJ’s Great Society, the poverty gap significantly narrowed (Yes — sadly, it was worse than it is now.). But it never disappeared.
This weight of history affects black boys but also girls.
2. Wellness Wrongs
Well-being can be measured in multiple ways. Earnings are one of them. Quality of life is another.
Black women workers are stressed. There are some small unscientific clues. Trending hashtags like #BlackWomenAtWork and #WorkingWhileBlack have become forums to vent about race- and gender-related workplace challenges ranging from micro-aggressions to pay discrimination. Virtual bookstores stock titles specifically targeting black workers (mostly in professional positions). Sporting credentials like CEO, MBA, Ph.D., life coach, and even former employee of President Trump, these authors focus on a common theme of group-specific job barriers — barriers associated with stress.
It would be helpful to have more, but research is available. Examples include a recent Catalyst study, which coined the phrase “emotional tax” to describe these stressors, and older research associating racism at work with reduced life satisfaction (and especially for those under financial stress). For black women, intersectionality (the overlapping effects of racism and sexism) is the real bitch. Stress is bad on its own but it also hurts one’s health, speeding up black women’s internal aging process and causing problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, and strokes.
Race matters in ways other than earnings.
3. Hidden Wrongs
Real victories for black women could be reflected in this new research. The power of stereotypes may be diminishing. Black women may be successfully navigating around them. However, societal stereotypes about the inferiority of black workers help to mask one other possibility. What if black women should be much further ahead of white women? And what if lingering race issues are preventing that outcome?
The 1960s civil rights and feminist movements ushered in a new era. No doubt they expanded the dreams of both white and black women. But black women especially need the money that comes with new opportunities.
Various factors point to black women’s heightened economic insecurity. Black girls are more likely to grow up poor. During young adulthood, our parents can provide limited financial help. Our families have strikingly less wealth. We have higher amounts of student loan debt. Black women are less likely to be married, or legally tied to (and sharing resources with) with better-paid men. And we are more likely to be single mothers, taking primary financial responsibility for childrearing costs.
For white women, greater economic security may mean different career and job choices. Personal fulfillment and quality of life factors can play bigger roles in the big decisions or even day-to-day activities. Unfortunately, nuances in the way women work can’t be fully understood through simple Census questions that are most useful in distinguishing full-time from part-time workers.
There is some support for this theory. The Center for Talent Innovation found that black women were more likely to desire (generally higher paying) leadership positions but are also far less likely to get them. Racism and discrimination may be factors.
Equal doesn’t always mean equality. Perhaps black women should be even further ahead?
4. Intersectional Wrongs
If black women walked away from the struggle for racial equality, it wouldn’t be to be rest. It would be to spend more time on other wars.
Comparisons of black and white women hide the reality that both make less than men. The gender pay gap reflects disparities within professions but also an undervaluing of jobs/careers dominated by women. Black women are necessarily a part of the movement for gender equality. America’s disappearing middle class is making life harder for all races. Black women are necessarily a part of the movement for economic equality.
Black women have minority status within these cross-racial movements, creating a risk of not being heard or fully included. Indeed, the women’s movement has a long history of racial strife with white feminists periodically working against or ignoring the cause of black women. Similarly, New Deal era efforts in areas such as housing and education improved the economic security of average citizens — but took great pains to significantly exclude African Americans.
There are historic and current models of effective inclusion. But good results don’t come automatically and they always require work.
5. Generational Wrongs
People truly are a product of their times. The boys and girls studied were born between 1978 and 1983. They were a part of the first generation to fully reap the benefits of the massive policy and social changes that came out of the civil rights and feminist movements and LBJ’s Great Society. We just don’t know the fates of those who came and will come after.
Subsequent generations could be moving in a forward direction. Our culture may be effectively adjusting to changed roles for black women. Some stereotypes may be weakening. Expanding numbers of role models in a variety of professions may be encouraging and helping younger women.
However, subsequent generations may also be moving backward. Potential culprits are conservative victories that have been dismantling opportunity-generating policies of the 1960's. The re-segregation of public schools, mass incarceration, under-funded and ineffective jobs programs, growingly unaffordable higher education, and anti-government policies of President Trump and other politicians may affect generations of black women who were not a part of the study.
Progress on black equality is fragile and not guaranteed to be forward moving.
