The pay gap for African American women — and what we can do about it

Today is African American Women’s Equal Pay Day — the estimated point in the year that black women, on average, have to work to make what the average man was paid the previous year.

For me, today stands for all the progress we’ve made — and the many, many steps that are left for us to take.

You may know the statistics. Women as a whole make 79 cents on the dollar as compared to men. And for African American women, it’s even worse — we make just 63 cents on the dollar. The fight for equal pay, and equal rights, is personal for me, going all the way to my childhood.

I grew up in Mobile, Alabama — a place in the 1950s and 1960s where it was impossible for a child to have any illusions about racial or gender equality. I was just five years old when I saw my father get beat up by a group of Ku Klux Klan members. They surrounded and outnumbered him on a dirt road on the way home from church on Christmas Eve.

My dad was my hero. Passionate, humble, and resilient — in the 1940s he became the first African American elected to office in the Deep South since Reconstruction. And he and my mother instilled in me the belief that each of us could better the world around us, no matter who we were or the color of our skin.

Even in the heat and the hate of the Jim Crow era, my mother and father thoroughly believed in our country and our political system. They trusted that if you set a goal and worked toward it, taking a step forward every day, nothing was impossible. That dreams could become a reality, as long as you tended to them carefully.

I was expelled from high school at the age of 15 for challenging an old white school system. Their passion became my passion, shaping a path I have now followed for over 45 years. As an undergraduate at Xavier University, moving to New Orleans during the fight for freedom further shaped me, setting the purpose and drive I’d fight for my entire life.

My personal creed soon became clear: That equal wages were the only way we could ever hope to achieve equal rights. So, out of college, I focused on helping the underpaid and the left out workers. I moved to Atlanta at age 23 and worked to get African American women managerial-level jobs in the Deep South. By the time I was 29, I was in charge of the Labor Department’s Women’s Bureau, kick-starting employment initiatives targeted toward low-income, disadvantaged young women. The mission was simple: to find and employ those who had been discounted because of what they looked like.

Neither my mission nor my mantra has ever changed. When President Clinton (the first!) nominated me to be Secretary of Labor in 1997, I woke up every morning thinking about how to expand opportunities to all who call themselves American. Our battle for equal pay was never far from my mind.

To me, it’s a no-brainer. The studies are in. The stats are clear. The consequences of the wage gap are long term and far-reaching. It’s not just that we as African American women make thousands of dollars less every year, it’s that over a lifetime, those thousands become hundreds of thousands. It’s that in single-parent households, we’re less able to provide for our children — we’re less able to afford decent child care, adequate schooling, and safe housing. It’s that our kids’ futures and opportunities are also diminished when our salaries lag behind. It’s that we have less saved for retirement, and more of us fall under the poverty level as elderly citizens because of it.

This is discrimination, full stop. And discrimination has no place in our workforce.

That’s part of the reason I’m so thrilled that Hillary Clinton is our candidate this fall. Hillary’s been fighting for these causes for decades. She’s stood up and said that women’s rights are human rights — and that America’s workforce is strongest when women are represented in every area — from the classrooms to the board rooms. That’s why she introduced the Paycheck Fairness Act to Congress — multiple times — when she served in the Senate. And that’s why she’s promised over and over again that when she’s president, she won’t rest until girls and women get the same chances to succeed as boys and men.

You see, Hillary combines a once-in-a-generation intellect with a deep sense of compassion. She combines a uniquely creative political mind with the kind of courage familiar to any trailblazer and change-maker. I couldn’t be prouder to call Hillary my friend — and I couldn’t be happier that she’s about to break that highest, hardest glass ceiling.

In the world I grew up in I was automatically disqualified from reaching for the highest stars simply because of my gender and my race. So just thinking about the strides our country has taken in the years since I was that little girl in Alabama moves me deeply.

But while doors are opening and ceilings are shattering every way we look, the stakes we’re facing these next 77 days are much too high for us to feel complacent. The progress we’ve made, the policies we’ve passed, and the people’s lives we’ve changed for the better — all that good could vanish come January 20, 2017.

So I’m asking you to register to vote today — or, if you’re already registered, help a friend or a relative do so. It only takes a minute. The choice is simple this November. In Hillary Clinton’s White House, we will begin to close that gap. I am certain of that because Hillary is patient yet passionate, reasonable yet resilient — she has a goal in mind and a mission to achieve going forward.

She is the tough leader we need for these tough times, and she is ready to translate our dreams into reality.