Quote from a very interesting article linked in an Open Thread (hat tip to Matthew Swank):
I also said that [the documentary] marginalizes MOC because for example, the women make 70-something cents per dollar thing (that white feminists *always* use) is white women to white men. Black men, for example, make less than white women. And black women make even less than that. And this can really be applied to a lot of situations where white women have privilege over MOC. And then WOC are even less privileged than that. But white feminism erases the plight of MOC.
Economic inequality is one of the ways in which oppression is the most clearly unidirectional. Holding all other things equal, it is easier to be rich if you’re born in the professional class as opposed to the working class, white as opposed to a person of color, male as opposed to female. Obviously, there are a lot of people who are white men who end up broke, but if you’re a white man who grew up in a middle-class or wealthy family, you have a lot more options and opportunities than other people have, and it is easier to be one of the One Percent (still not easy, of course).
Of course, that’s when we fall into intersectionality.
Ozy’s Law (dude, it feels so weird to cite my own law) states that most forms of modern gendered oppression are bidirectional: that is, anything that oppresses one gender also oppresses another gender (although perhaps one may suffer more). However, because of intersectionality, even things that don’t oppress one gender more than another on aggregate may oppress members of one gender more than another. For instance, economic inequality. A middle-class white woman will likely make less money than a middle-class white man (partially because of the expectation that women do childcare); however, a poor black man will make far less money than her.
Of course, the feminist movement might quite rightly point out that it is primarily concerned with gender, and while fighting against racism is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, perhaps the anti-racists should be left in charge of it. Which is true! But the problem is that, given the nature of privilege, if we want to talk about economic inequality between men and women, unless we pay attention to the racial and class dimensions, we’ll end up talking about economic inequality between white, upper-middle-class men and white, upper-middle-class women.
That is hardly our most pressing topic.
Admittedly, there are a lot of reasons why white feminists don’t talk about race. I don’t talk about race a whole lot myself: I am continually afraid that I will end up saying something mistaken or out-of-touch or disingenuous-liberal-y, and so I end up saying not much of anything at all. But the problem with not saying much of anything at all is that you erase the very real struggles men of color experience with economic inequality.
Also, seriously, can we stop with the “men make more money than women” thing? White men tend to make more money than white women, who make more money than black men, who make more money than black women. And yet whenever the wage gap comes up people think you’re talking about gender. Christ.
I think there’s inherent sexism behind why men tend to die earlier than women, and racism in why blacks die earlier than whites, but that’s a ridiculous way to describe SS that you heard, Nancy. How is that different from saying that welfare is transferring money from white men to black single mothers? That’s not the point of the program, and it’s hideous demagoguery to frame it that way.
I’ve seen Social Security described as a way of transferring money from black men to white women– black men start working younger and die younger.
Also, it’s so uncomfortable to talk about race for me partially because I’m not one thing, and such conversations so often assume one identifies as only a single race. I’m like four races, where am I supposed to fit? For me, that just makes it all the more important. I’m mixed race: a ghostly white kid growing up in a brown family. I’m going to have opportunities that my great aunts and great uncles (I don’t have any aunts and uncles, so they’re my stand-ins) couldn’t even conceive of just because of my skin color. I’m humbled by that, and… Read more »
However, because of intersectionality, even things that don’t oppress one gender more than another on aggregate may oppress members of one gender more than another. And I think the desire to make a remark on aggregate may have something to do with why things like this are missed. Its a much heavier blow to just flatly declare “one gender has it better than the other” that to say “in some things one gender is better off than the other but then in this thing over here it switches but look at this one over here where pretty much all genders… Read more »
P.S. @daelyte: Ah yes that too. Ozy’s law does apply. Well at least it applies for the male/female portion. Some of the things that likely contribute to the wage gap are things like mocking of men trying to take care of children in the media, or being seen as a pedophile for taking your child to the park. Those things push men out of childcare, and in turn into making more money.
Hmm… in retrospect I sort of realized my wall of text didn’t touch on the article a whole lot. (This is what happens when I don’t make outlines*…) So the point I wanted to make in regards to the OP, one, as daelyte said, black women make more money than black men if you don’t try and control for things like education. Two, things like “the wage gap” are really complicated. When it comes to racial gap a huge part of it is probably things like lack of education, unfair courts, and other general troubles in addition to any direct… Read more »
@Lamech:
I think Ozy’s Law applies. Men do stuff they don’t like to make more money because they’re expected to, because women have to work less hours so they can take care of the kids, because men can’t stay home and take care of the kids.
Young, childless, single women earn more than men.
Right now I think thanks to the efforts of feminism, women may have more freedom to have a career than men have freedom to be a homemaker, but this may come at the expense of having a family in some cases.
I’m uncomfortable with the way the “gaps” are used. First its a correlation, that could have any number of factors, now you could make an argument that logically the only thing that would result in a gap is “nurture” because “nature” has nothing to do with it. Therefore a certain gap is evidence of discrimination. Even so it doesn’t tell us what kind of discrimination. Take the pay gap* for example. Men make more than women. It could be due to sexist employers. Or it could be the success myth pressuring men to achieve, and take on more stress and… Read more »
As I see it, intersectionality means that no person is free from some manner of oppression, so making blanket statements that X is better off than Y without having experienced both will always be unfair, especially when they ignore additional factors. Such oppression-olympics shit is useless and only leads to poor feeling. Action and cooperation is what’s needed, not bickering over who’s the worst off. Honestly, taking the example of men vs. women, I think that “I don’t think women have it worse off than men, but want to help with both genders’ problems” should be more than enough to… Read more »
“White men tend to make more money than white women, who make more money than black men, who make more money than black women.” Wrong. College educated black women make more money than white women with the same level of education. Black women also make more money overall than black men, due to a combination of higher employment rate, and the education gender gap (even larger than between whites IIRC). http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-09-02/news/0509020187_1_black-males-gender-gap-white-women “White women’s income appears to be lower than that of black women partly because college-educated black women are less likely to leave their careers in order to raise children,… Read more »
PS- I’ve got a big androgyne ace-crush on you this week, Ozy. :B
The wage gap, I think, should be argument enough for intersectionality (not that it should have to be argued in the first place). Those numbers just bring the whole thing crashing down and points out just how irrelevant “men make more than women” can be.