Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wokay f Daily with
Speaker 1: Meet your Girl Danielle Moody, recording live from the Podstream
Speaker 1: studios here in Times Square. Folks, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you were aware, but this week was Equal Pay for
Speaker 1: Black Women Day and that was on August third. And
Speaker 1: I want to say this. This is according to CNBC,
Speaker 1: and I find this so completely troubling. First that we
Speaker 1: have to have an equal pay day in general for
Speaker 1: all women, then we have to have a Black women's
Speaker 1: equal pay day because as you stratifize, you go down
Speaker 1: the list of ethnicities by gender, you just lose money. Right,
Speaker 1: So here's what CNBC News says this week, Tuesday, August third,
Speaker 1: Black Women's Equal Pay Day marked the additional listen to this,
Speaker 1: two hundred and fourteen days that black women must work
Speaker 1: to catch up with white non Hispanic men what they
Speaker 1: earned last year. In essence, this article says black women
Speaker 1: have to work for five hundred and seventy nine days
Speaker 1: to make what white men do in three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five. The article goes on to say this, and
Speaker 1: I want you to pay attention to these numbers because again,
Speaker 1: we have a Congress, right now that is controlled supposedly
Speaker 1: by Democrats. We have a one vote margin with the
Speaker 1: Vice President in the Senate. And here's the thing. We
Speaker 1: have more women in Congress now than we have at
Speaker 1: any other point in history, and yet we can't manage
Speaker 1: to get a fucking equal Pay Act on the books.
Speaker 1: And so how does it work, just in general for
Speaker 1: the economy. If everyone who is working is not making
Speaker 1: what they should be making, then you're not investing in
Speaker 1: the economy and everyone loses. So I want you to
Speaker 1: listen to this. On average, black women are currently paid
Speaker 1: only sixty three cents for every dollar paid to a
Speaker 1: non Hispanic white man. For full time working black women,
Speaker 1: this amounts to a median wage gap listen of two thousand,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine dollars a month, twenty four thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred and ten dollars a year, and nine hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty four thousand, four hundred dollars over a forty
Speaker 1: year career. So you're looking at a potential loss over
Speaker 1: forty years of working before you supposedly are able to
Speaker 1: retire of close to a million fucking dollars in lost
Speaker 1: wages because of pay and equity. And this is according
Speaker 1: to the National Women's Law Center, and they say this.
Speaker 1: I've looked at this in a lot of different ways,
Speaker 1: says Jasmine Tucker, who is the director of research. I've
Speaker 1: cut it by education, I've cut it by age, I've
Speaker 1: cut it by job. It doesn't go away. It gets
Speaker 1: a little bigger, it gets a little smaller, but the
Speaker 1: wage gap is always there. There's a wage gap in
Speaker 1: ninety four percent of occupations. Think about this because when
Speaker 1: you think about the education level, the average, the median
Speaker 1: education level of Black women, majority of black women are
Speaker 1: college educated, many have post degrees, right graduate degrees. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about a highly educated part of the black community.
Speaker 1: Highly educated meaning on top of which you have an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of student loan debt. So not only are
Speaker 1: you trying to work twice as hard to get half
Speaker 1: as much, but you're also incurring an insane amount of
Speaker 1: debt in order to do that and still having to
Speaker 1: work two hundred and fourteen days more than your white
Speaker 1: male counterpart. How the fuck do we see these numbers?
Speaker 1: Know that it's true, Know that it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you are working as a doctor, or if you're working
Speaker 1: as a teacher, or if you're working as a nurse.
Speaker 1: It does not matter. The pay gap is apparent in
Speaker 1: ninety four percent of occupations, and we have the ability
Speaker 1: to do that to change it. In other countries. Do
Speaker 1: you know that it is illegal to pay people a
Speaker 1: different wage for the same amount of work. Why is
Speaker 1: that such a pipe dream to think about here in America?
Speaker 1: That if I am working side by side in the
Speaker 1: same office, in the same fucking position as a white man,
Speaker 1: that he is making over a dollar more than I am.
Speaker 1: How is that? Okay? You know, the justification back in
Speaker 1: the day was this, And we are so fucking far
Speaker 1: removed from the little woman stays at home, heteronormative, patriarchal
Speaker 1: model of what our economy and work looks like. We
Speaker 1: are so far removed from the nineteen fifties in that aspect, right,
Speaker 1: But we still set up this idea that somehow white
Speaker 1: men deserve to get paid more money for doing less.
Speaker 1: So here's the other thing that the article says. Black
Speaker 1: women who work in areas that are critical to the
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen recovery, such as doctors, nurses, teachers, childcare workers,
Speaker 1: wait staff, and cashiers, for example, make eleven to twenty
Speaker 1: seven percent less than white men, according to the data
Speaker 1: from the Economic Policy Institute, in higher paid professions, including
Speaker 1: among doctors. This broke my heart. White male physicians and
Speaker 1: surgeons make sixty three dollars and forty one cents an
Speaker 1: hour on average. Black women in these positions make less
Speaker 1: than forty six dollars and fifty nine cents an hour.
Speaker 1: This is according to the Economic Policy Institute. The pay
Speaker 1: gap can potentially result in millions of dollars lost in
Speaker 1: wages in black female physicians lifetime. So imagine again, you're
Speaker 1: going to school for seven, eight, however many years in
Speaker 1: order to get that good paying job. You get in.
Speaker 1: You think that you are doing it, you are doing
Speaker 1: the most, and you come to find out that you
Speaker 1: are making twenty to thirty dollars less than your colleague
Speaker 1: who studied right beside you, going through the same program,
Speaker 1: getting the same degree. This is not about fairness, because
Speaker 1: fairness comes from a place of morality and values. Right.
Speaker 1: This is about equity, and I believe that we should
Speaker 1: be in a position to be able to sue employers. Right.
Speaker 1: We got part way there with the Lily Ledbetter Act
Speaker 1: that was signed during the Obama years, but we did
Speaker 1: not get all the way there, and it's a conversation, honestly,
Speaker 1: that does not come up enough. Over fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the fucking population is women, over fifty percent. So you're
Speaker 1: talking about folks that if you are a single parent
Speaker 1: and you are a woman, that you are barely able
Speaker 1: to make ends meet, you should not be in a
Speaker 1: household where your husband, if you are straight again, your
Speaker 1: husband is making more money than you and you're in
Speaker 1: the same position. And this goes thinking about right, queer people,
Speaker 1: Black queer women who are coupled are more likely to
Speaker 1: be living at the poverty line than any other group.
Speaker 1: That is insane to me, but that number is always
Speaker 1: stuck out in my head from when I was doing
Speaker 1: the research as a senior advisor at the Center for
Speaker 1: American Progress many years ago, because when you're looking at
Speaker 1: the way discriminatory policies work is that there is a
Speaker 1: huge economic component here because in order for white men
Speaker 1: to have everything that they have, the path needs to
Speaker 1: be cleared for them, which means that whatever clutter, debris
Speaker 1: and obstacles are moved out of their way are placed
Speaker 1: in other people's way. And we just shrug this off
Speaker 1: in America, and we say, continue to lie to people
Speaker 1: and tell them, get an education, pull yourself up by
Speaker 1: your bootstraps, do the most. And you have a group
Speaker 1: of people, black women, who do all of those fucking things,
Speaker 1: check every single goddamn box, and still come up in
Speaker 1: their lifetime a million dollars less. So when we were
Speaker 1: referred to and said to be the workhorse of this country,
Speaker 1: this is what the fuck I'm talking about, because from
Speaker 1: slavery until now, black women have never gotten their just
Speaker 1: due ever. Right, we don't even get acknowledged for the
Speaker 1: creative content that is put in being put out. So
Speaker 1: if you have kids right now who are telling you
Speaker 1: about boycotts that were happening on TikTok and other things,
Speaker 1: it's because black creators are like, fuck, y'all. You come
Speaker 1: in here, you steal our moves, you steal our intelligence,
Speaker 1: you steal our creativity, you dress it up in whiteface,
Speaker 1: and then you push it out there, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're getting all of these ten twenty thirty
Speaker 1: thousand millions of endorsements, and meanwhile, the black creatives get nothing.
Speaker 1: It happens in every single space, in every single industry,
Speaker 1: and it is sickening, and it should be illegal. You
Speaker 1: should get the same full dollar for work that your
Speaker 1: male counterparts get. So the article goes on to state
Speaker 1: this and again just really incredibly troubling to me. So
Speaker 1: it goes on to state this very clear fact, student
Speaker 1: loan debt, as I mentioned, caregiving duties, particularly for single
Speaker 1: black women, are among the factors that can exacerbate the
Speaker 1: overall gender and racial wealth gap. Yet some companies are
Speaker 1: making strides, they say, to provide benefits that could help
Speaker 1: narrow the divide by providing student loan repayment assistance and
Speaker 1: subsidized childcare. So again, when I hear the likes of
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi utter things like canceling student loan debt isn't
Speaker 1: a good eye idea. This is who she's saying, it's
Speaker 1: not a good idea too. There are schools right now,
Speaker 1: some that we have talked about historically black colleges, that
Speaker 1: are canceling student loan debt because they want their graduates
Speaker 1: to be able to dream, to achieve. What would you do,
Speaker 1: where would you go work, what would you invent, what
Speaker 1: would you innovate on? What business would you create if
Speaker 1: you weren't saddled with six figures of student loan debt.
Speaker 1: It stops innovation, it stops dreaming, and it forces us
Speaker 1: to continue to be cogs in a machine that just
Speaker 1: grind us out. So it is a different form, dare
Speaker 1: I say, of indentured servitude that happens when you become
Speaker 1: a college graduate. And so when Democrats, on one hand
Speaker 1: want a campaign and tell young people, oh, we have
Speaker 1: your back, or anyone for that matter that wants to
Speaker 1: go back get certificates and degree so that they can
Speaker 1: be more competitive, you're trying to be more competitive so
Speaker 1: that you can make more money. And we're telling black
Speaker 1: women that essentially you're a motherfucking hamster on a wheel
Speaker 1: right now, because you can keep running, and you can
Speaker 1: keep running, but you ain't ever really going to get anywhere.
Speaker 1: And that's a horrible place to be in, a horrible
Speaker 1: one to be in, particularly when we have the ability
Speaker 1: to stop it, when we have the ability to create
Speaker 1: policies that make it a federal offense for you to
Speaker 1: pay people a different amount of money for the same
Speaker 1: goddamn jobs. I'm not talking about bonuses, folks, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about the fact that you're sitting as a cashier right,
Speaker 1: and Johnny next to you is making twenty dollars an
Speaker 1: hour and you're making twelve. But you guys are scanning
Speaker 1: the same fucking groceries. That's what is happening. That's what's
Speaker 1: been happening, and we have justified it by saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, the good old boys club men need to
Speaker 1: make more because they got to take care of the
Speaker 1: little woman at home. That is not the society that
Speaker 1: we live in, and it has not been for quite
Speaker 1: some time. But our policies have not caught up to
Speaker 1: where we are currently, and that to me is incredibly frustrating.
Speaker 1: So they say that there are some fixes that employees
Speaker 1: can make, but again I'm looking in this article where
Speaker 1: there isn't any for the fixes that Congress can make. Right, So,
Speaker 1: once again we are passing the buck to private employers
Speaker 1: to do the right thing. They're not going to do
Speaker 1: the right thing without fucking incentives. We know that no
Speaker 1: one does. So here is what they offer. Employers can
Speaker 1: make tax free contributions of up to five thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars a year to their employees student
Speaker 1: debt through twenty twenty five. That can help many workers,
Speaker 1: including black women who are among those hardest hit with
Speaker 1: student loan debt. This is another interesting point. While mothers
Speaker 1: in general who work full time earn seventy five cents
Speaker 1: per every dollar paid to fathers, black working moms are
Speaker 1: paid just fifty two cents on the dollar. However, a
Speaker 1: recent NWLC report found that in high if high quality,
Speaker 1: affordable childcare were universally available. And again, this is the
Speaker 1: type of infrastructure that we're talking about in the America
Speaker 1: Cares Plan. We are talking about ways in which we
Speaker 1: learned through COVID nineteen how unaffordable childcare is for most
Speaker 1: American households. And so if we were like we are
Speaker 1: doing right now with the child with the earned child
Speaker 1: tax and all of these credits that folks are able
Speaker 1: to get per child, but understand that this is running
Speaker 1: out right, all of these offers, let's say, from the
Speaker 1: federal government, have expiration dates, and we see how they
Speaker 1: function with expiration dates. Given what happened with the moratorium
Speaker 1: on evictions. People were evicted at five o'clock in the
Speaker 1: evening that day because guess what, the extension didn't take
Speaker 1: place until five thirty. So we know that everything that
Speaker 1: is afforded two families two individuals has an expiration date,
Speaker 1: of course, if you're not a shareholder or a CEO.
Speaker 1: But there are ways that the federal government can provide
Speaker 1: a basic fucking income so people are able to close
Speaker 1: this gap. It should not just be left to private
Speaker 1: industry to do the right thing. That is it for
Speaker 1: Today's Woke, A f daily podcast. To hear more from me,
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Speaker 1: to all the people power, get woke and stay woke
Speaker 1: as fuck.