Gender Wage Inequality Is White Feminist BS [View all]

Patricia Arquette’s Oscar acceptance speech imploring for wage equality was met with applause by her peers, including Meryl Streep. However, as The Frisky told you yesterday, her backstage interview — which was reasonably referred to as “tone deaf” where racial politics are concerned — attracted negative attention and response. To recap, this is what she said:

“It’s time for women. Equal means equal. The truth is the older women get, the less money they make. The highest percentage of children living in poverty are in female-headed households. It’s inexcusable that we go around the world and we talk about equal rights for women in other countries and we don’t. One of those superior court justices said two years ago in a law speech at a university that we don’t have equal rights for women in America and we don’t because when they wrote Constitution, they didn’t intend it for women. So the truth is even though we sort of feel like we have equal rights in America right under the surface there are huge issues at play that really do affect women. It’s time for all the women in America, and all the men that love women and all the gay people and all the people of color that we’ve all fought for to fight for us now.”
Now firstly, let’s get this straight: Arquette is an actress and she is also imperfect. We must not forget that her words, well-intentioned but problematic though they may be, were merely an entry point to a much-need conversation about wage inequality. It is up to us to expand on and continue the conversation she attempted to begin. So let’s go ahead and do that.

In truth, America does have a wage gap problem that needs to be explored. And that problem can, indeed, be labeled a “gender-based” problem. However, the biggest wage gaps are interracial and not necessarily gender-specific. In order to truly delve into the issue, here are some highlights from the U.S. Bureau Labor of Statistics 2013 December Report:

Asian men out earned all other demographics, with a weekly median earning of $1,059. In comparison, White men earned $884, Black men $664 and Hispanic or Latino men earned $594.
Asian women and White women (with weekly median earnings of $819 and $722 respectively) earned more than Black men and Hispanic men.
Black women and Hispanic women had the lowest median incomes earning $606 and $541, respectively.
While it is true that, as a whole, women still struggle to earn as much as their male counterparts, the largest income gaps are race specific. Only when we compare male-to-female differences in income among individuals of the same race does a gender-specific gap even become worthy of talking about. After all, I would much rather be a White woman and have a weekly earning of $722, than be a Hispanic man who earns $594 in that same time period.

In fact, according to the report, “Earnings growth has been greatest for White women, outpacing that of their Black and Hispanic counterparts. Between 1979 and 2013, inflation-adjusted earnings (also called constant-dollar earnings) rose by 31 percent for White women, compared with an increase of 20 percent for Black women and 15 percent for Hispanic women.”

http://www.thefrisky.com/2015-02-24/the-soapbox-heres-why-closing-the-gender-wage-gap-is-a-white-feminist-issue/