4 WOMEN, 4 INCOMES, 2 WOMEN WHO DON'T SEE A WAGE GAP PROBLEM

DO YOU THINK YOUR TAXES ARE TOO HIGH?

 MILLIonaire:  

I'm indifferent. 

350 K-onaire* 

No. I don't think so. The way I see it, you drive down a road, that's what your taxes pay for. There's someone who can't take care of themselves, that's what your taxes go toward. It's not unreasonable.

80,000 a year woman 

Not really on income. New York is known for it's high real-estate taxes, but we found a town where the taxes were lower but the schools were still good. 

Just Above Poverty Woman

        For people in general, yes, I think they're high.

As stated in part one of this article, it's not too surprising that women with more money are less concerned with making less money for the same job as a man and also less concerned with how much money Uncle Sam is taking out of your paycheck. (Was the millionaire telling the truth? I'm not sure. Maybe I've been conditioned to believe that those nearest the 1% always think they're paying way too much in taxes -- and entitled to pay a shell game with the IRS that leaves them paying an effective tax rate of 7% like General Electric)
 * * * * *
AGAIN

It is the green dollar line is the line that divides  new blacks, who think everything's A-Okay racially speaking, from the old blacks very concerned with the social reality of race and racism;
affluent women not concerned about sexism and misogyny from non-affluent women  very concerned about sexism and misogyny;

and also 

white feminists from black and brown feminists

White women being married to white men, at the top of the societal food chain with most money and power, feel a lot like black-looking, 350K Megan 

 * * * * *

Megan essentially said, 'Yes, my male co-workers make more than me doing the same job but that's fair because I'm not as dedicated to my job.

You see, I have a husband's income to fall back on therefore I can make hands my hands-on-motherhood more important than my husband's hands-on-fatherhood as thousands of women have done for decades.

My husband's job is always put before my job. I won't worry about making less money than my peers because the hands-on-raising of the children hasn't been split between us both until I'm getting a divorce or something.'

I don't actually have a problem with any couple deciding which income will be deemed as the more important, theoretically speaking. I just wish the decision about whose job is most important was the woman's 50% of the time, divorce rates and the feminization of poverty being what it is. The thing I truly objected to here was the fact that Megan didn't address the wage gap's existence, one way or the other, at her job  -- as if she wasn't concerned at all.
 

What I wish Megan had said is, "Well, I make less than my peers because I'm less reliable at work due to the fact that I'm always the one that stays home when the kids are sick etc. My husband's job, his promotions, is the one we seriously depend on for our family's financial well-being. But I most definitely notice, in general that women --without children or whose children are already grown, are/aren't promoted as fast where I work. 

In other words, I would have liked to see 350K a year Megan be just as concerned about sexism as women who will or will not be able to send their children to school because of sexism's presence or absence. I would have liked to see Megan look outside her lot in life. But the green dollar line is b*tch to see over, apparently.

Megan, whether this reflects her true attitude or not, presented a sexism-blind answer to the question of whether or not the wage gap was a factor in her life. _________, the white-looking millionaire, basically said she hates acknowledgement of the wage gap because "I made it. All it takes is hard work" which sounds an awful lot like one of the new blacks, Anthony Mackie.

It is the accumulation of green dollars that moves people into this mindset that oppression (race or gender) doesn't exist. Oppression ceased to exist for some people the second they crossed a financial line, drawn in their mind, that allowed them to say to themselves "I am great because of who I am. I made it because I work hard. You don't because you don't work hard. I got mine, now you get yours. Little bits of sexism and racism may still exist but aren't really a factor"


We, a black people and as black women, need to pay more attention how income, class, and status divides us so we can pull some of us back into the fold. We can't just declare some of the self-centered and evil. We need to see some of the upper income folk as misguided and pull them back into us.

Feminists, and especially black feminists should know that we cannot afford to fracture along so many different lines.

That means we have to call out the new blacks when we see them, decide to not go see their crap at the movies, and decide to not download their music. We call them out until we can call them in. We uplift instead, not sans critique, feminists supporitng the black community via supporting their output. We consume the products of imperfect feminists like Beyonce and John Legend.