mekka okereke :verified:
Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !
I haven't made it to Black History yet. I'm still on white US history.
Q: Enough about racism for a second. Take a break! I'm worried about gender issues in the US too. For example, why is the gender pay gap in the US so large? It's one of the worst in the OECD!
A: You know why. Racism! In the US, the pay gap between white men and white women, is smaller than the pay gap between white women and Black and Latinx women.
mekka okereke :verified:
Students of US history understand what Lincoln knew: One reason you can't have slavery in some parts of the country and not in others, is because slaves run to the free parts.
But many of those same students don't realize that you can't block women's reproductive rights in some parts of the country and let it be legal in others. People travel to California. This frustrates the racists.
The racists are coming for women's rights everywhere. Nationwide. And they will use racism to accomplish it.
mekka okereke :verified:
RBG couldn't see what Black women tried to tell her: that racist men don't care about your reproductive rights. Or parental leave. Or affordable childcare.
Trying to address sexism without addressing racism, is doomed to failure, as it has failed throughout US history. Susan B Anthony fought for white women's right to vote, while fighting just as hard against all Black people's right to vote.🤡
She started a pattern of self-defeating racist feminist voting that persists to this day. 🤷🏿♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a champion of white women's rights. But she knew so little about white US history, that she said Kaepernick's protest was "dumb and disrespectful." Then she made it worse in her apology by saying she was "barely aware of the incident or its purpose" and that she should have "declined to respond."
A Supreme Court Justice of the United States. Unaware of how every Black person in the US experiences the police, and the most important civil rights protest of her generation.
mekka okereke :verified:
I reject the "pink collar" designation entirely. Some people use that term to draw a distinction between the type of service work that Black and brown women often do, and the type of service work that white men usually do. There are ~500K plumbers, and ~5 million nurses. Both industries are ~10% Black, but ~90% of nurses are women, and ~96% of plumbers are men.
There are about as many Black women nurses, as there are white men plumbers in the US. But no one talks about winning the nurse vote. 🤷🏿♂️
mekka okereke :verified:
Most of the real unions (trade unions), endorse left leaning politicians. I'm not sure why this is surprising for so many people. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. American Federation of Teachers. Plumbers and Pipefitters. National Nurses Union. Etc,
Most of the police unions, endorse far-right politicians. Again, not sure why this is surprising either. 🤷🏿♂️
"Blue collar" and "working class" are code words designed to evoke a particular demographic of *worker*, not *types of work*.
mekka okereke :verified:
We can't achieve racial equity without achieving gender equity. Black misogynists are not enough.
We can't achieve gender equity without achieving racial equity. Racist feminists are not enough.
Only 26% of Black employees work in white collar jobs, and only 19% of Latinx folk. It's quite rare for a Black woman to be a white collar worker.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2018/home.htm
So when US politicians talk about reconnecting with "Blue collar workers," they really mean "White business owners in the trades"
mekka okereke :verified:
And much of the "progress" on closing the gender pay gap of the past 50 years, has been closing the gap between college educated white and Asian women, and college educated white men.
This is a good thing! But it's not the whole thing. On the US' current trajectory, Black women will not achieve pay equity until the year 2369. For Latinx women? The year 2451.
https://www.aauw.org/resources/research/race-and-the-pay-gap/
mekka okereke :verified:
Without understanding how race, gender, class, and the law intersect, we are severely limited in our ability to achieve gender equity. Bad actors that understand very well how these concepts intersect, will use that knowledge to win the long game.
This is why racists are banning the teaching and study of this intersectionality.
Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality. Read her stuff.
Arm yourself with the forbidden knowledge! 👍🏿
https://youtu.be/XfBzTTFLNz4
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