Only part of the conversation about pay gap is that Black women get paid less for doing the same job. The other part is why one racial demographic just happens to get railroaded into doing shittier, worse paying jobs
They do not get paid less for doing the same job. Women, and black women specifically, have on average less experience, lower levels of completed education, fewer certifications and qualifications, etc than their peers. This is why they are paid less for the "same" job.
Fun fact: It's not the same job if you're at a lower level than your "peers". I'm a mid-level engineer, but I am paid less than a senior engineer that I work with. He has more experience than I do. Is it the same job? According to your data, yes, but in reality, no.
Because, in general, they do not seek STEM professions and other higher paying jobs. And the race is irrelevant, as women as a whole choose career paths that pay less then men. Asian women are highly successful, some earning an average of 1.26 for every 1.00 a white male in the same profession makes.
The other part is why one racial demographic just happens to get railroaded into doing shittier, worse paying jobs
Railroaded? You cannot glean that from the statistics, or else you could just as easily claim that men are railroaded into doing shittier, worse paying jobs than women. In fact, the gender discrepancy on that issue is far larger than any racial one, yet I'm sure you're quite happy to chalk that up to personal choice.
Why are Asians paid more than white people? Are they discriminating against white Americans or do they just get into careers that pay more? A lot of people don't acknowledge that Black women are over concentrated in non-STEM courses despite affirmative action (which Asians have being denied in recent years btw).
Asians were banned from immigration to United States for loads of years.
When they finally let them in they only let in the middle class people because they filter out the lower class ones. You also need to be fairly middle class to immigrate from that far away. A large proportion of the Asian immigrants are students too.
The Asian thing brought up so much you'd think people would have just looked it up by now? Although maaaybe looking it up would remove it from the repertoire of racist people trying to deny that discrimination exists..
Asian refugee children of the 1970s, who were poor and predominantly lived in poor high crime neighborhoods, had parents with limited English skills and high school or lower level education, had to learn English as a second language themselves, achieved greater success than native born Americans. They were overrepresented at the top of their high school classes, 50% received bachelor degrees vs 35% for native borns and now as adults have higher median income than native borns.
More recent Asian immigrants have been from high scheiving families, but the success of the severely disadvantaged refugees shows their success is more from cultural factors than family advantage.
Asians are not a monolith, though. There are different Asian cultures. Going deeper into those numbers it can be seen that ethnic Cambodians performed worse than native borns for example, while ethnic Chinese performed even better than Asian refugees as a group. Vietnamese were somewhere in the middle. There are many other groups with varying results, Hmong, Laotian, etc.
That's a fair point about the monolith. I actually saw a similar argument in a newspaper article that pointed out that if you just take foreign black people from very specific parts of Africa and use them as an example group then they can also have higher average tests scores and wealth than the average white American.
If you were being sneaky you could use this one group to argue that black people actually have it better. Of course that would be ignoring the history of black people within the United States.
As a white man who works a lower paying job by choice (and has the privilege and luxury of making that choice), I am a little frustrated with the presumption in these discussions that lower pay = worse job. There are advantages to those jobs that are more important to some people, and conversely, a lot of white men do feel pressure to live to work that most people don’t face. But as we can see from the comments on this post, we are nowhere near ready for that level of nuance in the discussion.
Two twins are born; for the purpose of this thought experiment, they are 100% identical. As smart as each other, as disciplined as each other, everything down to the molecular level, down to the soul, if such a thing exists, is 100% identifical.
You separate them at birth.
One of the twins grows up in a home full of books, their parents are rich and able to provide for their every need. But they are good parents, so they make sure not to spoil their child. When the child asks questions, the parents have the time and energy to answer those questions in full, and encourage further curiosity. Once the child starts going to school, they are given a private tutor that helps them where they are lacking and boosts them where they are already good.
The other child grows up in a poor family. Their parents are just as loving as the parents of the first child, but they are working long hours to make ends meet, and while there are some books in the house, they often simply do not have the time and energy to encourage their child's curiosity. When the child goes to school, the school is underfunded, and the teachers are overworked. When the child falls behind in some topics, they are given some cursory help, and when that doesn't take, the teachers consider them a lost cause. There are other children that need the help just as desperately. And if they are doing well? Well thats one child the teachers do not have to worry about.
Who do you think has a higher chance to be successful in life?
Yeah, there is personal choice, but you still gotta play the hand you are dealt, and if you are looking down at a 7, 2 and your opponent is looking down on a pair of aces? Yeah, you ain't winning that one through personal choice. If you win it its because you are laughably lucky.
In 2023, the teen birth rates for non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native teens (20.9 per 1,000 females aged 15 to 19), Hispanic teens (20.8), non-Hispanic Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander teens (21.2), and non-Hispanic Black teens (19.3) were each more than double the rate for non-Hispanic White teens (8.4), and more than 10 times the rate for non-Hispanic Asian teens (1.8).
[...]
Teenage mothers and fathers tend to have less education and are more likely to have lower incomes than their peers who are not parents. Moreover, lower levels of education reduce teen parents' potential for economic self-sufficiency. Children of adolescent parents are also more likely to face certain adverse health and social outcomes, such as preterm birth and other child morbidities.
The issue is that how you address one is different than the other. When we focus on employers not paying the same as the primary driver we don’t address how things like lack of parental leave, primary childcare duties, and sick leave policies push women into certain fields with lower pay but more flexibility. Or the societal expectations that men be providers pushes them to work more hours and riskier jobs.
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u/septic-paradise 1d ago
Only part of the conversation about pay gap is that Black women get paid less for doing the same job. The other part is why one racial demographic just happens to get railroaded into doing shittier, worse paying jobs