Episode Overview

Podcast: Economic Update with Richard D. Wolff
Episode Title: Valuing Work by Women of Color
Date: May 13, 2021
Main Theme:
This episode explores the economic invisibility and undervaluation of the unpaid work performed by women of color, with a special focus on Black women’s community labor. Host Richard D. Wolff interviews Professor Nina Banks about her research on the topic, covering historical and contemporary examples, the roots of its neglect in mainstream economics, and the social and systemic forces behind this erasure.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Introductory Commentary: Incentives in Capitalism

• Bernie Madoff’s Legacy & Systemic Incentives for Corruption
  • Wolff draws lessons from the Bernie Madoff case, emphasizing that capitalism inherently incentivizes both positive and negative behaviors, including large-scale fraud ([00:10]).
  • Quote:

    “Every system has a mixture of incentives, good and bad... capitalism has incentives that produce disastrous results, corruptions that ruin large numbers of people...”
    — Richard D. Wolff ([02:00])

2. U.S. Military Spending & the True Costs of Wars

• Review of the economic impact of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
  • U.S. defense spending increased dramatically over two decades.
  • The only clear economic “winner” is the defense industry; ordinary citizens and affected regions are left worse off ([03:00]-[08:00]).
  • Rising military expenditure is justified with new geopolitical tensions, e.g., with China.

3. Structural Racism in U.S. Housing Policy

• Recap of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, exposing government-facilitated racial segregation through housing policies ([08:30]-[11:30]).
• Emphasizes how capitalism and government policy intertwined to deepen racial divides, particularly affecting Black Americans’ access to housing and wealth.

4. Debunking ‘Capitalism Lifted Millions from Poverty’

• Wolff challenges claims that capitalism alone reduced global poverty, pointing out China’s experience under communist leadership as a critical counterexample ([12:00]-[14:30]).
  • Quote:

    “Most of the advance of poor people was not done as a gift from capitalism. It was done in opposition to capitalism—whether it’s a rising minimum wage, a better tax system, or funding public schools.”
    — Richard D. Wolff ([13:23])

Featured Interview: Professor Nina Banks

Guest: Professor Nina Banks, Associate Professor of Economics at Bucknell University, President of the National Economic Association
Segment Start: [15:13]

The Problem of ‘Uncounted’ Work

• Main Argument:

  • Mainstream economic metrics (e.g., GDP) only value work that is paid for in the market.
  • Vast amounts of unpaid work, especially by women of color, are systematically left uncounted and thus devalued ([15:15]-[16:42]).
  • Quote:

    “Feminists take a look at the work that women disproportionately perform within the household: cooking, cleaning, laundry, caregiving... But what I found is it did not do an adequate job of capturing a lot of the unpaid work that racialized women perform for their own communities.”
    — Nina Banks ([16:42])

• Intersectional Framework:

  • Banks advocates for an intersectional feminist political economy that centers the lived experiences of Black women.
  • Differences in how white women and Black women conceptualize oppression: White feminist theories often focus on private household dynamics, while Black women’s “lived experience is informed by racial oppression” and communal responsibility ([17:00]-[18:30]).

Historical & Contemporary Examples of Community Work

• Historical Self-Help Initiatives
  • Black women organized collectively to address unmet community needs—from segregated schools to inaccessible healthcare ([20:07]-[21:45]).
  • Notable example:
    • Atlanta Neighborhood Union (1908): Black women conducted community needs assessments, raised funds, established social services ([21:45]).
    • During the Great Depression, the AKA Sorority established mobile health units in the Mississippi Delta, sending Black doctors to serve the rural poor ([22:30]).
    • Recent case: Black women in Delaware fighting the unjust placement of Black boys in special needs programs ([23:20]).
    • Environmental justice movements as further evidence of Black women’s unpaid organizing ([24:00]).
  • Quote:

    “These are activities that have not been theorized as work and often not recognized as work. So they’re largely unseen.”
    — Nina Banks ([21:15])

Why Has This Work Been Ignored?

• Devaluation by Society and Economics

  • Both the actors themselves and broader society often don’t label these activities as “work.”
  • Economic systems and cultural norms systematically erase and undervalue the unpaid labor of Black women ([25:27]).
  • Quote:

    “There tends to be a devaluation of work that African American women perform for their own communities and for their own families.”
    — Nina Banks ([25:38])

• Racialized Hierarchies of Value

  • The work of middle-class white homemakers, while unpaid, is socially valued; Black women’s unpaid familial/community work has never been so, even being stigmatized if a poor Black woman wishes to stay home as a caregiver ([26:20]).
  • Wolff:

    “It fits into the very way that capitalism in this country has systematically culturally devalued the working class, white and black.”
    — Richard D. Wolff ([26:00])

The National Economic Association

• History and Mission ([27:04]-[28:09])
  • Originated as the Caucus of Black Economists in 1969.
  • Focuses on research about racial disparities and anti-Blackness.
  • Advocates for institutional change and bold solutions to long-standing structural inequalities.
  • Quote:

    “Black American economists have always been at the forefront of thinking very critically about racial disparities in the United States and proposing very bold solutions to the problems of racial disparities against Black and Brown communities.”
    — Nina Banks ([27:38])

Notable Quotes

• “Every system has a mixture of incentives, good and bad... capitalism has a set of incentives that produce disastrous results.” — Richard D. Wolff ([02:00])
• “Feminists take a look at the work that women disproportionately perform within the household... But what I found is it did not do an adequate job of capturing a lot of the unpaid work that racialized women perform for their own communities.” — Nina Banks ([16:42])
• “These are activities that have not been theorized as work and often not recognized as work. So they’re largely unseen.” — Nina Banks ([21:15])
• “Work that African American women perform for their own communities and for their own families... there tends to be a devaluation of that work.” — Nina Banks ([25:38])
• “Black women have never been valued as mothers in our society.” — Nina Banks ([26:40])

Important Timestamps

• 00:10 — Wolff opens show, discusses Madoff & capitalist incentives
• 03:00 — U.S. military spending and impact of Afghanistan and Iraq wars
• 08:30 — Housing segregation and systemic racism in policy
• 12:00 — Debunking the “capitalism reduces poverty” narrative
• 15:13 — Introduction to Professor Nina Banks and today’s main theme
• 16:42 — Banks begins unpacking the neglected unpaid labor of women of color
• 20:07 — Historical examples of Black women’s collective work
• 25:27 — Discussion of why this work is ignored and undervalued
• 27:19 — National Economic Association’s origins and mission

Summary & Flow

This episode begins with a critique of capitalism’s built-in negative incentives, such as those that enabled the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and segues into discussions of war spending, systemic racism in housing, and the myth that capitalism alone has alleviated global poverty. The central interview with Professor Nina Banks is illuminating and urgent: she explains how mainstream economics fails to recognize the crucial unpaid labor—mutual aid, social services, activism—performed by Black women in their communities. Through historical and modern examples, Banks demonstrates that not only is this work foundational to community survival, it is erased by both cultural and economic value systems due to persistent racism and sexism.

Listeners come away understanding both the value and the invisibility of women of color’s unpaid labor, as well as the need for broader frameworks and economic recognition of such work. The episode concludes with a brief introduction to the National Economic Association and its mission to dismantle structural inequality through research and advocacy.