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- [00:02]
A
Over the same old news cycle, tune in to Hysteria, your weekly group chat with me, Erin Ryan, and my co host, Alyssa Mastromonico, where no topic is off limits. From politics to pop culture. We're bringing you brutally honest takes on the stories shaping our lives, from powerhouse women like Elisa Slotkin to wellness trends in education.
- [00:18]
B
No sugarcoating, no doom scrolling, just real talk, strong women and hope to keep moving forward. Catch Hysteria wherever you get your podcasts and tune into our YouTube channel for full episodes and our special series. I know we aren't supposed to bring it up, but racism and sexism exist. And nowhere is it more apparent these days than in conversations about meritocracy. In the 11 months of Trump's second term, the word was used as some sort of antithesis of dei, when in actuality, DEI simply meant hiring qualified people who came from underrepresented backgrounds. But nevertheless, these discussions of meritocracy persisted. And all this time later, we can see the result. Qualified high powered black women are being purged from the workforce while people like.
- [01:05]
A
This Hexseth in the tank. There it is, there it is. Down goes pecsef. Down goes pegseth.
- [01:14]
B
Get promoted. I'm Akilah Hughes. This is. How is this better? And today we're diving into the cost of being a black woman in America. So we have this administration in power who is not. I mean, you know, the Washington Post, I believe, posted their number about how it's the whitest in, I think, at least the 2000s, the whitest administration. Even if women overall are getting more placement in terms of, like, appointments, turns out it's, it's still real, real white. Beyond that, there's also the reality that black women are leaving the workforce in droves, whether they're being pushed out because they're the first to go due to layoffs. But I guess if you could just talk a little bit about, like, what you're seeing in regards to that and how that sort of lines up with the timeline of you writing this book. Because I think that obviously we're all talking about employment at this point. The numbers are down. The country is in a flop era.
- [02:11]
A
What numbers?
- [02:13]
B
Exactly.
- [02:14]
A
What numbers?
- [02:16]
B
You know, if you squint and you.
- [02:18]
A
Kind of count on your own, I don't think you understand. We're in, like, I don't even know what kind of land we in right now. Any analysis you're seeing about jobs is based off of September numbers.
- [02:30]
B
Yeah.
- [02:31]
A
I want to remind people of this. It's not the most recent numbers. We're we're about a week and a half, maybe till November numbers, but we not ever getting those October numbers. They told us that.
- [02:44]
B
No, they didn't. They say they were like, we don't have them and you're not getting them. And don't have.
- [02:47]
A
We don't have them is crazy.
- [02:49]
B
Yeah, that's kind of their only job.
- [02:51]
A
Is to tell us.
- [02:52]
B
And they're like, well, we're not doing our job. This is Anna Gifty, economist, a PhD student at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of the Double Tax How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid. And I wanted to talk to her because the numbers, old and out of date as they may be, tell the story of women, specifically women of color, being the first on the chopping block as the economy continues to tank under Donald Trump. And I would love some numbers to back up my suspicions that it's frankly racism that's the culprit.
- [03:23]
A
I'll say. First and foremost, I did not realize a book like this would drop in such a political and economic moment. What people don't realize is that this book was actually supposed to come out last year. So during the election time. And I remember, I think I told my team to, like, push it a year before that because we just needed more time with all the interviews that came in. For those who don't know, like, 4,000 people had signed up to share their story. We don't got 4,000 people money. So we had to, like, whittle it.
- [03:51]
B
Down and read and, yeah, like, we.
- [03:54]
A
Can connect with people after the fact. Everything that you're seeing right now is really emblematic of the double tax. And perhaps what I should say is things are not great because this country is committed to bigotry. That's it. It's really not more complicated than that. People are like, why aren't we Sweden? Why aren't we Finland? Because there's black and brown people here.
- [04:17]
B
Yeah, right.
- [04:18]
A
And if you actually look at the data over there, it's not great for black and brown people either. So I think that for me, this book is very much. I like to say it's both a prescription and a reaction. Because when I was riding it, I was like, okay, if Kamala Harris wins, right, then maybe they might use this as a guide for their policy making. But if she doesn't win, everything that this man does will be in direct opposition to it. What I'm realizing, though, is that communities are trying to rebuild as things are being destroyed, and they still do need a blueprint. And so I think that this book provides one context and then it provides some solutions that we know work and some solutions that we should really be radical enough to imagine could work. Right. In terms of the numbers around black women, I just want to maybe level set for people why you should be paying attention to those numbers. So this is the work of Categoroy. Dr. Valerie Wilson has done work around this. Let me say something that I know a lot of media headlines won't say. The data never tells us whether or not people get like explicitly fired and why they get fired. Right. So to say that people are being pushed out is a hard claim to make that's backed by data. But we can bring in other data to contextualize why a bunch of people are leaving suddenly. So what we know from the data is that in the good times, black women are the least likely to be promoted, the most likely to turn over, and the most likely to be labeled low performers. As you noted, we are the last in, first out. And a lot of the industries like manufacturing, professional and business services, and even what we're seeing with the rollbacks of dei, especially in certain parts of different industries, are clearly having an impact on black women anecdotally. So if we take all of this together, you can go ahead and say, yeah, black women are being pushed out of the workforce. Now, you might be wondering, as a white man, shout to Devin, as a white man.
- [06:21]
B
Thank you, Devin. Devin.
- [06:25]
A
Why should I care? And the reality is, because black women are taxpayers. Black women are community members. Black women are members of society, have kids, are trying to feed their families, are literally plugging into our economic system. If black women are losing, all of us are losing. Because if black women are not able to bring in an income, oftentimes other people are relying on our income. And so it's not just that you're taking money away from one person, you're taking money away from an entire ecosystem of people. And that spills into whether or not the economy grows or shrinks.
- [07:04]
B
It feels super important to reiterate. You do not have a successful economy if a large part of your economy is shut out from participation due to race, gender, or both. A healthy economy economy requires people to spend money, which means they have to have jobs so they can have money to spend. This is not hard. After a short break, we will dive into what the double tax really is and how it shows up in the lives of women of color.
- [07:32]
A
I'm Brian Reed. When I created S Town, I looked at how secrets lies and the stories we tell Shape a small rural town. Now on my podcast Question everything, I'm going bigger. Hi, this message is for Senator Lindsey Graham. I'm hoping I head to Washington to take on a law that gives tech companies sweeping immunity is how these companies have gotten rich. Join me as I go after big tech on Question everything from placement theory and KCRW out Thursdays. Wherever you get your podcasts at Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone. You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at capella. Edu the double tax is the compounded costs of racism and sexism. And I think that lots of black women know this as misogynoir. Right. When we kind of bear the fruit full discrimination of being black and also being women. And so what I basically do is sort of extend that definition beyond just blackness.
- [08:51]
B
Again, here's Anna Gifte.
- [08:53]
A
Any sort of proximity to blackness as a racial minority puts you in this sort of bucket of dealing with all of these costs that come with your racial minority status in addition to all the sexism that we experience in society. And so I feel like example of how this really shows up is, let's say that, you know, as a woman, you're like, having to get ready for an interview. A lot of times you're expected to look a certain way. Right. So you might have to.
- [09:25]
B
I. I feel like this is so important now that the pod is on video.
- [09:28]
A
Yes.
- [09:29]
B
Yeah, it's. It's not just that I get to show up, roll out of bed and look like whatever and be so fine with her listening. No, no, no, no. But continue. Exactly, you know, scrubbing my pain with your finger.
- [09:40]
A
That's right. There's a. Even my nail. I don't know if y' all can see that, but one of my nails is out. So I'm out here just trying to keep it down. Right. But my point is, like, there's a cost of presentability that all women deal with. Right. And I mean that in the most expansive way possible. But the double tax says, well, black women especially, and rich minority women by extension, are having to do all this extra stuff on top of that cost to really make up for the fact that they're minorities as well as women. Right? So the example that I use is our hair. To give you a sense of what I mean, I had to go somewhere recently, and I was literally doing the cost benefit analysis of whether or not I should get braids right before, because I was like, I need to catch my flight. Yeah, but the braids are gonna take, like, four hours, five hours. But I don't know if the ladies are gonna go as fast as I need them to go because they're humans, too. So, you know what? Eff it. I'm just going to go ahead and just throw it in some little bun or whatever, and we're just going to pray that something works out. But that's what I mean by, like, I'm having to do all these extra calculations around my existence because I'm a black woman. So that blackness and that womanhood is that double tax.
- [10:54]
B
Absolutely. And, you know, just, I guess another question about the title. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose to put color of color in parentheses? Because, you know, is that because you think all women will be able to relate to at least some of what you identify or, you know, talk, speak to us?
- [11:10]
A
You know what?
- [11:11]
B
Let me.
- [11:11]
A
It's the end of the year, so let me just be real honest. So there. There's a couple reasons why I think we went with of color. So initially, the conversation was whether or not we make this Black women are overcharged and underpaid, Which I think that if you really read the book, that's essentially what the book is about. But there are some areas in life where that's actually not the case. So, for example, if in retirement, I think Asian women and Latina women are worse off in terms of their retirement income than black women. So I can't say that black women are on the very bottom of the economic totem pole, but we are very close to it, right? Or even in pay, where we know that native and Latino women make less. So I think that that's where it was like, okay, like, if we're really trying to be accurate, I have to use of color. But, like, this is the number one question I've gotten from black women, which is like, now, girl, now, why did you say black women? I'm like, I hear you. You know what I'm saying? I hear you. And so I think for me, it's actually been a really good lesson that, like, if I'm talking about black women, let me just, like, lean all the way into that. And quite frankly, too, I was a little scared because this is my first book that I've written. I wasn't sure if like, women's faces would turn away from a book that was about black women. Turns out even if you put up color doesn't make it.
- [12:29]
B
Yeah, it's not really. It's not really something, you know what I'm saying?
- [12:32]
A
So.
- [12:32]
B
Totally.
- [12:33]
A
Yeah, that's basically it.
- [12:35]
B
I mean, it's. It's really great to have, I think also your academic lens on this. It's like there are the things that I've sort of seen obviously in my own, you know, personal life. And I think everybody who is a woman of color or a black woman or both or neither or whatever, I think that we all have our anecdotal evidence to like, what is systemic oppression. But like, having real, like hard numbers is really fascinating. And so I guess, like, I'm curious because I think that this is. It's cool that you're the one writing it. And so I'm curious, like, how much of your own life or career shows up in the book, even in ways that readers might not even realize.
- [13:14]
A
I don't know if y' all can hear me snapping is not new to this. She's true to this. Exactly. I feel like there were times when I probably should have been even more personal. And I remember even seeing somebody recently, this black woman author. Not author, sorry. She's a reviewer. And she was like, I wish she had said more about her life. And I was like, man, maybe for the memoir, I don't know, maybe I'll speak to it later. But I mean, I think that there's stories that like, when I read them back, I'm like, this is a really personal share. Like, people in my life don't know this about me. So I think like the first chapter where we talk about beauty, a lot of people didn't know that I struggled with like thoughts of skin bleaching. Right. So I'm a dark skinned black woman. And I don't think my parents knew that I was dealing with those thoughts. I don't think you know what I'm saying. So that's. Those are some of the things that I think were revealed in me even writing the book and being like, wait, I have to bring this into it, because if I don't, then it's an incomplete story. And so I feel like stuff around my self image and my self confidence, I think has been really personal. I would even say, you know, a lot of folks didn't know that. I've dealt with so much discouragement coming up to this point. So A lot of people assume this was, you know, zippity zooda, zippity zay. It was like a situation.
- [14:33]
B
Yeah, exactly. It's all up.
- [14:34]
A
Like, no, I've had discouragement every single step of the way, especially from white men. And so, like, this is not something that I'm just like, oh, look at the numbers. They're happening, you know, hypothetical, theoretically over there. But, like, rather, this is actually my personal experience. And it turns out the data really does back it up. And I think at the end of the book, which every time I finish the book, I always cry because I feel like, oh, this is such a release. Because I think a lot of people, especially black women, who read the book are like, I knew I wasn't going crazy. And that's like the best feeling in the world. That, okay, all of this data, this is what people in power listen to, actually backs up the experiences that I know to be true. But now I can show them this as a way to really provide the evidence for why things need to change.
- [15:23]
B
So let's dive into some of the evidence. Black women make up 7.8% of the US population, but as far as unemployment goes, we are bearing the brunt of it right now, which doesn't square with black women's achievements academically, but it does seem to square with that rollback of scholarships for women of color and the anti DEI push. This is, you know, me asking for your speculation. Do you think that there is any correlation to the sort of cracking down on not only dei, but on who is getting funding for college and scholarships and all of these things that are being looked at and sort of, you know, hoping to hold back black women and women of color?
- [16:00]
A
Let me be frank. These people are enemies of progress.
- [16:05]
B
Yeah.
- [16:06]
A
Certified enemies of progress. And they're also eugenicists.
- [16:11]
B
Yeah.
- [16:11]
A
I want to be really blunt. They don't think that black people, especially black folks who are poor, are worthy, period. So anything that evens the playing field, they're anti. I think I wrote a piece for Bloomberg maybe a year ago, and I said, all these attacks on DEI are not really about merit. Yes, they're about merit. But what is that? Right.
- [16:39]
B
Yeah.
- [16:39]
A
Looking around, there's entire ecosystems around just getting rich white kids into universities where, like, they're only going there as a signal because they're going to work for Daddy anyway. So I don't even know what was the reason, as Cardi B would say. Right. But I think to that point, what I really told folks was these attacks are really about widening the Racial wealth gap and making it really hard for black people to build wealth. They know that homeownership is tied to building wealth. Why is it that the two prominent black women that they've attacked and accused of fraud. It's always mortgage fraud. Have you all noticed?
- [17:24]
B
Yeah. Actually wild. Actually wild.
- [17:28]
A
So they accused my. My wonderful governor, Lisa Cook of mortgage fraud. And there's already documentation that she didn't do that. And then they try to try ag. Letitia James of mortgage fraud twice. Failed both times.
- [17:41]
B
Yeah, they keep trying it. They keep throwing it. They're like, she couldn't possibly have a house. We did everything in our power to make sure she doesn't have a house.
- [17:49]
A
And this is really about setting president around. Like, oh, we just don't think black and brown people should own things, build things, be able to have agency. And the crazy thing about all of this, Akilah, is what's inevitable, and they know it because there was a Brookings report. Brookings is a think tank, y'. All, that came out several years ago. And basically what it says, in short, this place about to be black and brown. Right, Sorry. It's about to be black and brown.
- [18:19]
B
You let us in.
- [18:20]
A
The white folks aren't having enough babies. So the majority of the world that we know is starting to seep into the west, which is why you're seeing intergalactic crash outs from across the globe, right? And basically what they're trying to do at this point, if you guys are noticing, is they're setting up, I would like to say, the pillars of what they hope will become apartheid. Because in about a generation or two, this place will be majority minority. And they know that that's going to be the case. So they're trying to radicalize their men, they're trying to reprogram their women, and they're trying to set systems in place that make it impossible for black and brown people to advance in society. Right. The reality is, if we're willing to fight against that, they have no chance because we do truly outnumber them.
- [19:13]
B
If what Anna is saying is true, and the numbers do support the idea that the future will be way more diverse than now.
- [19:18]
A
We're.
- [19:19]
B
How do we fight for a more equitable future? How do we fight back?
- [19:23]
A
I think that we can take our notes from history. Shout out to the Black Panther gang, right?
- [19:29]
B
Gang. Gang. Black Panther Gang. Gang.
- [19:35]
A
As I said that, I was like, somebody's going to clip that, right?
- [19:38]
B
Here we go.
- [19:39]
A
I don't care. They did a good job with providing food Assistance, health care and education to the black community. That's what I am highlighting right now.
- [19:47]
B
Yeah. Specifically that y' all could. Yeah, y' all could have your own conversations about that.
- [19:52]
A
But the social services that they provided to the black community, I think give us a blueprint into how do we take care of each other during crises. And it turns out we literally just show up for each other. We pull resources, we protect one another. You have a vested interest in somebody else's well being. I'm starting to see that single mothers are starting to buy homes together. That's so intelligent. I think the other thing we're starting to see is a lot of unions. I don't know if folks know the data shows that the unionization has been on the decline, but we're starting to see a resurge of union efforts. Right. Even with Mamdani's. When we're seeing that a lot of Working Family party candidates are coming to the top of a lot of these tickets, we're seeing a lot of folks who are pro progress in the sense that they want free buses, they want free child care. People just want to be able to take care of their neighbors. I think having that spirit and turning it into action is really, really important. I keep telling folks, you got to go outside and touch grass.
- [20:57]
B
Yeah.
- [20:58]
A
You out here spinning out on blue sky is not making the world better.
- [21:03]
B
Right.
- [21:03]
A
It's complicating airflow. Go and do something. It was your life that helps your community.
- [21:09]
B
That's. I mean, that's fantastic. And like, I'm curious, I guess when you think about future generations and what that looks like, we kind of have two paths, right. We keep going down the path of more regulation against people of color, taking away rights from people of color, women of color being more oppressed, and at sort of the bottom of this rung. And then we have another future. And so I guess, you know, you talk about what people can do to fight back, but is there anything you've sort of seen more specifically, like economically that people can start thinking about to plan for if they want families to not have to exist in that. My plan is just to leave, but some people gotta stay. So, you know, it turns out the whole world is in America.
- [21:56]
A
Right. I would say Europe is about five years behind the States at the moment. I think what I said before still applies here. Unionization should be happening in every aspect of our lives. And that is how we hedge against a future that is not people centered. Right. I think that a lot of folks think that they can Go at this alone, and what you're going to realize is that people who want ill for you, they're banking on you doing this by yourself. And so I think that you literally linking up with other people, you plugging into different community groups, you investing in your community. So I got, like, a letter recently in the mail from my library system. I said, go books, right? Like, I was like, yes, because I was like, I want to support kids reading in the library. I want that to be something that is a pillar of my community growing up. So I feel like that, to me, feels like really great preparation. I think if we're thinking practically, if you're in the workplace, for example, you should be talking openly about how much you're making, because I want to make it very clear into the mic. I don't know what the mic is, but let me make it very clear to y'. All. These corporations don't care about you. I'm so sorry. They don't care.
- [23:07]
B
Yeah.
- [23:08]
A
They don't care if you die today, because guess what they're gonna do. They gonna put up an indie post talking about, we got a new opening. Isn't that what happened with that CEO?
- [23:18]
B
Yeah, straight up next week. To that end, like, is there policy analysis that you've seen that, like, can maybe safeguard against the, you know, this sort of downward trajectory for us?
- [23:30]
A
For sure. I think one thing we need to do is reduce the price of childcare. Literally, the price of taking care of the next generation needs to go down significantly. So we know the child tax credit, which is, interestingly enough, a bipartisan supported policy, is definitely something that's on the table. It should be a lot higher on that front. Having public resources be well funded is extremely important. I'm a PBS kid.
- [23:52]
B
Yeah, same.
- [23:54]
A
Oh, I love it. Wait, what did you watch?
- [23:55]
B
So I'm. I think I'm a little bit older than you, but I was watching Zoom. But it was, like, not the originals. It was like I was on the.
- [24:02]
A
Very tail end of when it. It went off air.
- [24:04]
B
And, like, majorly Sesame street household.
- [24:07]
A
Okay.
- [24:07]
B
Period. Now I'm in the news hour game.
- [24:10]
A
I love it. Great news, by the way. They're so good.
- [24:14]
B
Yeah, they get to the truth, they get to the heart of it.
- [24:16]
A
That's right. Public resources, things like Head Start are so, so important. I would also say, too, that I think that worker power is going to be the future. And it's also going to be what I think prevents us from living in a purely exploitative and extractive world. People just need to literally speak up and be like, nah, actually, I'm not going to pay that. I know we all see the egg prices. They're preposterous. I was at Roche Brothers the other day. I just come back from my little European book tour. Whatever. So it had been two, about a month and a half. The last time I was at Roche Brothers, I went to go to Ben and Jerry's. It cost maybe $4 a pint. I got there maybe a week or two ago. $7.
- [24:57]
B
For ice cream.
- [24:58]
A
For ice cream in this economy, girl. I said, huh?
- [25:01]
B
They said, no little treats.
- [25:04]
A
But my point here is that I think that we as people forget that we're the 99%. If we actually want things to change, we can determine that future together. But I think that that's exactly what happens. There's a lot of fractures because people want to be proximate to the 1% or they want to benefit from the 1%.
- [25:23]
B
They think they're going to be the 1% if they just wait long enough.
- [25:27]
A
But history has shown that that never happens. And the only way that progress actually comes to fruition is when the people say, actually, we not messing with this collectively. And so I think those are the ways in which, economically, we can protect ourselves to ensure that some of the policy solutions that are on the table, like reparations, making sure that entrepreneurs of color, especially black entrepreneurs, get access to capital. Right. Like, these are all things that are super important. Just to let folks know, black hiring managers are more likely to create jobs for black people.
- [25:59]
B
Yeah.
- [25:59]
A
So that's why you want black entrepreneurs.
- [26:02]
B
Yes.
- [26:02]
A
Because they're going to hire black people. They're going to hire people in their community. So if they're not getting capital to pay people, then they can't employ people and they can't create jobs for the community. So that's why all of these things are intertwined, ensuring that our economic future doesn't leave anybody behind.
- [26:18]
B
Yeah. Let me cut to the chase. How is it better to strip women of color of opportunity for advancement to appease the last gasp of white supremacy that refuses to honestly and earnestly compete? It's not. And the only way forward toward progress is to support one another. Mutual aid sounds fringe to many, but sharing meals and resources is kind of where the onus stops for us as individuals to fight huge systemic injustice. Obviously, voting is going to matter going into 2026. And when we don't vote, it's those on the margins who tend to feel it most. So let's do better this next time our future might actually depend on. Thanks for listening to or watching How Is this Better? Make sure you're following or subscribing on your platform of choice, including our very own YouTube page@YouTube.com howis this better? And if you can leave a rating and review or comment on the episodes because all of it is super helpful in spreading the reach of the show and we appreciate you. How Is this Better? Is written and hosted by me, Akilah Hughes. It's produced by Devin Maroney, video editing is by Shane Verkus, Kevin Dreyfus is Courier's National Managing Director and Executive producer, RC Demezzo is their VP of Brand and Social and Charlotte Robertson is the Deputy Director of Brand and Social. Samantha Hollows is the YouTube and podcast growth marketer and Marianne Kuga is the Director of Marketing. Tracy Kaplan Kathleen is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Distribution and if you're interested in advertising or sponsoring, you can reach her@advertiseuriernewsroom.com show artwork is by Danielle Deplato and original theme music is by Used Seawall.