Equal Opportunity Employers

When Barbara Ehrenreich chose “Maine for its whiteness,” she was not doing so out of some sort of white upper-middle-class squeamishness about working with poor people of a different race.[1] If anything, the liberal daughter of a union man had likely set out in her research for Nickel and Dimed hoping to find some sort of racial solidarity among the proletariat of the working poor. She had no problem befriending Haitians and Carlie, the African-American housekeeper who trained her, while working in Key West. Her criteria for picking her experiment’s second location points out a troubling racial stratification in regards to lower-paying service jobs in cities with a more “diverse” population.

Although housekeepers are not always racial minorities, public perception and regional ethnic dominance of occupations feed into the stereotypes. Image from Vogue Italia, via Sociological Images (http://contexts.org/socimages/)

Ehrenreich had noticed the racial makeup of the housekeeping workforce while looking for a housekeeping job in Key West. She saw that most of the housekeepers were black, Spanish-speaking, or central European refugees. [2] Now, these distinctions could be drawn as much from linguistic reasons, rather than any racial factors. Ehrenreich does, however, point out later that any association between minorities and housecleaning is a well-established misconception. She cites a 1998 Bureau of Labor Statistics study that identifies only about 37 percent of housekeepers as Latino/Hispanic and less than 16 percent as African-American. Any dominance by a particular group is likely to be regional, but the stereotypes exist. [3] Racially and ethnically dominated minimum wage occupations actually kept Ehrenreich from selecting certain cities for her experiment. New York and Los Angeles were ruled out because “the working class consists mainly of people of color and a white woman with unaccented English seeking entry-level jobs might only look desperate or weird.”[4]As a result, Maine seemed like a good place for her to blend in with the working poor, but only because the racial demographic was quite albino, as she put it.

It would be dangerous to equate poverty with certain races or skin colors. Of course, being Caribbean in New York City does not make someone destined to work a low-wage job and barely scrape by with enough to make a living. The Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) shows troubling numbers on poverty, however, in its Annual Social and Economic Supplement for 2009 (using 2008 data). While “White Alone, Not Hispanic” participants register an 8.6 [5] percent poverty rate, the percentage jumps with African Americans at 24.7 [6] percent in poverty and Hispanics of any race with 23.2 percent in poverty.[7] The statistics come from the CPS’s Definition 1 for poverty, which excludes capital gains.

Between the poverty statistics and Ehrenreich’s experience, we can see a disparity between whites and racial minorities in relative income and perhaps in workforce opportunities.  If we think about how difficult it was for her to find a setting where she could blend in effectively with the working poor, can we imagine the difficulty for a person of a different race to break away from jobs they are “supposed” to have to find a middle-class career?

—

[1] Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, (New York: Henry Holt an Company, LLC, 2001), 51.

[2] Ibid, 29.

[3] Ibid, 79.

[4] Ibid, 7.

[5] U.S. Census Bureau, ” ‘White alone, not Hispanic,’ Table 2. Percent of Persons in Poverty, by Definition of Income and Selected Characteristics: 2008,” Annual Social and Economic Supplement, Current Population Survey, 2009, http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/rdcall/2_004.htm.

[6] Ibid, ‘Black alone,’ http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/rdcall/2_006.htm.

[7] Ibid, ‘Hispanic, (any race),’ http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/rdcall/2_009.htm.

Day Care Through The Nose

Children reading at a Head Start center in St. Louis, MO.

In Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote about Maddy, a young single mother in Portland, Maine, who used her boyfriend’s sister as a babysitter. She paid this babysitter fifty dollars a week, instead of paying ninety dollars for a “real day care center.” [1] Affordable child care is a problem, especially for single-parent families living on a meager salary.

Parents bracketed in the lower class (even those in two-parent households) must have jobs to pay the bills. This means that their children must attend some sort of child care while their parents are away. Most national organizations suggest that children not be left home alone until they are at least twelve. Yet there is a catch-twenty-two here: to make enough money to pay for childcare, parents need jobs. To get a job, your children need childcare services. What comes first? Ehrenreich found herself in a similar (yet slightly less dire) situation when she described her need for both work and a place to live: “I need a job and an apartment, but to get a job I need an address and a phone number and to get an apartment it help to have evidence of stable employment.” [2]

If parents are lucky enough to find childcare, how much will it cost them? The Head Start program is an option for those who meet the federal poverty level eligibility requirements. As of 2008, a family of four must earn less than $21,000 per year to qualify. [3] However, for those not under the federal poverty level, the average day care cost in the United States is $8,150 per year for infants and toddlers. [4] The price is slightly lower for pre-schoolers. By visiting the Child Care Aware site, I used their nifty budgeting option to find out that if I lived in Massachusetts, had one child, and worked in a job that paid $30,000 a year, I would be deep in the red by now.

What happens to single mothers (or fathers, or even two-parent families) who are forced to get a job, but are unable to pay for childcare during the eight (or more) hours they are gone? It is illegal and dangerous to leave children alone for extended periods of time. Shifting children from place to place (grandmother, friend, babysitter, etc) results in under-developed emotional capabilities in children; if they cannot be at home with at least one parent, it is best for their development to attend an accredited childcare facility. Yet these places are rarely affordable to people living near the poverty line (and even many in the middle class), and both children and parents suffer for it. As Ehrenreich’s experience documented, a single person has a hard time “getting by” in America. But what happens when you have children counting on you, too?

[1] Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed, (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2001), 80.

[2] Ehrenreich, 54.

[3] Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center, “Head Start Family Income Guidelines, 2008,” <http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/Program%20Design%20and%20Management/Head%20Start%20Requirements/IMs/2008/resour_ime_005a1_020508.html>.

[4] National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, “2008 Price of Childcare,” <http://www.naccrra.org/randd/docs/2008_Price_of_Child_Care.pdf >.

Symbols of Success

November 1959 cover of Ebony

In Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, Jacqueline Jones briefly contrasted the treatment of women’s work in Ebony, the “nation’s largest-circulation black magazine,” to that in Life, its white counterpart.  [1]  Jones asserted that while both magazines spoke to traditional, middle class values, Ebony promoted black civil rights and emphasized “intelligence and diversity in women,” while Life confined women to the home through its “unidimensional image of women’s work.” [2]

November 16, 1959 cover of Life

This description and the lack of supporting images left me curious about the actual content of each magazine.  Did it hold up to Jones’ analysis?  Luckily, complete copies of both are available on Google Books.  While there’s great content in both issues, I chose to compare just the advertisements from the November 1959 issue of Ebony to the November 16, 1959 issue of Life. [3] (Since Life was published weekly and Ebony monthly, I chose the Life issue from the middle of the month).   Even just the ads in these particular issues upheld Jones’ assertion of Ebony as a more progressive and leftist magazine that encouraged black women to work.

Advertisements in Ebony urged women to seek job training and become a “symbol of success” while ads in Life placed women safely within the domestic sphere.  An ad placed at the very beginning of this issue of Ebony encouraged women to “Enjoy steady pay every day as a nurse!” and sign up for a “home study course” whose completion would guarantee $65 per week. [4]  Although the ad is for a teaching program, it still promotes work outside of both the home and the service industry, and this training implies getting an education in a certain skill.

A Life ad for Farberware cookware, in contrast, stated that, “A woman’s life, it would seem, is fraught with the problems of raising children to maturity, husbands to affluence, and omelets to perfection.” [5]  The word choice of “fraught” suggested that these tasks were so important, so time and energy consuming, that all proper women needn’t bother with anything else.  A woman was failing in her duty as a woman if she neglected these things.  Another Life ad for the Hartford Insurance Group enforced this vision, declared that “Hartford’s weekly check kept us going all through my husband’s slow, costly recovery” – it was better for the wife to support her family through remaining home to care for her husband than joining the workforce to earn an extra income. [6]

Ebony did also run an ad for Aladdin Vacuum Bottles that read “Smart Wife, Hot Lunch, Happy Husband!”, but the inclusion of ads promoting women at work offered a more nuanced image of black women than was presented for white women in Life.  [7]

Most telling, Ebony ran advertisements featuring whites as well as blacks, although never together.  One ad for Martin’s V. V. O. depicted a clearly Scottish man with a wispy, white fairy in the background, images completely separate from 1950s black culture.  Life‘s ads did not picture a single African American, even in service positions.  It’s as though they don’t exist.  This discrepancy contributes to Ebony‘s progressiveness and highlights Jones’ assertion that blacks had “created a culture shaped by values that were not necessarily shared by the people with whom they were struggling to become equal,” of which the differences between the ads in Ebony and Life clearly illustrate. [8]

Keeping them on the fields

The Legislative Black Caucus of South Carolina is not calling for a worldwide class revolution, or even organizing a demonstration of thousands to demand bread. These lawmakers are, however, hitting white elites where it hurts by urging black football recruits to reconsider attending the University of South Carolina (USC). The caucus is responding to the university’s board of trustees, which is likely to lose its lone black member.

State Rep. David Weeks, the chairman of the caucus, told the AP, “We are asking young athletes to be aware … there are folks in this state who say it’s fine to play ball but not to be on the governing board.”

Painting a Unified Labor Force

"Dress Shop" by Ralph Fasanella (1972) owned by the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY.

This piece reveals the ability art has to address important political and social issues.  It depicts a garment factory symbolizing the factory that Fasanella worked in as a young man with his mother and sister.  Fasanella, his mother, and his sister are all painted in the scene, highlighting the import role the factory played in his family life.  There is a sign towards the bottom left of the factory which says “In Memory of Triangle Workers”.  This sign and the painting as a whole, is paying homage to the 146 young immigrant workers who perished in the Triangle Waist Factory Fire of 1911.  This fire was significant to labor history, as it revealed the poor working conditions of industrial workers.

The windows of the factory display historical newspaper headlines and the paintings of the events they describe.  Amongst the historical events are the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.  This component continues with the theme of paying homage to important historical events and those who have perished.  Fasanella kept newspaper clippings he found important in his studio in New York City as inspiration for his work.

To the left of the factory are 1920s New York City tenements and to the right of the factory are 1970s New York City apartment buildings.  This allows the viewer to compare and contrast living conditions in New York City in these two important decades of political and social change.

Blaming immigrants for America’s problems?

"The Cause of it All," Judge, November 6, 1897, Courtesy of the New York State Historical Association