More Money Podcast - How the Black Women Best Framework Lifts Up All Boats - Economist and Author of The Double Tax Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, an award-winning economist and author of the new book The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid. Anna breaks down the concept of the "Double Tax," describing it as the "Pink Tax and then some," and explains how the compounded costs of racism and sexism force women of colour to pay more to exist in our economy, and what we can all do to make things more equitable for everyone.For full episode show notes, visit jessicamoorhouse.com/447Follow meInstagram @jessicaimoorhouseThreads @jessicaimoorhouseTikTok @jessicaimoorhouseFacebook @jessicaimoorhouseYouTube @jessicamoorhouseLinkedIn - Jessica MoorhouseFinancial resourcesMy websiteMy bestselling book Everything but MoneyFree resource libraryBudget spreadsheetWealth Building Blueprint for Canadians course Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lou, Lulu, and welcome back to the More Money Podcast. I'm your host Jessica Morehouse, and I've got an amazing episode for you. I'm interviewing Anna Gifty of Hoku Adjiman, who is an award-winning economist, founder, speaker, and postgraduate student at Harvard Kennedy School, studying public policy and economics. She's also the youngest recipient for a C-D-A-W Women's Rights Award by the United Nations Convention on the Elimination, of all forms of discrimination against women. And she has two books out. The Black Agenda, which came out in August of 2025. Make sure to grab a copy of that. But we're going to be talking more about her new book, which just came out in September, called The Double Tax, How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid, which explores the compounded costs women of color face

throughout their lives and what we all can do to fix it. Now, Anna is amazing, as you know, and she brings, she brings her research with her, which I always love. So you were really going to learn a lot and, I think, be inspired and motivated to take action after listening to this episode. So without further ado, let's get to that interview with Anna. Welcome, Anna to The More Money Podcast. So excited to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor. Oh, honor. Well, I'm honored to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I randomly got kind of discovered you when you were on. a friend of mine's Instagram where she was like promoting your book. I'm like, oh, this is up my alley. This is, you know, Kismet. This is great. So I contacted you. And I'm so excited to have you on the show to talk about your new book. The Double Tax, which I feel like is very much in line with even some of the stuff that I talked about in my book, but goes way deeper, way more research, way more stories. I mean, just the fact that you interviewed so many people through your book is

absolutely mind-boggling. So I'm so excited to dive deep into. to the double tax and I've got quite the list of questions. But before we get going, just for anyone who is just finding out about you, you're an award-winning economist, now an author, you're a speaker. Tell me a little bit more about your background than how you came to a point where you're like, I need to write this book. Yeah. Again, thanks so much for having me on the show.

I'm super, super excited to be here and to be talking to your listeners and your community. It's interesting because even you calling me an award-winning economist is such a weird thing to be. That's fancy. It's kind of weird to like sort of, okay, like, that actually is who I am at the moment. Yeah. So I like to say I'm just a girl from around the block in the sense that, you know, I grew up in Maryland, but I'm born in Kumas and Ghana. So immigrated here when I was three months. So my parents got something called the visa lottery, which essentially gives citizenship at random to individuals who are abroad.

And so lived in the Midwest, Minnesota specifically, moved to Maryland, was namely sort of raised, in Howard County, Maryland. And so I feel like a lot of my experiences growing up really kind of prepared me to write a book like this. So, you know, I grew up in sort of like a low-income affordable housing neighborhood. And I never felt poor, so to speak. But, you know, when we did the Head Start program and the program was required to sort of send one of their students to a new private school in the county, I was a student that was selected. And so my world sort of flipped upside down. Basically went from being one of many students who had a very similar socioeconomic status to now being one of the only ones who grew up in sort of like a low income working class

neighborhood. And I feel like my, that was when I was like five or six. So I kind of got exposed to inequality pretty early on. And then I would say that from there, I really kind of like started to confront, like, how rich people were, how poor people were, you know, where I fell in that and how it was very relative depending on where you grew up or, like, where you were currently living. So, you know, in, like, I'm in my school and among my classmates, it's probably the poorest, quite frankly. But then when I went back to Ghana for the first time as a 16-year-old, I was closer to the middle class because of how worse off our relatives were, right? So I think that having some of those early experiences really exposed me to how inequality manifests

and also whether or not I was okay with the way it was manifesting, right? And I realized I'm not really okay with this. It's very unfair. I think everybody has the right to a dignified life that allows them to move up the economic ladder if they want to. And so I felt like even then I wanted to kind of play a role in helping that become a reality. And I was one of those high school students that watched a lot of tech. TED Talks. So it's funny because, like, I don't know why I watched TED Talk. I think people were just, like, really smart and fascinating. And I wanted to learn more about what they were talking

about. But funnily enough, like, when I really reflect back at that time, I remember a couple things. One, watching a lot of economists and not knowing what they were, but like knowing that, oh, like, this is a really interesting way of thinking about the world. I wonder what these people do. And I thought that that meant looking like, you know, becoming a lawyer or studying international relations or whatever. And then the other thing that ended up being a pivotal thing for me in terms of understanding inequality, especially in the States, was watching The Daily Show with John Stewart. So I remember, you know, I wanted to watch an episode of DeGrasi and my brother wouldn't change the channel. And I was like, hey, can I watch? I just came back from school.

Like, he's like, no, I'm watching this man talk about politics. And I was like, who is this angry man yelling at the TV? But then I realized, like, as I was listening to him, I actually agreed with a lot of the thoughts that he was sharing. And I was like, hmm, maybe I should just tune in to the next episode, in the next episode. So it ended up becoming a bonding experience for my brother and I, but also really like a key point of exposing me to how we think about solutions, especially through the policy making process. Yeah. Wow. Who knew that I wonder if John Stewart knows how many people. He's, you know, he's like, you know, watch the job. You know, not crazy. He's like, who. knew that that would be like and this is the direction I'm going to go into and that's that's so

funny also like shout out to degrassy Canadian show yeah shout out to the grassy yes wow that's incredible and so and so from that you decide to go in a path to become an economist and honestly like I don't know too many economists like who aren't when you think of an economist you think of like someone in a suit Wall Street base street whatever and just boring as heck but you are not that at all you like i would never pin you as an economist just because you are so lively and so passionate and um and it really comes uh you know through on the page of your book and i think that's also it was so easy to read your book because it just felt like it was it was digestible whereas again if you talk to an economist even having that conversation is sometimes difficult um so you know

why did you really want to make sure okay now i'm at a point where i have a lot to share a lot of data points, a lot of stories. I want to make this accessible because even though, you know, you know, from my little weird bubble, it's like, I'm aware of lots of these stats. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But a lot of people still aren't. Or, you know, there's a story that you shared in the intro where you came off stage after doing a keynote and this guy comes up to you and refutes all of the facts that you just shared in your presentation, which I feel like if you're a woman, it's like, oh, yeah, if you're a woman of public speaker, you've had that experience. And you're like, You mean the whole presentation I just gave?

You're like, I don't believe it. Well, okay. Yes. So how did that, I guess, kind of be one of the driving forces of like, I need to get this word out? Because clearly, not everyone knows or understands or even believes that these are the things that are actually happening. Yeah, you know, it's interesting, right? Currently, I'm a PhD student at the Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy and economics. So my focus focuses on race, gender, and the economy, which means that.

a lot of the stats that we know, I spend like, I breathe in day and out, right, day in and day out. And so I think when I had that speech, it was in front of a bunch of accountants from what I remember. And having that guy provide his unsolicited feedback, we'll just call him John, right? John had some thoughts, right? I realized even with all the education and the credentials that some folks have, they don't know all the facts, right? And so I think it was really important to recognize that, you know, if we don't make these facts easily accessible, a lot of people are going to be making decisions based off of incomplete information. And for me, it was just really important that, you know, if that's the case,

how do I help democratize the information that helps us make more, you know, I think sound decisions that have inequality and equality in mind. Yeah. So I think that like having people make decisions based off of incomplete information to me feels unfair, right? I think also because now that I'm here at Harvard, we have access to pretty much everything, right? So I think for me, I kind of saw it as, okay, well, I'm in a position of privilege at the moment as a researcher, as an economist. And I can use this privilege to sort of talk to other people who agree with me or talk to other people who have similar levels of expertise. Or I can try to spread. this knowledge as far and as wide as possible. And so for me, I really saw it as a responsibility and say, look, we actually have a lot of really great data and a lot of really good cutting edge research that is already out there that kind of helps us better understand the compounded cost of racism and sexism, which I call the double tax in my book. And so if we're able to sort of bring that research and information to the forefront in a way that you can understand and not feel

like someone's talking at you or talking over you, that to me is a value add, not just to, you know, our understanding of the issue at hand, but also to a lot of communities that may need that kind of information to make better decisions about their lives and their community's progress. Yeah, absolutely. You've already touched on the double tax, but I did want to kind of explore that term a little bit more, especially to, because there's already the term out there, the pink tax. I think a lot of women are familiar with that. But you want to kind of talk about what the double tax mean? And how is it kind of different than the pink tax or it's like kind of connected, but it's different? Yes. So I would say that the double tax is the pink tax and then so.

Yeah. So the pink tax for those who might not know is basically when women are sort of being charged more for products that are similarly marketed to men. So just think about pink raisers versus, you know, blue razors, right? The pink raisers will be priced higher. And so what we know from the research is that the pink tax doesn't apply to every single product on the market, but a lot of the products that we use, it applies to, right? Things like shampoo and conditioner, for example. The double tax says, look, all women deal with the pink tax, right? You know, all women have to buy tampons. All women have to sort of buy these products that are advertised to us. But black women are having to deal with additional taxes on top of that, meaning that, you know, it's not just that I have to buy

the products that are feminized and that are probably marketed at a higher price point. But I'm also probably traveling further to buy products that even work for my hair to begin with, right? And so driving to a further distance is a tax. And then when I get there, those products might be even marketed higher because the products that work for me tend to be, you know, in less supply when, you know, they're actually on the shelf. So if you're going to sort of a department store or going to a CVS, there's a

small sliver that might be advertised towards black and brown folks hair types which means that you know if those products aren't even being produced in mass i'm already paying a higher price point given the amount of people who are also trying to buy those products yeah on top of the fact that i had to drive maybe a further distance to even get those products in the first place so what i'd like to tell folks is that in cambridge i believe there's only one black beauty supply store and it's about 45 minutes away from me. Oh, my God. Yes, right?

So if I don't have a car, that means that I'm going to have to buy maybe a bus ticket or train ticket, switch buses, switch trains one way, and then I'm going to have to do that whole process again coming back home, right? Not to mention that because there's only one beauty supply store in this area, all the black women

and also white, Asian, and other women of color who might need those products as well are going to the same place to get these products which is driving up the price, right? So essentially the double tax says, look,

if we don't address these compounded costs or with racism and sexism, these costs become societal costs in the long run. Another way to put it is, you see a fire, five houses down, you think, oh, it's five houses down.

It's not my problem right now. But fire, like Christ, sees spreads. So if you don't address the fire where it's at right now, it at some point will arrive at your doorstep. And I think that a really clear example of this right now in the labor market is that we were having conversations back in March about how unemployment is spiking for black women, right? This has been an ongoing conversation. It's now starting to make itself into the mainstream or make its way into the mainstream. But we're now having a conversation about six or seven months later is that women are starting to experience overall

a spike in unemployment. Mothers are starting to leave the labor force. This is a great example of double tax. How we address what was going on with black women and black mothers at the top of the year, perhaps we wouldn't be having this conversation across the entire nation at this time. Yeah. And there's a framework you talk about or you called the black women best, which I thought was really interesting. And again, when you explained it in the book, and it was kind of one of the reasons that guy was like, I don't believe what you're talking about. When you explain it in the book, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Why aren't we all that, why are we even talking about? But for people that don't know what black women best that framework means, you want to kind of

explain it and why we should be using this framework to kind of address what you've just been talking about. Yes. So the black women best framework is a framework that was championed and coined by Janelle Jones. So Janelle Jones is the first black woman to serve as the chief economist of the Department of Labor. So for those who are interested in like job numbers, unemployment statistics, she was essentially the person who managed that team that put out those numbers for some time under the Biden administration. So what she basically says is the following. If the economy is working for black women, it's likely working for everyone else. Put another way, black women are the tide that lifts up all boats.

So what this means is the following. I think that people oftentimes will look at minority groups, minorized groups, and say, well, they're only making up a small share of our population. What can they actually tell us about the economy at large or women at large? And what I like to tell folks is that black women are essentially at the center of the Venn diagram that is our society. So we have so many communities that have very similar circumstances. in different pockets of their lives. And what I like to tell people is that black women oftentimes intersect with a lot of

other communities where women, we're breadwinners, we're highly educated, but also we can be low or middle or working class, right? We're small business owners, disproportionately so. We hire at a faster rate than other groups when we own businesses, meaning that we're trying to put food on people's tables, right? We find ourselves in jobs that are disproportionately in caregiving. At this point, I've described about 99% of our nation, right? And so the question then becomes, okay, well, this group kind of represents quite a bit of individuals in our society.

What is happening with this group that can kind of signal what's coming down the line? And so Black woman best says, look, if we have people, policies that use black women as a benchmark for progress, that means that anybody else who's better off is also probably experiencing progress as well. It's not to say that we're only making things better for black women. I think a lot of times people will misinterpret the framework as such, saying, oh, you're just trying to make things better for black women. No, no, no. We're saying that if you make things better for black women, white women benefit, white men benefit, disabled people benefit right a lot of different groups that are overlapping in their experiences

will also benefit because black women oftentimes are at the bottom of the economic totem pole yeah i wonder i mean i kind of know the answer but i'd like to know your perspective the the argument is likely that well if we yeah put all of our resources or or change policy to lift you know black women up isn't it you know going to take away from another group i think that's the argument that's the fear. What would you say to that? I think that our economy is not a zero-sum game. Yeah. We are tethered or put differently. Our fates are linked. And so what happens to me matters for you, right? What happens to my community, because my community is not existing in a silo. It also matters for your community as well. So let me maybe bring this to our current day.

we had a government shutdown, the longest in history, recent. Is it over yet? It's over now. Okay. It's over now. Right. Like, we're kind of just like, what's going on, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Can I keep track. Yeah. Listen, right? So, government shutdown. And what was on the table, at least as a residual impact of the shutdown with SNAP benefits? For those who don't know, SNAP benefits are basically food stamps. A lot of Americans, right?

I think it's about, I don't want to get my numbers wrong, but it's at least 20 million Americans rely on food stamps. And for Canadians listening, that's half of our population. Right. We're a much smaller country. Right. It's a lot of people. It's quite a bit of individuals rely.

I think it's 43 million. You can fact check me on that. But my point here, if that is 43 minutes, that's, I think, how big our population is. Right. That's wild. It's wild. So we have quite a few people relying on assistance from the government to eat. I want to make it very simple.

People are relying on the government to eat, right? And I think a lot of people are like, oh, well, it doesn't matter if these SNAP benefits go away. It's only really impacting black folks. It's only really impacting brown folks. But the reality is, if you look at the data, in their attempt to attack SNAP benefits, We saw a lot of politicians saying, well, you know, you have these black moms who are just leaching off the system. Very Ronald Reagan-esque. This is the welfare queen trope.

Using that to justify why the SNAP benefits not being there is totally fine. But when you look at the data, what you see is that 36.4% of SNAP beneficiaries are white. Okay? So who the welfare state's actually benefiting is white. Why is this an example of the double tax? It's saying that this compounded cost of racism and sexism, which is used to sort of demonize and villainize black mothers who might rely on government assistance for food, is actually harming other communities that may think that they're divorced from that reality.

Right? And so it's actually incumbent on us. to really think about, okay, if you're hurting a black woman, who else might be hurt as well, right? And I think the other reality of it, too, is that black women are economic ecosystems. And what this means is, you know, if a black woman can't feed her family, oftentimes her family is, you know, made up of a lot of different components of the community. It might include the elderly, it might include children, right? It also might include just other people who rely on her. And this is not divorced from the reality, I think, of other women groups as well.

But it is to say that you're not just hurting the black woman. You're hurting black men. You're hurting black disabled people. You're hurting folks who are going to school. And that plays a significant role in how our society evolves, right? So it's important for us to not dehumanize parts of our society. I like to say it like this. If 12% of your body stopped working, could you function?

Right? And so I think we need to think about our economy and such that if, you know, a substantial part of our economy was not able to do what it needed to do, the rest of us would suffer because we rely on that as part of our economy. Yeah. I want to talk a little bit because it's been conversations over the past year of DEI. I know that's had a huge impact on, again, everybody. And I think a lot of people didn't realize how impactful would be to everybody.

What have you seen the changes this year? And how does that, you know, again, kind of prove the point of the double tax and why we need policy in order to make things more equitable to everyone because, again, it impacts everyone, not just people of color. Again, this is such a great question. I think that, you know, for those who know what DEI is diversity, equity, and inclusion, I want to say a couple of things before we get into that question. The point that I want to make first is that DEI is not illegal. I think it's important to note that because everybody around is moving like it's an illegal thing.

But it's not illegal, okay? If you want to do DEI, you are not breaking the law. I just want to make that very clear. I mean, that would be wild if that was a crime. You know, like, that doesn't make sense. I think that a lot of challenges that you're seeing in the corporal sphere is so that that can be actually deemed illegal, right? So that's the first thing I want to say. The other thing I want to say is DEI actually, historically, benefits white women.

So white women have benefited from affirmative action. disproportionately and white women also benefit from diversity equity inclusion practices. The majority of diversity funding that's gone towards sort of like entrepreneurs who are not white men has gone to white women. Okay. So now let's talk about what you just asked about. What do these rollbacks mean and who does it impact and how is it like a representation of the double tax? I think a lot of times when people say DEI, why they'll say DEI hire, what they're basically saying is you did not get in here based on merit. Yeah.

So I think in the book, what I say is these merit warriors is what I like to call them, like to say that diversity is at odds with merit. They're substitutes, not compliments, right? And I think that that's a fundamentally flawed way of thinking for a lot of different reasons, but I'll give you one big one. Diversity is inevitable. Yeah. So I think that, you know, there was one clip that went viral a couple months ago.

It was this veteran who was talking about diversity equity and clues. I don't know what state he was in. But he went through the statistics, excuse me, of our demographic change. And basically what he said was, you know, to this panel of all white men, is that you know, and I know that the future of this country does not look like you, statistically. right one and four gen z is Hispanic the majority of generation alpha is minority at this point right black or brown non-white the majority of our world right now is black or brown the most populous continent and one and four people in the world by 20 i think 2050 maybe even sooner will be African.

So this sort of like, oh, we're, we hate DEI. What value can diversity equity inclusion? If you are an organization, a company, an institution, a leader, and you don't care about diversity, equity, inclusion, I promise you, you are going to be 25 years behind everybody else who does. Yeah. You are going to, you're either going to be behind or you're going to be irrelevant. it. Right? And I think that we need to start being very honest about what these attacks are

actually, which is a lot of people don't believe that black and brown people deserve to have a shot at building out their wealth, becoming economically mobile. And so what they're doing is they're attacking different pathways for that wealth building process. I wrote about this for Bloomberg recently. I said a lot of these attacks on DEI, especially in higher education, They seem like, oh, you know, we're just trying to get the most qualified person. But if you really think about that critique, what are you saying about black and brown folks? Are you saying that we can't be qualified? Yeah, we're not the most qualified?

We're not the most qualified? What are you saying about women in general? We can't be qualified? Yeah, yeah. Right? Why are you saying that my identity disqualifies me from being smart? Yeah. From being qualified for the job, for being competent.

This is the cost of competency that we've seen the double tax. This idea that because of these inherent beliefs about who is most productive, who is most qualified, people lose out on jobs, which contribute to whether or not they can make a living. A lot of the work that I focus on right now deals with understanding how we can disrupt inequality and bias in the workplace. And a lot of people will ask me, you know, Anna, do you ever get tired of this work? And what I tell them is I said, look, if I can design an intervention or interventions that make it harder for bigots to be bigots outside of their bathtub, I've done my job because that means that my niece, who is getting ready to go to college by the time she finishes, there will be accountability mechanisms in place that if she's qualified for the job, she'll get the job. There will not be anything in her way. And so if that means that I have to take it on the chin, I'll take it on the chin to study this work, to design the interventions, to scale these interventions, to make sure that my nieces and anybody else who's coming up after me doesn't have to go through the same obstacles and barriers that I want to go through. And I would also say, just as a quick aside, that Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and the next generation of millennials are very justice center.

We want a more fair world. Yeah. The majority of people want a more fair world. What's happening right now is that the minority of individuals who want to concentrate power, wealth, and influence are right now in positions where they can essentially dictate to the rest of us who they think is qualified and who they think is not. By the way, not based on merit. Yeah, as we've seen in many examples that we won't get into.

But it's so interesting that you mention your niece because I have been thinking about that a lot lately. My niece is six. She's half white, half Asian. And I think about this more and more as she gets older. And I start picturing her as like a teenager trying to find her first job and then going to university and getting her first, you know, real job. And all of the barriers I faced as just a woman with a lot of white privilege. I still face a lot of barriers getting into certain roles, especially working in finance. Right.

I mean, it's a lot better. now that I'm in my late 30s, but my God, my 20s, I was constantly questioned about my qualifications, my value, blah, blah. And I think about my niece and I'm like, I don't want her to go through what I went through because it's almost unfair that I went through, you know, less so that what my mom went through. She experienced a lot and then my grandma. But I'm like, it's got to be better. It cannot be like this. But also time is running out. She's six. She's going to be 16 and 10 years. That's not that long from now. And that's when she's probably going to get her first job. And so it's like this work is so, so important. And I think what's

frustrating for people like us who talk about this a lot is that there's still so many people out there that just are ignoring these facts or, or I guess, just don't want to accept it because, again, they think it will negatively affect them instead of what are their potential positive benefits. I wanted to talk just a little bit about, because again, I think it's really important just to point out that lots of arguments I've seen, too, with women and people of color, it's like, well, what are your problem? Like, they earn as much as we do. Like, what are these barriers? I don't know what you're talking about. If they didn't get a job, then they didn't earn it or whatever. But there are some very clear, you know, data points to show. Well, no, it's not like that.

And unless you've had that lived experience, then you probably don't understand. But you want to kind of talk about, there was one term that I don't know if I've heard about it with that term, but I know about it, is resume whitening. I'm like, oh, that's the term that we use for that. Oh, that's interesting. And I've heard so many stories of friends. There's even one from someone I interviewed for my book that really showed this discrimination at the exact start of your career and why it's like there's so many barriers right even before you get your foot in the door. Do you want to kind of talk about that? Yes, this is actually what my dissertation focuses on. So I'm happy to talk about this is like my bread and butter.

And funnily enough, I just read a couple papers about this. So here's what I'm learning, as I'm also learning about resume whiting. This is, by the way, a term that was coined by Sonia King, who is a professor at the University of Toronto and her co-authors, is this idea that essentially ethnic minorities are going to go ahead and whitewash their resume because they want to increase their chances of getting a callback. And there's really good reason for this. There's over 300 studies that show pretty much that you can hold all else equal,

meaning that the same exact resume can be presented to an employer. But if one of the resume says Tisha or like, you know, Clarkisha or something like that, sorry, I'm just like using a black sounding name versus like, you know, Bethany. Yeah. Tisha's not going to get the call back. even with I'm curious because a lot of hiring processes are integrating AI is that it doesn't matter AI is still racist and in my opinion I actually think there's not enough work on this and it's something that I'm debating getting into yeah we we know that you know AI bakes in whatever you train the data on

so if the data is biased because people are making biased decisions what will the AI do yeah let's go right so this is actually like one of my my my my my my First Projects was The Black Agenda, which is a book that I also encouraged people to check out, especially during Black History Month, where I invited 35 black experts from across the country to weigh in on a number of different policy issues and to provide concrete solutions. And one of my favorite chapters in that book is just the tech chapter, where I basically had three black women computer scientists right on what they felt was the most important topic. All of them touched on AI. This was back in 2022. Wow. They really wrote those essays back in 2021.

So before CHAPT and OpenAI and all these things came into play, and one of them said, you know, we have to pay attention to how these algorithms launch assaults, digital assaults on black and brown people through the ways in which the data is processed and then disseminate it, right? And so with that in mind, you know, I'm not sure. how AI is really going to make things more fair. I know there's some mixed evidence at the moment that, you know, in some cases it can be less biased. But again, it is a function of the training data. Who is actually training that data and what does that data actually demonstrate

in terms of the decisions that are being made at the start of someone's career? To your point about discrimination, a lot of discrimination that we see, hiring discrimination that we see, happens at that entry point, disproportionately. And what we actually see is that as you follow folks, at least in the software engineering career path, women, white women specifically, are more

likely to be promoted than any other group. So it's really that, yeah, it's quite surprising, right? Yeah. What we really need to be addressing, at least to start, is what's happening at the very beginning of people's careers. Yeah. And so, you know, if you don't kind of get it right at the start, you got to get in. It could, it's, I mean, yeah, it's really important. Those first few years or keys. Yes. Yes. And so essentially what they show in the study is that, you know, folks who were applying for these types of jobs, you know, if they were black and they said, you know, I was part of the Black Garden Club versus I was part of the Garden Club, the latter ended up getting the job offer, or at least the callback versus the former, right?

So indicating your blackness or your ethnic minority status was seen as a doc, right, on to whether or not, like, you can move on in the process. And I think that, you know, it's interesting to me because this brings in a larger conversation about whose diversity is welcomed in the workplace. And so I was reading some work by a sociologist called Frank Dobbin and his co-authors. And, you know, this was in conjunction with some other work by Dr. Kate Wiseman and some of her co-authors. And this idea of, like, diversity value is really fascinating to me.

what I'm noticing, at least from the literature and also from the interviews that we had with black and white women, is that white women are seen as sort of the creme de la creme when it comes to diversity, right? A lot of workplaces see white women as the safer bet because you're white. Yeah. Right? And so I'm getting this woman aspect, which, you know, contributes towards diversity, but I'm also getting this whiteness, which is palpable to maybe the white men who are running the place, right? But as we know, white women also deal with barriers in the workplace. So it's not like, you know, white women being in the workplace and being seen as sort of valuable in this diversity sense is, you know, the best case scenario. But it is to say that

blackness, particularly, is seen as a cost, right? And so when you, you know, when you, you you see these barriers that black women are dealing with, it's really because, you know, black folks are not perceived as a value add to a lot of these organizations. And so now when you think about that, oh, then it makes a lot of sense why from the 1970s till now, no matter how many audit studies you do, meaning that we're holding these resumes fixed and changing the names, the black person is always going to be called less. Because these employers don't think that black people have value to add to their organization. They see these black folks as a cost to their organizations. And I think what's also interesting in what was reflected in the book

is that I want to add some nuance here about the relationship between black women and white women in the workplace. Because we're seeing a lot of online discourse about this. And we also see this reflected in some of the qualitative work, meaning some of the work that researchers have done when they interview people. And it was interesting to talk to black women in their mid career and ask them pretty much, you know, what do you deal with in the workplace? And the same with white women as well. And what was interesting was all women in the workplace that we spoke to said, look, we deal with like basically feedback that's not actionable, right? We get, we get feedback that, oh, you're so friendly, you're so goofy, right? Like that's the kind of, and it's not helpful

for your actual performance. For black women, the tenor of that feedback, that's, you know, that that unactionable feedback is negative. Oh, she's bossy. She's aggressive, right? Saying she's assertive, but in a way that is negative, right? But in addition to that, talking to black women, we discovered another thing, which I'm not too unfamiliar with, but maybe you might be unfamiliar with,

is that while white women deal with the patriarchy in the workplace, black women deal with the patriarchy in white women. Yeah, yeah. So I remember I made a video. It's probably my most viral video ever on Instagram Reels. And I was kind of explaining this paper that came out by some Harvard professors, Elizabeth Linos and her co-authors. And what they find is that as the number of white individuals increase on sort of teams,

people get placed on when they first enter consulting agencies, right? Think about sort of like Bang consulting or Deloitte or something like that. Black women face higher rates of turnover, higher rates of being seen as low performers, and lower rates of promotion. And I think a lot of people will say, well, white men are the ones who are driving that entirely. No.

White men and white women contribute towards higher turnover and white men contribute towards lower promotion rates, right? And when you look at this in conjunction with some of the qualitative work, we know from some black women scholars, I'm forgetting their names now, which is horrible, but they talk about how black women who finally kind of cracked through sort of the discrimination that takes place early on, when you ask them, hey, who played a role in this?

They do not say white women. Yeah. They say white men. And so when I take all of this together, I think that, you know, I'm not sure who the demographic of your audience is, but I imagine it's pretty diverse. Right. It's pretty diverse. But for the white women who are listening, I think it's important to reflect a little bit on why these different groups of women who don't know each other, but who come from the same collective experience of being black women are all saying the same thing, right? what is it about white women and black women's dynamics in the workplace that creates such a toxic dynamic that black women don't feel safe with other white women right why would like why would you say that's happening is it like from my perspective i'm like i could see if white women were just like i just want a chance at the top and men are taking that so they're just effectively if they get to the top they're pulling the ladder with them and be like no i'm this is my spot i've worked really hard to get here no one's taking it from me. Is that one, or is it something bigger? I think that you've hit on one of the potential reasons why that might be the case. I think that there is also another reason which is

it goes back to something a bit more philosophical. I don't know if a lot of white women, not all white women, but a lot of white women see black women as women. So, you know, like to be in solidarity with other women, it doesn't look like to be in solidarity with black women. And so what that means is, like, you're fighting for the other white woman, but you're not fighting for the black woman, right? I think there was one story that was shared in that chapter called The Broken Wrong, where a black woman said, you know, I think it might have actually been dollars and said, she said, you know, I got paid like $10,000 less than I should have.

The person who told me not to fight for it was a white woman. But then when another white woman came into the office, she fought for her to get $20,000 more than the woman was asking. Right? I think it's like, who do you think you're in community with and who do you think you should be looking out for? Right. I think some would also say that I feel like the workplace,

especially the corporate workplace, can feel like a zero-sum game. So if I'm winning, you must be losing and vice versa. Right. So I think that there's also this idea of like, I'm in competition with these black women. And so if they're, if they're, you know, advancing, that means I'm not advancing, which goes back to my point about who do you see yourself in solidarity with? Who do you see yourself in community with? And I think as we have demonstrated in this conversation, the fates of all women are tied.

Exactly. So you might think I'm expendable today. But tomorrow, if you get rid of me, you become expendable. Exactly. So what was the point of getting rid of me, right? So what would have been better is if we had lost. linked arms and just kind of advanced our collective position rather than being pitted against each other and one of us wins one day and then the person loses the next day. Like, what was the

point? Right? Exactly. Yeah. No, and it kind of goes back to just, you know, what we were talking about at the top of this episode, which is the idea that so many people think that it is a zero-sum game or I just need to protect my force. That's right. And I, you know, this very individualistic, idea, which is so far from what this is, you know, the world actually is. It's like we need community and we need allyship. And we need to know what's actually happening to maybe people who have a different lived experience so we can come together and lift them up. Because, yeah, the only way we're going to find equity in the world, especially like as women and get like, you know, gender parity is if we also focus on the fact that, well, yeah, women are less,

or women in general earn less than men. But white women still earn more. than black women. And that's not okay too. We need everyone to come to the forefront. I know there's we probably just touched the surface. There's so many great things in your book, but I there's, believe me, I have like so many notes that we didn't even get a chance to touch on, but you're such a great guest. And I'm so glad we can touch on just a few things. I just think your book is so important and a great conversation piece for especially what we're seeing right now. It's just such a disappointing thing that we have to like keep talking about these things. And we've seen so many you know i feel like over the past couple years we saw so many things in a forward direction

and now they're kind of all being rolled back which just goes to show the work is not done not nearly done and so we need to keep talking about these things and especially as like coming from a white woman we need to understand uh the experience of black women and these data points because i don't you know you may not be aware of them but they're happening every day um so we need to be you know how can we be better be better allies and um yeah up because like you said you're black women they're the the ship that rises all ships i got that wrong i'm always the tie that lifts all votes yes yes what i'll say really quickly here just to add on to your brilliant sort of wrap up there is white women are not experiencing gender equality because racial inequality has not

been addressed yeah okay yes so you will not see equality in your lifetime until you start addressing what's going on in black women and i wish that could be i'm I'm not lying to you. I wish I was lying. But the reality of the matter is our fates are truly tethered, right? The fight for abortion rights really started with black women, right? I'll say again that, you know, what happened with Jimmy Kimmel? Yeah.

Actually, really started with a black woman, Jamel Hill, back in ESPN, eventually Amber Ruffin when she wasn't allowed to speak at the White House Correspondents dinner. We saw Samantha B. shortly be lifted off air after that, right? And now you have Jimmy, it's this fire that has spread out in the neighborhood. And so what I will tell white women who are listening, and also women of color who are not blad, is that you will not have a better life until you ensure that a better life is possible for all women. Yeah, yeah.

Right? This is not me being sort of like dramatic. This is me saying that what a life is. of people who abuse power will do is they know that black women are seen as a societal scapego and so they'll perfect the ways in which they abuse their power on us first and then they'll scale yeah so if you don't want that history like this isn't anything new there's this isn't anything new i think we just have short-term memories but it's like exactly we need to remember right so if you don't want them to scale you nip it in the butt when it comes to us And the great thing is we also don't want this to scale.

So this is where solidarity, this is where community, this is where coming up with solutions that actually benefit all of us comes into play. This is where Black women best comes into play, saying, okay, if they're coming for us and we're sort of the economic shock absorbers of all these different costs, what if we find a way to stop these costs from being incurred by us in the first place so that they never reach you? But I think a lot of times what people will say is like, well, those costs are affecting those people over there and I'm never going to have to deal with that. And then it's a sudden shock four or five months later when you're having to deal with the same thing we just dealt with. And people are like, why are you that so calm? We just spent the last five months dealing with it. Exactly. The evidence was there. We need to be aware. We need to be more aware. We need to open our eyes. That's for sure. And act. Exactly. Not just like, I mean, I think part of it is like knowing

what's going on. But yeah, you've got to do something about it. And, you know, speak up. Absolutely. Well, I can't wait for more people to grab a copy of your book. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I know you've been busy with your book tour and all this success for your book. And, you know, thanks again. And also, sorry, before you leave, terrible of me, where can people find your book? Where can people find online? Hello. So I am online at a social media handle with its Afronomics. ITS Afronomics. So if you want to learn honestly more about the economy, more about politics, I'm someone

who loves to break things down in a fun, entertaining way that's digestible, very similar to the book. So highly encourage that. I also encourage people to listen to the audio book. I'm the one narrates it all the way through. Oh, I love that. Super, super fun. I also add a little bit.

So you're getting a slightly different experience from those who are reading the book. So highly, highly encourage that. I'm on Blue Sky. I'm on Instagram. I'm also on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is popping these days. I actually agree. I like LinkedIn.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on there. Or I'm like, am I just getting older or is LinkedIn too? Right. That's very much it. So I highly encourage people to like connect on there. Always happy to talk to folks in the comments. And then I'm also just on the interweb. So visit my website anagifty.com. If you want to learn more about my research, if you want to learn more about the book,

as I mentioned before, I wrote another book. Well, actually I edited another book called The Black Agenda. So if you want to learn more about those topics, feel free to visit the website for that as well. but hopefully I see you guys around. I'll be doing a couple more events in the spring, especially around Black History Month and Women History Month. So feel free to come into those events and pay attention to my socials for those updates. Yeah, amazing.

Well, thanks again, Anna, for coming on the show. Pleasure having you on. Thanks so much. And that was my interview with Anna. Make sure to check her website out, Anna gifty.com. You can follow her on Instagram at It's Afronomics and on LinkedIn. just by her name. I'm going to link everything in the show notes, which you can find at jessicamorehouse.com slash the number of this episode. I always link it in the description, FYI, wherever you're listening.

Just check out the description. It's linked right there. And, of course, you can always go to jessicamorhouse.com slash podcast to find the show notes of any other episode you ever want. It's that easy. And of course, I'm giving away a copy of her book, Double Tax. Make sure to buy it. But also, you can enter to win the copy that I'm going to be giving away. just visit jessicamorehouse.com slash contest to enter to win. I'm also giving away all the books featured on this season of the show. A lot of good books coming out. So, and I think as this episode airs, we're kind of thinking of a holiday season. Is there any better gift to give someone or to yourself than a book? I don't think so, quite honestly. And speaking of books, just a reminder, I also have a book that came out this year, Everything But Money, a great holiday gift. I think, I think so.

think it's a great gift. Give it to all your family so you can have a really nice discussion of what the hell happened? Why do we have all these weird money issues? What's going on down our family line? I think that would be an interesting fun Christmas gift or holiday gift or whatever you celebrate. But yeah, this is my two cents. But also make sure to get a copy of double tax. It really was an incredible book. I was, yeah, loved every minute of it. So of course, like always, I am going to be sharing another archival episode, a re-listen episode tomorrow. So make sure to check back here for that. But thank you so much for watching on YouTube or listening on your preferred podcast platform. Really appreciate it. We'll see you back here tomorrow. And yeah, that's it for me.

Thanks a lot. And see you next time. The more money podcast would not be possible without the amazing talents of video editor, Justice Carrar, and podcast producer Matt Rideout, who you can find at M-R-A-B-Canada.com