Opinion
Ann Romney: Privileged Mother
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
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W
hen Democratic strate-
gist Hilary Rosen said
that Ann Romney had
“never worked a day in her life,”
Romney behaved as if she had just
hit the lottery. She smugly made
the media rounds talking about
how hard it was for her to raise her
five sons. And she’s right. Stay at
home moms work extremely hard
to cook, clean, run a shuttle for
their children and their various
activities, participate in school
activities like “Room Mom” and
“Cookie Mom.” How do I know,
having never had chick or child?
A very dear friend, a Harvard-edu-
cated lawyer, has been mostly
home with her children, one of
whom is my godson, for the past
decade or so, and it shows.
I digress. Hilary Rosen mis-
spoke when she said Ann Romney
had never worked. What she could
have said is that Ann Romney
never needed to work in the paid
labor market. Even when Mitt
Romney was in graduate school,
they survived by living on the
returns from their investments,
according to them. So it isn’t that
Ann Romney never worked, it is
simply that she was never forced
to.
This entire conversation is a
blast from the past, reminiscent of
articles that I wrote in the 1980s.
Even then this was a mostly White
women’s’ conversation since few
Black women have or are married
to the kind of wealth that would
allow them to stay home. Conser-
vative stay home moms often say
that people have to make sacrifices
to stay at home, perhaps cutting
out luxuries such as restaurant
meals and extra clothing. But
unless food is a luxury, there are
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
Black women who are in the labor
market simply because they have
no choice.
The official unemployment rate
among African Americans is 14
American stay-at-home moms
called Mocha Moms, and there is
little data to suggest the size of the
African American stay-at-home
mom population, it is clear that
historically, African American
women had no choice but work. I
am not invoking ancient history
when I reference the women who,
as maids, were paid to take better
care of their employer’s children
than they could possibly take of
their own. And then they often
paid, I part with used clothes and
leftover food substituting for cash.
Ann Romney never needed to work in
the paid labor market
percent. The actual rate is more
like 26 percent, and in many inner
cities the Black male unemploy-
ment rate is nearly 50 percent.
This is a burden to African Ameri-
Patriarchal tradition kept White
women home, while White men
were paid a “family wage” that
was, by definition, enough to sup-
port a whole family. Such
Few Black women have or are
married to the kind of wealth that
would allow them to stay home
can women who often don’t have
the economic assistance they need
to raise a family. As a result of this
burden, nearly 40 percent of
African American children live in
poverty, too often supported by a
single mom (more than 40 percent
of African American households
are headed by women).
While there is a group of African
patriarchal tradition was not eco-
nomically present in the African
American community.
Few
African American men were paid a
family wage, but instead some-
thing like a subsistence wage.
Women needed to work to help
keep the family together.
Until the late 1980s, the labor
force participation of African
American women exceeded that of
White women, which means that
proportionately more of us were
working.
African American
women’s earnings often make the
difference between poverty and
comfort for their families.
Mommy wars? Give me a break.
Let’s talk about survival wars.
Even those African American
families who have been blessed
with higher education and “good
jobs” are well aware that African
Americans are “last hired, first
fired”. Too many so-called middle
class families are a paycheck or
two away from poverty. Last time
I checked, African American
households had only 2 percent of
our nation’s wealth, hardly a cush-
ion to fall back on, with few
investment returns to live on when
no one is working.
Tuesday was Equal Pay Day,
which counts the extra days
women have to work to earn as
much as a man did last year. This
hits women of all races, but it may
hit African American women
harder.
We can only laugh and shake our
heads at Hilary Rosen’s faux pas
and Ann Romney’s smugness. We
working
African
American
women, stay at home or in the paid
labor force understand that “life
for us ain’t been no crystal stair”.
Educated or uneducated, middle
class or working class, the labor
market has never been a level
playing field for us, and our
salaries show it. Mommy wars?
We fight survival wars in the
workplace and in this economy.
Julianne Malveaux is president
of Bennet College for Women in
Greensboro, N.C.
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Racially Profiling Black Businesses
T
he positive demonstrations
of support for the family of
Trayvon Martin following
his tragic death, and the nation-
wide evidence of unified response
(hoodies everywhere!) and the call
for justice are inspiring signs of a
renewed spirit among African
Americans and others committed
to correcting the obvious
inequities exposed in the wake of
this travesty.
Clearly, nothing we encounter in
the world of business can be
equated to the senseless slaying of
this young man. And as Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. taught us in his
Letter from a Birmingham Jail,
“… injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere…”
We are clear that there is no way
the shock, hurt and grief Trayvon’s
family endures because of the
absolutely inhuman conduct of
one misguided individual can be
compared to the struggles of busi-
nessmen and women. We can’t
help, however, but draw parallels
to the inequity Black business
owners must contend with each
and every day.
The deck is stacked against you:
When the courts rule against
you… when financial institutions
refuse to extend credit to you…
when even governments you sup-
port through your tax dollars can’t
bring themselves to provide equal
opportunity… well, you get the
Page 4 The Portland Skanner April 25, 2012
B LACK C HAMBER
Ron Busby
picture. As a class, the businesses
we work hard to represent face
odds no other group faces in this
country.
fractional percentage points of
opportunity to Black-owned busi-
nesses.
You’ve seen the numbers in this
space before. According to the
Census Bureau, there are 1.9 mil-
lion privately held Black-owned
businesses across every industry
sector in the United States. We
As a class, the businesses we work
hard to represent face odds no other
group faces in this country
And just as there are incredulous
voices that somehow defend the
series of bad decisions that result-
employ more than 921,000 people
and generate $137.5 billion in
annual revenue. According to a
It is the re-awakened sense of outrage
that will fuel our commitment to
correct the wrongs we see around us
ed in the senseless snuffing out of
a young life, there are those who
believe there is nothing wrong
with a marketplace that delivers
report by the Nielsen Company,
African Americans spend more
than a trillion hard-earned dollars
in the U.S. economy. Tragically,
even this spending does not trans-
late to reciprocity in the form of
contracting/vendor relationships
from the corporations that benefit
from our dollars.
Tragically, the giant loopholes in
regulations guiding federal, state
and local utilization of ethnic
minority suppliers allow for inter-
pretations that boggle the mind –
and devastate our businesses and
their hope for a brighter future.
It is beyond unfortunate that it
takes the senseless slaying of a
future businessman, a future
lawyer, a future elected official, a
future husband and father to cause
us to take stock of all the inequity
around us. But it is the re-awak-
ened sense of outrage that will fuel
our commitment to correct the
wrongs we see around us.
And though our commitment to
improving opportunities for
Black-owned businesses across
this country is solid and sincere,
the outpouring of support for jus-
tice in Florida fortifies us and
strengthens our resolve to stay on
the battlefield. There is no doubt
that the same energy that awak-
ened so many of us to Trayvon’s
murder is the same energy that
will drive our achieving economic
parity in America’s marketplace.
Ron Busby is president of the
U.S. Black Chamber, Inc.