#blackwomensequalpayday
News Brief
Damola Durosomo
Aug. 07, 2018 12:02PM EST
Image via TONL

#BlackWomensEqualPayDay Is the Day When Black Women Finally Earn What White Men Did Last Year

"Equal pay is not about getting what's fair, but about getting compensated for the value and expertise we bring to the workplace."

Black Women's Equal Pay Day marks the day that a black women will earn the equivalent of what a white man earned the previous year. This year, it took eight months and seven days for this to happen which makes today, August 7, Black Women's Equal Pay Day.

Despite being the most educated demographic in the US and working the most hours on average, black women are paid only 63 cents for every dollar a white man makes, the AAUW reports. There is also a major pay gap between black and white women, as black women are payed 21 percent less than what black women are payed on average.

This divide applies to women in all fields. According to a report from the National Women's Law Center, a black woman stands to lose over $800,000 throughout the span of her career under the current wage gap and up to $1 million in certain states.

These discrepancies are astounding and they affect the everyday lives of black women who are often the financial backbone of their families, yet according to the Huffington Post, only 1 in 3 Americans are aware of it. "Equal pay is not about getting what's fair, but about getting compensated for the value and expertise we bring to the workplace," Lisa Skeete Tatum, CEO and founder of career guidance platform Landit.

Not only do black women face salary discrimination, but they are often subject to prejudice and microagressions in the workplace. Last year, the Twiiter hastag #BlackWomenatWork was created to address these issues and allow black women to share their stories.

Black Women's Equal Pay Day is intended to combat this, and is a day to remind and inform people about such injustices against the livelihoods of black women.

Much like previous years, many black women have taken to social media to share their experiences and demand folks to "give us our money," using the hashtag #BlackWomensEqualPayDay.













#blackwomensequalpayday
Music
Photo by Don Paulsen/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Hugh Masekela's New York City Legacy

A look back at the South African legend's time in New York City and his enduring presence in the Big Apple.

In Questlove's magnificent documentary, Summer of Soul, he captures a forgotten part of Black American music history. But in telling the tale of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, the longtime musician and first-time filmmaker also captures a part of lost South African music history too.

Among the line-up of blossoming all-stars who played the Harlem festival, from a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder to a transcendent Mavis Staples, was a young Hugh Masekela. 30 years old at the time, he was riding the wave of success that came from releasing Grazing in the Grass the year before. To watch Masekela in that moment on that stage is to see him at the height of his time in New York City — a firecracker musician who entertained his audiences as much as he educated them about the political situation in his home country of South Africa.

The legacy Masekela sowed in New York City during the 1960s remains in the walls of the venues where he played, and in the dust of those that are no longer standing. It's in the records he made in studios and jazz clubs, and on the Manhattan streets where he once posed with a giant stuffed zebra for an album cover. It's a legacy that still lives on in tangible form, too, in the Hugh Masekela Heritage Scholarship at the Manhattan School of Music.

The school is the place where Masekela received his education and met some of the people that would go on to be life-long bandmates and friends, from Larry Willis (who, as the story goes, Masekela convinced to give up opera for piano) to Morris Goldberg, Herbie Hancock and Stewart Levine, "his brother and musical compadre," as Mabusha Masekela, Bra Hugh's nephew says.

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