We met our new boss recently and he's this exceedingly wealthy, older man who's also a person of color. He met with everyone at the company during a town hall-type meeting to answer questions about what we could expect during this new chapter of him running everything. One of the first questions was from a Latina woman who asked him how he planned to address the pay disparity between women and people of color in the company, compared to white men. He said he understood and recognized the problem, that it's definitely an issue he wants to address, but he also wanted to "be careful" and make sure that no one was getting a pay increase "just because of their gender or skin color."
*this is the part where I squint skeptically*
That any changes or increases in pay should always be based on merit.
*SIDE. EYE. my dude, but I'ma let you finish*
He went on to tell a story about how when he was still a 20something student living in a well-documented racist country and entering a program for his chosen field, he was told that he was going to be paid half of what the white students in the same program would be paid. And when the other students found out and threatened to protest this blatant bigotry, he stopped them and told them that it was a privilege for him to have the opportunity to work and learn in that program, so he would do the work for less pay. This man stood in front of our whole company, a room filled with way too many white folks, especially too many white men making more than the rest of us, AND SAID IT WAS A PRIVILEGE TO DO THE SAME WORK FOR HALF THE PAY, thus setting the fucking tone for how the rest of us can expect to be treated, and communicating what would be acceptable treatment.
Now, let's talk about this bullshit idea of "merit-based pay," particularly when it comes to a field that involves more creative work that can be pretty subjective, making it difficult to quantify its worth. This idea of pay increases (which really isn't an increase in this case; it's a correction) based on what someone deserves, is subjective as hell. That low, mediocre ass bar where the standard is set? It's based on whatever white men do and have decided they think they've done well, compared to what, I don't even know. They twist that shit into what they believe is objective proof of their superiority, making them deserving of being compensated handsomely for their work. Work that women and people of color are doing, too, and if not at the exact same level, THEN USUALLY BETTER.
And I guess we just gonna ignore the fact that despite saying that no one should be paid more "just because of their gender or skin color," white men are already being paid more based on their gender and skin color. Thanks to bullshit racist and sexist perceptions about the inherently lower value of the contributions of women and people of color, we get paid less. We work just as hard, and usually harder, and make less. But it makes sense to essentially say "Fuck y'all, you gotta do even more than what you've already been doing in order to prove you shoulda BEEN paid fairly a long time ago."
We've already been exploited and taken advantage of, we've already been proving our worth by doing the work every day and being underpaid for it, but people in power feel comfortable operating under the idea that even more burden should be placed on us to prove ourselves. Why y'all ain't telling the white dudes that they gotta prove they should continue being paid more for the same work? Why don't they need to demonstrate and justify the value of their contributions? Because you're not really committed to justice or restoration. Instead of recognizing the damage in the pay disparities and coming in and making those adjustments off of that basis alone, you require even more labor from the people already doing more for less. While the goofballs in the power position stay comfortable.
Trash, the lot of y'all.