Women of Color and Wealth – Measuring The Intangibles [Part 4]
[E]ventually, with her qualifications, she could have gotten a far better position than sales assistant from one of the letters she’d sent out, but few companies hired a person based on sheer resume, and it was nearly the end of July – a dead time for hiring. The girl had no cash left and no backup plans. The most hilarious thing about this girl was that she was too proud to use whatever connections she might have made. Her arrogance stunned him; he almost admired it. She was one of those Korean girls who thought she was as good as white and that the world was fair, and it tickled him to see her reduced to this position – to have to ask a member of the immigrant tribe for a patch of floor to sleep on and to ask another member to pull a favor on her behalf. Where are all of your little white friends now? he wanted to say to her. She was acting like a rich white girl, and Ted knew that life did not let you lie to yourself for very long. In that way, you had to admit, life was quite fair.
Reading through the Women of Color and Wealth Report, there was one aspect of wealth building that was absent from the pages. And the Insight Center could not have measured it, since by nature, these things are intangible. However, as a person mired in the American class struggle, the three other factors loom fairly large: networks, access, and acceptance.
These three things also influence how someone is able to amass wealth. Networks play an important role, as Ted points out above. Even if someone has the correct qualifications and experience, without networks to unlock the doors, it can be difficult to access positions on the higher levels of the scale. Also, access speaks to the idea that you can reach levels of decision makers and speak with them in order to turn things in your favor. But most important is acceptance – the ability to appear as if you belong, so that networking comes naturally, so that the decision makers you meet will accept and want to work with you, and so you do not mark yourself as too different and strange.
In the excerpt above, where Casey is at a job interview, she is literally starving, having exhausted all of her funds. Even though she is living off of rationed cigarettes and one pack of ramen noodles a day, she doesn’t fill her plate. Her prior training has taught her to be careful what you eat and how much you eat at a job interview, so she pushes her personal desires aside in order to make a good initial impression.
This part of wealth building isn’t often discussed – the idea that some people are able to game the system better than others. In a world in which bias can work for or against you, it is the dirty little secret of our so called meritocracy that the better connected tend to win out over the better qualified. Once again, networks and access hold the key.
Thinking through your own network connections (parents, parent’s friends, schoolmates, peers), how easy it it to find someone who:
- Can loan you fifty dollars? Loan you $500? Loan you $5,000?
- Owns a business with more than nine employees?
- Has an executive level job?
- Can sell you weed?
- Does not have a bank account?
Since Fridays are for reflection, let’s ponder the following:
How does who you are connected to impact how far you can go professionally? How much information can you find out from your networks? In what circles do you feel the most comfortable, and how does your race/class/gender impact your social and professional circle?
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