Building Black Wealth: Black Marriage and the Superwoman Schema
By Kathryn Wiley, MA
We are delighted to present the following submission from our rolling call for blog posts. The present entry, “Building Black Wealth: Black Marriage and the Superwoman Schema,” was submitted by Kathryn Wiley, a doctoral candidate in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Black women are doing a lot for Black families. The strong Black woman trope, sometimes called the superwoman schema, is characterized by resisting dependence, feeling obligated to help others and manifest strength, being determined to succeed, and assuming family headship through being the “breadwinner” (Barnes, 2015). This trope is an asset and a liability for Black women. Black women can’t rely on the state or on marriage for support so “superwomanning” becomes a survival strategy to navigate inequality (Barnes, 2015; Woods-Giscombe 2010). Even as some Black women embrace the role and value contributing to Black families in this way, the trope is used to justify Black women’s marginalization and the struggles of Black families (Barnes, 2015).
In today’s economy, “breadwinning” isn’t just about bringing in wages and paying bills. To “make it” now you have to build wealth (Adkins et al., 2020). You need to acquire assets such as homeownership, you need to learn about investing, you need to leverage your debt into more assets, or at least manage it to stay creditworthy; you have to do these things well enough to leave generational wealth for your children. Building wealth as a Black woman is an uphill climb because of the structural discrimination in housing, wages, and access to financial products (Rothstein, 2017; Charron-Chenier & Seamster, 2021) that is known as the racial wealth gap. At the median, Black households have $44,900 in wealth compared to white households’ $285,000 (Aladangady & Chang, 2023). This gap is intrinsically tied to what Black Americans are owed through reparations. Without intervention it will take over 200 years to close the racial wealth gap (Collins et al., 2016).
At the same time, there is also a gender wealth gap that doesn’t receive as much attention. Women across races hold 55 cents to white men's dollars (Kent, 2021). An intersectional analysis illuminates how Black women are impacted by both the race and gender wealth gaps: The group has 5 cents in wealth to white men’s dollar (Kent, 2021). While marriage is likely overinflating white women’s wealth, it still helps them build it (Ruel & Hauser, 2013). This isn’t true for Black women as marriage doesn’t help Black people build wealth (Shapiro et al., 2013). This isn’t the fault of Black men, but it is one path into an intersectional analysis of Black marriage and Black family wealth building.
In 2023, Tyler Perry made a comment about “successful” Black women splitting bills with lower earning Black men, which sparked another round of an ongoing conversation on Black love and “marriageable” Black people. Discourse around Black women’s headship and breadwinning has been around for a long time, hence the dedicated superwoman trope, but there is very little research on how Black couples actually share financial responsibilities (Eickmeyer et al., 2019). Perry’s comments imply that Black women’s economic headship is a solution to low Black marriage rates (see his full 2023 interview on Keep It Positive, Sweetie here). This suggests that Black women should be individually responsible for solving a structural problem. It also ignores that Black women already often partner with lower earning men. Black women have the highest labor force participation among women (U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2022) and are more likely to be primary or similar earners in their households than white women (Brown, 2021). Perry’s assessment of “success” gives income and education too much power– it skirts the economic significance of wealth, where Black men fare better than Black women. Black men hold more assets than Black women and, by net worth, Black women are the most economically disadvantaged race-gender group (Rucks-Ahidiana & Kalu 2023). Black women’s student debt burden supposedly helps acquire the human capital needed to earn high incomes, but ultimately contributes to a fragile Black middle-class (Houle & Addo, 2019).
Troubling Perry’s comments by considering a more nuanced economic and gender analysis doesn’t imply that Black women should financially rely on Black men. Instead, what this discourse motivates amid wealth inequality and the need for reparations is the question: Who is building wealth for Black families? Daminger (2019) found among white couples that husbands do more financial cognitive labor or spouses share it, but Black families are heavily reliant on women’s earnings in ways that white families are not. Superwomanning today for Black women requires performing the financial cognitive labor of investing and debt repayment, both of which have childcare components like paying for college with state-sponsored savings plans like a 529, out-of-pocket, or pushing your child to take on the burden of student loan debt. Consequently, addressing the question of money sharing and wealth building when the stakes are economic security requires an intersectional analysis.
We know that Black people can’t budget their way out of wealth inequality–the wealth gap has to be addressed structurally (Darity et al., 2018). When we talk about who is paying bills and about closing the racial wealth gap, we have to talk about gender, gendered racism, and Black women’s labor. The argument that reparations are the only thing that will close the racial wealth gap is strong (Darity & Mullen, 2022), but it also typically assumes that the systemic harm done to Black people is uniform. Black women’s oppression includes distinct sexual violence, labor as domestics, and racist-sexist discrimination (Collins, 2002). Black women’s labor in their own homes goes unacknowledged. Instead of obscuring the labor Black women do for Black families with ideological tropes, Black women should be centered in economic policies (Bozarth et al, 2020) and feminist policy issues like affordable childcare and paid parental leave should be part of the reparations conversation.
References
Adkins, L., Cooper, M., & Konings, M. (2020). The asset economy. John Wiley & Sons.
Aladangady, A., & Chang, A. C. (2023). Greater wealth, greater uncertainty: Changes in racial inequality in the survey of consumer finances. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/greater-wealth-greater-uncertainty-changes-in-racial-inequality-in-the-survey-of-consumer-finances-20231018.html
Barnes, R. J. D. (2015). Raising the race: Black career women redefine marriage, motherhood, and community. Rutgers University Press.
Bozarth, K., Western, G., & Jones, J. (2020). Black Women Best: The Framework We Need for An Equitable Economy. Roosevelt Institute and Groundwork Collaborative, September.
Charron-Chénier, R., & Seamster, L. (2021). Racialized debts: Racial exclusion from credit tools and information networks. Critical Sociology, 47(6), 977-992. (https://doi.org/10.1177/0896920519894635).
Brown, D. A. (2022). The whiteness of wealth: How the tax system impoverishes Black Americans--and how we can fix it. Crown.
Collins, C., Asante-Muhammed, D., Hoxie, J., & Nieves, E. (2016). The ever-growing gap. https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Ever-Growing-Gap-CFED_IPS-Final-2.pdf
Collins, P. H. (2022). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge.
Daminger, A. (2019). The cognitive dimension of household labor. American Sociological Review, 84(4), 609-633.. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122419859007
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The White House. (2021, June 01). Fact Sheet: Biden-Harris Adminstration Annouces New Actions to Build Black Wealth and NArrow the Racial Wealth Gap. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/01/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-announces-new-actions-to-build-black-wealth-and-narrow-the-racial-wealth-gap/
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Woods-Giscombé, C. L. (2010). Superwoman schema: African American women’s views on stress, strength, and health. Qualitative health research, 20(5), 668-683. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732310361892
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