“She Works Hard for the Money,” is Donna Summer’s classic that was born when she saw a waitress sleeping during her shift and thought, damn she works hard for the money. In this episode we talk about the birth of the song with Summer’s husband and we talk about Black women’s economic issues and how Black women can accrue more wealth and what society needs to do for Black women and how sisters can get more venture capital funds so they can start and grow their own businesses.
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Toure [00:00:00] Before 1980, Donna Summer was one of the biggest artists in the world. She was a singer whose cascade of hits could not be stopped. MacArthur Park went to number one.
Donna Summer [00:00:11] Someone left the cake out in the rain.
Toure [00:00:16] Then Hot Stuff went to number one.
Donna Summer [00:00:20] Looking for some hot stuff baby this evening. I need some hot stuff
Toure [00:00:21] Then Bad Girls went to number one.
Donna Summer [00:00:29] Bad girl, talking about the sad girl.
Toure [00:00:32] But Summer’s most important song came out in 1982, and it didn’t hit number one. The story starts in the ladies room.
Bruce Sudano [00:00:41] Well, the story goes.
Toure [00:00:43] That’s Bruce Sudano, Donna Summer’s widower.
Bruce Sudano [00:00:46] Was at Chasen’s restaurant. Chasen’s restaurant was a very famous old school. It doesn’t exist anymore. Hollywood restaurant back in the day. So this was after some kind of event. Whether it be the Oscars or whatever. Went to Chasen’s sitting in a booth. Donna gets up, goes to the ladies room, walks into the ladies room and sees the bathroom attendant. This woman sitting on a chair asleep.
Toure [00:01:13] That woman was Oneta Johnson. She was a waitress at the restaurant as well as a nurse at a local hospital. Johnson later told a reporter, quote,” I was exhausted because it was after 2:30 a.m.. I was saying to myself, Why don’t these people go home? I had to take a nursing exam the next day.”.
Bruce Sudano [00:01:31] She was raising her family. And this was like an extra job. You know, Donna certainly read it right. And that just goes to speak to Donna’s empathy and her intuition of people. She could read people really well and it was almost like she could look into their heart and into the soul and into their minds.
Toure [00:01:49] Donna Summer told a reporter, quote, I had such a feeling of love and compassion for this woman. So there in the ladies room of this fancy restaurant, a superstar singer and a working class woman. And Donna.
Bruce Sudano [00:02:04] And Donna looked at this woman and says, My God, she works hard for the money. And the light bulb goes off in her head. She goes back to the table where her manager at the time, Susan Mane, was sitting, said, give me a napkin. I have to I have this title. I have to write this down. She went into the studio the following day and basically wrote the song, One, two, three.
Donna Summer [00:02:26] She works hard for the money. So hard for it honey.
Toure [00:02:37] Donna said, quote, “I really appreciated her role in society and began to think of other people with similar roles who do odds and ends like waitresses, hat check girls and mothers without husbands who keep society where it should be but don’t get credit. The song was about Black women working hard and taking care of the finances and deserving respect because they’re carrying the family on their back. And that’s so real. There’s so many Black matriarchs who work hard and take care of the family, and we love them so much. And we know Black women have gotten the short end of the stick in America in so many ways. So today we’re going to talk about some concrete ways that we can change that. This is Being Black the ’80s. I’mToure and this is a look at an epic decade through the lens of some of the great songs of the era, not necessarily the best songs, but the songs that speak best to the issues that shaped the eighties. Money woes have long been a part of pop music. Another one of the greatest songs of the eighties was Gwen Guthrie’s disco classic, Ain’t Nothing Going On But the Rent, where she starts by saying,
Gwen Guthrie [00:03:50] Bill collectors at my door. What can you do for me? No romance without finance.
Toure [00:03:58] She says,.
Gwen Guthrie [00:03:59] You got to have a j-o.b if you want to be.
Toure [00:04:04] She’s in a dating pool where many of the men are unemployed or underemployed. She’s not a gold digger. She’s not looking to be taken care of. No, she’s looking for a partner who can help her battle these bills. This sort of song isn’t the escapist romantic fare most people want when they’re at the club, dancing and drinking and hoping to maybe, just maybe, meet someone. But it is empowering to hear someone singing your perspective. And a lot of women want a partner who can help them financially. Having a lover who can put some money on the table on payday is exciting, and it shows the realism that many sisters bring to their romantic lives. It’s hard to be romantic when you’re stressed about paying the light bill. And in the eighties, it was hard for a lot of Black people to pay the bills.
Nina Banks [00:04:55] So let me give you, you know, some context for African-American women’s economic situation in the 1980s.
Toure [00:05:02] That’s Nina Banks. She’s a professor of economics at Bucknell University.
Nina Banks [00:05:07] Because the 1980s, I think, is a really critical decade for African-American women because it leads to an increase in economic precarity and an increase in income inequality by race and also by gender as well. So so what happens in the early 1980s is that there are two economic recessions in the United States back to back. You think about it as really one big economic recession, because up until that time it was the worst recession that we had experienced since the Great Depression. Economic recessions, as you know, affect African-Americans especially hard. And so at the peak of that recession, just about late 1982, the unemployment rate peaked at about 11%, and it was double for African-Americans.
Toure [00:06:03] In the eighties, a lot of businesses and manufacturing began moving out of urban centers and either to more suburban areas or to the south or overseas. That shift, which was also known as deindustrialization, meant job losses for a lot of Black people.
Nina Banks [00:06:21] Deindustrialization is this transformation of our economy where there was a reduction in the manufacturing sector and an increase in the service sector that also disproportionately affects Black men who had manufacturing jobs, unionized jobs, good jobs. So the Black community is dealing with in the 1980s, major economic recession. They’re dealing with the effects of mass incarceration, deindustrialization and, of course, ongoing racial discrimination against both Black men and women. And so the effect on Black women is that it starts to lead to a decrease in marriage rates.
Toure [00:07:01] Hence, the reason why a song saying you’ve got to have a job if you want to be with me would resonate with so many people. It’s not that she’s hating. It’s that she’s meeting a lot of Black men who aren’t working or aren’t making much. And no matter how fine the brother is, if he can’t help her, if he can’t provide something. Okay. But let’s talk about solutions. Yeah. Want to do something different in this episode? Usually we talk about history, but this time I want to talk about the future and what society can do to improve the economic situation for Black women and what Black women can do to help themselves. Black women still face a 90% wealth gap, and with many Black women serving as the head of the household, that gap has a massive impact on both the current Black community and generations ahead. It limits educational options and it constrains how much a family can help members leap forward into ownership of a home or a business. It controls how much you can help those who fall into financial trouble. Lower incomes lead to lower rates of savings, which makes it nearly impossible for many Black families to transfer wealth to the next generation. In many white families, the older generation helps the younger ones navigate home purchases or college expenses, or helps with seed capital to start a business. In many Black families, the older generation is poor and reliant on the working age generation to help them as they age, which creates a negative inheritance. One fifth of Black families have a net worth of $0 or below. Seventy-five percent have less than $10,000 to save for retirement. But many of us know this dire picture. I want to talk about how to begin to reverse all of that. One of the key reforms that will immediately impact millions of Black women is this We need to raise the minimum wage. About 3.4 million Black women work for minimum wage and raising it would put over 3,000 more dollars in their pocket every year. Raising the minimum wage would change the lives of women more than men. About 60% of minimum wage workers are women, and it would change the lives of Black and Brown women more than that of white women, in that a disproportionate percentage of minimum wage workers are women of color. The real reasons why we haven’t raised the minimum wage in an extraordinarily long time are not economic. It’s not that corporations can’t afford it. It’s political. We have a political system built to serve the wealthy before the masses, especially the Republican Party. They are here to stand in the way of progress for the masses at the expense of the wealthy. But wage reform for millions is critical, and it would help many, many women who are working class get through the days and the years a little more comfortably. It would reward them a little more equitably for their hard work. Also, we should have a federal job guarantee.
Nina Banks [00:10:06] I would also argue for a federal job guarantee.
Toure [00:10:09] That’s economist Nina Banks again.
Nina Banks [00:10:11] Everybody who is willing and able to work should have the right to have a job. I’m a proponent of that. Sadie Alexander, the first African-American economist, was a proponent of federal job guarantees as a way of dealing with persistent labor market discrimination that Black workers faced. So federal job guarantee, I think, would be essential for Black men and women in our economy.
Toure [00:10:37] Those are important safety net measures that will protect people from poverty. But to substantively change lives, to change the economic trajectory of future generations. We need more ownership. We need more Black women becoming homeowners. Home ownership is the cornerstone of building multigenerational wealth, which means having something to pass on to our children. But more than home ownership, we need Black women becoming business owners. There are already over 2.7 million Black women who are business owners, and they are the fastest growing demographic of entrepreneurs in the U.S.. A Harvard Business Review study found 17% of Black women were in the process of starting or running a new business, while only 10% of white women are. This is great, but we need more. Many more. When I say we need more, I mean both the Black community and America needs them because more Black women business owners will help change America for the better. The way to truly change your family’s economic trajectory and move out of the class that you were born into is to either accrue enough assets that generate significant amounts of passive income assets like real estate and stock, or to create your own business and turn it into something that lasts or something you can sell and exit with a huge sum. But it’s hard to create a viable business without access to capital. You got to spend money to make money. And the best way to get money is to get investments from other people. But women entrepreneurs say getting capital is one of the hardest parts of creating a business. Black women in particular, find that part harder than other founders do. Black female startup founders get less than half of 1% of the total that American venture capitalists invest every year. Most businesses start with money raised from family and close friends. Most successful entrepreneurs were born into wealth, which allows them to take bigger risks and leads to having a network of friends with investment money. The vast majority of Black people do not have family with money to spare and access to a large network of friends who can help them accrue millions of dollars. These initial dollars are critical to building the infrastructure of the company and helping it prove that the concept works, thus setting it up to attract more money. Without that network, entrepreneurs are starting behind. But you can raise money from venture capitalists. You can do it. And I reached out to a few. To help us better understand how to navigate the VC world. Now a word from our sponsors.
Omi Bell [00:13:36] But it’s important for us to want to make money.
Toure [00:13:39] That’s Omi Bell.
Omi Bell [00:13:40] I’m the founder and CEO of the Black Girl Ventures Foundation. I’m an investor. I’m an angel investor. People have trauma around money and around making money or asking for money. Money is a tool to get down what you want to get done. So I would say like, want to make money and focus on building a business that makes money. And I think a lot of that business is being built in in the Black community around like things that are solutions for our community, which is great and it’s perfect. But make money.
Toure [00:14:06] I want my business to make money. As opposed to what?
Omi Bell [00:14:10] You’d be surprised. Okay, so I listen to hundreds of pitches and I’ve literally reviewed thousands of applications. And one of the clear distinctions in business owners from what I’ve seen, is the ability to articulate in a way that solidifies capital. So, for example, we’ll have women who say, and I built this by myself, you know, and I’m alone. I built this by myself. Well, guess what? Well, you tell me as a funder that you build it by doing it by yourself. I’m nervous because of you. I don’t I don’t like to give negative circumstance. So let’s say if you won the lottery, you whisp away growing up into the sunset what’s going to happen to my money? So there’s like a pure fun understanding of the financial system such that we’re not afraid to make money and knowing that, like, capitalism can be better. But the word capitalism and the idea of it in and of itself has been oppressive for us. And it’s trauma there. It says like, I want to make money, but I don’t want to be a capitalist. Like, what does that look like for people? You know, that’s actually not easy. For some people they really want to make money, but they don’t want to be a capitalists.
Toure [00:15:12] But being a capitalist sometimes means just asking for money. And for some of us, that can be hard.
Omi Bell [00:15:19] I think that you have to have a support team around you. You know, you have to have your I’m trying to ask for money playlists. Let me be clear, because at the does cause you will feel defeated and you’ll get a lot of no’s. And I heard someone say say, once an investor say it takes founders about 25 pitches to know what they have not know how to articulate it better. No but is like what do you know what you actually have in front of you? And it’s like. So all of that feedback is necessary for you to get better and better and better is a it’s a muscle. So you have to view it as a muscle. You go in and you working out, You know what? It’s better to lose weight on your first day in the gym, not even the third day for day, sometimes a 20 of day, two, three months in. You not spent to be at your idea, quote unquote, weight. You know, after just spending time in the gym, I think is about like reframing how we think about what we’re going to do. We’re not going to ask someone to do something for us. That’s how we’re going it where we’re going and to offer an opportunity for someone to join you in an endeavor. And when you think about it like that, it’s like, Oh, well, they just missed opportunity. Let me keep going. Oh, this is not the right opportunity for them. People say no because it’s either not the right person, not the right time, or not the right ask is nothing wrong with you. Right. So you learn from every time you talk to people.
Toure [00:16:36] Omi says there’s a few challenges for Black women that she sees consistently.
Omi Bell [00:16:41] There’s three challenges that Black and brown women are facing when it comes to access to capital. I mean, access to VC funding or why VCs are not investing it. That one is access to networks. If you don’t have family members that went to certain colleges or you didn’t go you yourself didn’t go to school, then you’re being left out of some of the conversations or the trust factor. Another reason is the ability to appear less risky because of some of these reasons, like you have certain levels of education. Is there a levels of friends or relationships? You have built businesses in certain ways that people then adore or believe it to be the truth of the pattern that needs to be matched. So that pattern matching is a big part of this. Like the guy who can backpack across America with a toothbrush is believed to be less risky than the woman who has managed a house of five and can kept then consistently fed. And then I think when women do start businesses, there’s this like underlining belief that women are more emotional and more for whatever reason. There is some lack of intellect that we have around businesses, around crazy business. I’ve heard literally her VCs say, well, you know, because women make more emotional decisions or, you know, Oh, because, you know, and I’m like, how are you, Peter Theil, Elon Muks? There two of the most emotional people. How are you saying where is this coming from?
Toure [00:18:05] She sees Black women adopting different approaches to the hurdles of the VC world.
Omi Bell [00:18:10] So I would say women are one deciding to be more educated. The other idea, the other that is taking on our greatness like masculine qualities where we’re you have to become just as cold or just as whatever the masculine ideal is of business might be. And I think another path that women are taking is just that, you know, I’m just going to build my own thing, which is where I came in.
Toure [00:18:31] Omi is part of a growing group of people who’s mssion is to help Black women founders get funding and get help building their businesses.
Omi Bell [00:18:41] You know, my thing was, hey, if people are not giving women access to capital, what can I do about that? I’m a builder. I can bring the people together. We can throw some money and we can give it away. And so what we do about our ventures is entirely built off of the rent party. So in the early 1900s, white people, Black people migrated to Harlem, white people raised the rent and the threw rent parties in their homes to get themselves and their in their homes to pay the rent. And that’s exactly what I created. And so I put a bunch of people together in a house in southeast D.C. for women, got up and pitched their business. I ran the entire thing like a poetry slam. We voted with marbles and coffee mugs. If you like that person, you put your marble in their coffee mug. And the person when I gave them their message, be right back out. And guys, I honestly didn’t think twice about it, but people liked it. And so I said, we’re going to shift the narrative here. So women pitch. Imagine Shark Tank meets Kickstarter right when they pitch and the audience actually votes with their dollars for the candidate that they like. And then we grant that capital back out to the founders. We funded about 300 women founders.
Toure [00:19:40] If you have a great business idea and you’re looking for funding, you could reach out to Omi and Black Girl Ventures, or you could reach out to Lauren Mylan and Digital Undivided, which also seeks to provide founders with all the resources, all the data, and all the access that they need to thrive. There are people out here trying to level the playing field for Black women founders. One of Lauren’s favorite success stories are two women who founded something called Therma band.
Lauren Maillian [00:20:08] Markia and Debbie Dixon, a mother daughter black duo, have founded a company together while the daughter was at Yale. The finishing up her studies as mom, as a lawyer, and Glenn went through her own menopause journey, came up with a solution to create the world’s first wearable, like the Fitbit type wearable. That’s your personal thermostat specific to menopause in a multibillion dollar market. And they’ve attracted funding. We’ve made them to our C-suite list, which saw 60% of their their product sell out within one hour in presale. And they’ve gone on to raise additional capital and get into a program that Google and we identify them first and we put them on that C-suite list to be able to tell the world about that. In front of Cosmo 65 million plus audience, we know that visibility matters. We know that access matters. We know that storytelling matters. We know that wherewithal and know how matters. And we know that in all of these areas, Black women are seen to be less than and for whatever reason and our job, it is on the virus, not just create these success stories, but to ensure these success stories and then just scream them from the rooftops at the world. And then it’s our job also to tell these founders how to negotiate better for themselves in their businesses and how to build and create leverage and how unique they are in their position because of the data. Even though some of the data is not in our favor. How to flip it, to be in our favor, to show how unique we are, and to leverage that position with strength and competence, to have more and more and more success stories. They’ve raised nearly $2 million as of today.
Toure [00:21:50] What did the mom and daughter do right?
Lauren Maillian [00:21:55] It was a little bit of everything was a little bit of their own ingenuity. Was mom being very confident and relentless and willing to take a risk with her daughter? It was mom being a lawyer, being well spoken. And it’s interesting because on one of our interviews that I did with them recently, the mom says, you know, I needed something. This is her story, right? She’s like, I was tired of walking around with, you know, ice packs and this and that. Well, I’m the lawyer and I need something. I can go to the office, the boardroom or the ballroom. Right. That narrative was true for her. And so when they went out to raise, she could look at an investor and go, What are you doing? Or what is your mom doing? What the woman in your life doing and how she able to go from the meeting room to the boardroom to the ballroom, because those are spaces that she already sat in. Those were metaphorical for her. They embody that. They didn’t shrink. They stood taller. And even if you were wanting to discount them on their physical appearance or stereotype that based upon them being Black women, when they open their mouth, their greatness was undeniable. And so they embraced all of being. They embraced everything that people could limit them for, and they kept proving everyone wrong.
Toure [00:23:09] A company like Digital Undivided is able to help them figure it all out.
Lauren Maillian [00:23:14] Non-minority guys are set up to win when they get the money and they close the deal, they know exactly who to call as the mentor and ask what lawyer they should hire, who their cabinet should be, what their key next hire should be getting to that key, next hire help with recruiting, help with vesting schedules, help with incentivizing team members to grow a strong bench. A. Senior talent to be able to position the company for greater success in the future. These are all things that Black women are trying to create their own playbill, and that’s why Digital Undivided exists. We don’t want them to have to try to create a playbook in a vacuum by themselves. And we want to give them proven resources and proven insights and proven models to work with them. And we want to be able to support them. And when they don’t know how to prepare for a conversation, we are that place that they call and that they lean on.
Toure [00:24:02] Lauren says there’s data that shows Black women led companies are a better bet for an investor than white male led companies. She said the fail rate for Black women led companies is 27%, and the fail rate for white male led companies is 42%. Why is the Black women’s fail rate so much better than it did for white men?
Lauren Maillian [00:24:31] We are resourceful.
Toure [00:24:32] She said, because Black women founders tend to get less investment capital. They have to learn to be smarter with every dollar they get. And if they can survive that, it makes them better business women.
Lauren Maillian [00:24:44] I often say that for a Black woman, a CEO is the Chief Everything Officer. You’ve got to learn a little bit of everything, whether you like it or not. But once you master that, that’s also your superpower. And then there’s your answer to why our fail rate is lower. Because when our back is against the wall, we have to learn to do every other job. We can’t afford to hire for.
Toure [00:25:02] Black women have long been the heart of the Black community. Their ingenuity has saved us time and again. But getting more power into the Black community means acquiring more money. And to do that, we need more businesses owned by Black people. Think about turning your passion into a business and becoming an entrepreneur, because when you go to work, you’re either helping build someone else’s dream or you’re helping to build your dream. If we can create an army of people who build a business around their dream and bring more money into the Black community, then we will be moving toward more power and more freedom for us and our children. We can work hard for the money and have the money work hard for us to.
Donna Summer [00:25:54] She works hard for the money so you better treat her right.
Toure [00:25:54] There’s one more episode left in our season and we’re going to bring it all together by talking about Black resilience, Black perseverance and Black hopefulness in the face of white supremacy and oppression. And we’ll talk about it through the lens of one of the greatest songs of all time, Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. Don’t miss our epic season finale. I’m Toure and This was Being Black: The Eighties. The next episode of this show is already available, and soon we’ll be back with Being Black: The Seventies. This podcast was produced by me, Toure and Jesse Cannon and scored by Will Brooks with additional production by Bryan de Meglio, an executive production from Regina Griffin. Thank you for listening to this podcast from the Grio Black Podcast Network. Please tell a friend and check out the other shows on the Grio Black Podcast Network, including Blackest Questions with Chrissy Grier, Dear Culture with Panama, Jackson, The Grio Daly with Michael Harriot and Writing Black with Maiysha Kai
