discrimination Archives • Bitches Get Riches

Credit Scoring Is a Racist, Classist System that Has Us All Trapped

April 2, 2024April 12, 2024 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 8 Comments

Imagine a ranking system that assigns everyone a number. You don’t opt into this program; you’re automatically enrolled. And there’s no way to opt out. You’re involved whether you like it or not.

You also don’t have any say over the judges, those determining and adjusting your score as you go through life. These judges actually make money off of scoring you.

The worst part is that your opportunities in life—renting an apartment, getting a loan, qualifying for insurance, landing a job—are dependent on your ranking.

Imagine no more, dear readers! For I just described the United States’ system of credit scoring. Supposedly, credit scores are a neutral, unbiased metric for determining a borrower’s risk in the lending market. In reality, they function as a racist, classist trap from which there’s little escape.

Them’s some heavy claims! Don’t worry though: I brought receipts. And lots of them end in .gov so you know they’re legit!

Beware These 5 (Perfectly Legal) Discriminatory Hiring Practices

June 29, 2021May 24, 2022 Jess Fickett ("Piggy") 13 Comments

Admit it, Bitch Nation: you missed us and our relentless griping about labor rights during our two-week summer hiatus. Well cheer up, people, because the Bitches are BACK (and still griping about labor rights)!

Today’s topic: discriminatory hiring practices.

One of our most popular articles to date is our list of illegal job interview questions. In that post, we explained how how there are laws in place to mitigate discriminatory hiring practices. An employer can’t ask a job candidate’s age, for example, to avoid ageism when hiring.

If you’re on the job hunt, you should familiarize yourself with the questions a potential employer can’t ask you. Know your rights lest you unwittingly allow an employer to use your personal demographics (rather than your job qualifications) to exclude you from a job opportunity.

Yet despite all the things an employer can’t legally ask in a job interview… some weaselly fuckers still find ways to introduce bias into their hiring practices. In fact, a lot that can happen during job applications and interviews probably should be illegal… but isn’t.

Let’s go over some discriminatory hiring practices that are somehow still legal. Y’know, before we get to the inevitable pro-labor call to action. ¡Viva la revolución, comrades!

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview

February 25, 2020February 8, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 15 Comments

I got a call from a recruiter the other day. His offer wasn’t very exciting, but I told him to keep in touch. It would’ve been a forgettable call… except that he then asked a series of really unusual job interview questions.

“Can I ask a few more questions to complete your file?” he said.

“Sure.”

“You’re a U.S. citizen, right?”

I answered immediately, automatically. But as the “yep” escaped my mouth, a little warning light started flashing in the back of my brain.

“And your date of birth?”

I paused. There are some questions you should never be asked in an interview setting. Your nationality is one. Your age is another. He’d asked two of these questions in a row. What’s going on here?

I decided to give my birthdate, partially because I’m the exceedingly neutral age of 32, and partially because the truth is the easiest answer to give when caught off-guard. But then his last question was…

“Do you feel comfortable giving me the last four digits of your social security number?”

WOAH. What what whaaaat?! I didn’t know the dude from a hole in the ground! My birthdate and my social?! What’s he gonna want next—my credit card number? A copy of my house keys?? Shit no!

I thanked him for his time and asked him not to contact me again.

I knew the job offer was legit; I’d had other recruiters contact me about it as well. But the high number of sensitive questions betrayed a basic lack of training and discretion. It was just too many red flags.

Even though I know a lot of this stuff cold, I still wasn’t prepared for how to handle them when they came up in the moment. But you will do better than me! Today I’ll share with you ten bad job interview questions to watch out for. We want you to be ready to identify and avoid sketchy workplaces and scams. Luckily, many seem willing to make their sketchiness known before they even hire you!

Queer Finance 101: Ten Ways That Sexual and Gender Identity Affect Finances

November 12, 2018June 16, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 18 Comments

Ah.

Gay rights.

That thing we don’t have to do anymore because they’re finally getting married!

Hold on please, my producer is speaking into my earpiece… Okay, my producer is saying that evidently legal integration into the institution of marriage is actually not the final and defining achievement of queerdom.

Our clear-eyed, big-hearted Patreon donors have requested an article on how queerness affects people’s finances. It’s good timing because I just finished watching The Haunting of Hill House and I’ve never felt bi-er! (And yes, before you ask, my official order is Theo > Shirley > Luke > Nell > dead kitten > Steven.)

I am ready and raring to accept my crown as queer queen of bummer-ass articles!

Note: Throughout this article, I will use the word “queer” to encompass all people who are not both cisgender and heterosexual. I’ll talk a lot about gay people and trans people specifically because those are the populations that usually have all the good scientific studies and economic surveys to shellac my ramblings with a gorgeous patina of Facts.

But we love all you aces, aros, bis, enbies, pans, polys, intersex individuals, questioners, queens, and whatever the hell other gender and sexual minorities I left out.

Our Single Best Piece of Advice for Women (and Men) on International Women’s Day

March 8, 2018May 31, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 11 Comments

This post is part of the #WomenRockMoney Movement, a group of female personal finance bloggers who have come together to inspire more women to own their finances. Thanks to Chelsea for putting together this collaboration and the amazing homepage for the movement!

As part of International Women’s Day, we’ve partnered with other personal finance bloggers under the hashtag #WomenRockMoney. Our task was to:

“Write your one most important piece of advice you wish all women know. This is your ‘shout from the mountaintops,’ inspirational speech for women. It can be something you wish you knew when you were younger, something you’ve learned from experience, or something you are still working on mastering today.”

This is an overwhelming question. We started this blog because we’re a bottomless pit of unsolicited opinions! How the hell are we supposed to boil it all down into one single piece of solicited advice?

But all right, all right. There is one piece of advice that ticks all of those boxes. Our shout-from-the-mountaintops, inspirational speech for women—and men! It’s something we wish we knew when we were younger. Something we’ve learned from experience. And it’s something we’re still working on mastering today.

Conveniently, this advice fits neatly into a single word:

Radicalize.

Something Is Wrong in Personal Finance. Here’s How To Make It More Inclusive.

October 23, 2017February 2, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 37 Comments

We recently wrote an article about how raising awareness isn’t enough. Our thesis was that you need to pair awareness with some kind of action. Well, good thing we practice what we preach!

Last time we talked about some of the many ways being white brings unearned financial privileges. We got a ton of great responses from readers—many of them white—who are happy that the talk is being talked within the personal finance community.

Now let’s tell you how we think you can walk the walk. Here are our suggestions to make the personal finance community more realistic, more inclusive, more ambitious, and all-around better.

Let’s get to work.

C'mon personal finance community! Let's roll up our sleeves and get more inclusive!

The Financial Advantages of Being White

October 23, 2017February 2, 2022 Lauren Torres ("Kitty") 35 Comments

We were recently nominated for some industry awards! This was absolutely shocking. I have no idea who nominated us or how or why. But it instantly gave me two very strong, very different reactions.

The first was a variation on Sally Field’s Places in the Heart acceptance speech. “I haven’t had an orthodox career, and I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it, and I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me!” Borrowing, of course, the original speech’s explosively manic and self-congratulatory tone. We feel tremendously hashtag-blessed to have found so many warm and welcoming people in our short stay in the personal finance community. And we are truly grateful to all of our readers.

My second reaction was, “Shit. We’ve been pulling our punches!”

We should ask the hard questions

See, one of the reasons Piggy and I decided to start this blog was that too much financial advice ignored the hard questions and contentious issues that drive personal finance. Take, for example, this question: why do some people have more money than others?

There are so, so many potential answers to this question. People are different! They have different personalities, abilities, interests, advantages, backgrounds, opportunities, drives, beliefs, and knowledge sets. These combine into a set of financial circumstances unique to each individual. The personal finance community seems inclined toward examining only a few of these differences—the ones that are easy to talk about, the ones that cast a flattering light upon ourselves.

Today I’d like to torpedo all hope of winning industry awards by talking about one of the things that this community really, really doesn’t like to talk about. That subject is race, and by extension, the financial advantages of being white in a white supremacist culture.

Friends, I’d like you to extend me a little trust. Take my hand and follow me on a journey. I’m going to try to inventory some of the gifts given to me by a white supremacist culture. I didn’t ask for these gifts—there was no registry, and I will not be sending thank-you notes. But they also didn’t come with a return address, and there’s no way to refuse them. The body I was born with—that of a white woman—comes with undeniable financial advantages. And the legacy of these advantages is terrible to consider.

Let’s consider it anyway!