It’s fascinating to me how much ppl have bristled at/struggled with this question on the pod.

Leave race out of it for a second.

Two partners. One is a high-wage earner with no family wealth. The other makes significantly less, but has family wealth to fall back on. (Cont’d) https://twitter.com/Cai_Red_/status/1336200081993678849

The high-wage earner is more precariously positioned, despite what their W-2 might say.

Anybody who knows what it’s like to be the relatively high-wage earner in a family with no wealth can tell you all the drag that hampers your ability to save.

I pay my mother’s rent and utilities. I help out with other family stuff as needed. I have to budget for it. I want to do it and am blessed/fortunate to be in a position to.* But that’s not money that is accruing for me/my lady.

*Caveats abt capitalism requiring dumb luck

In the episode, the LW said her white male partner made less than her by a lot — but while she came from an working class, recent immigrant family, her dude’s people had lake houses — plural.

Implicit in this to *me* was that he was rich enough to afford to make less than her.

To follow his passions or whatever tf.

Then going 50/50 on things now is pretending that her money is always gonna be longer than his. Maybe, but her money has to go further than his, too.

A lot of us are our parents’ retirement plans. Not bc our parents were tricking off or being irresponsible but because of how racism and capitalism work.

(Okay, so let’s bring race back into it.)

i can pretty neatly tell you why my family has not accumulated wealth the way that white Philadelphians of the same tenure have. #housingsegregationineverything

This is one of those times when i really don’t understand what the listeners are hearing.

Somebody was like “should one partner have to apologize for the Armenian genocide??? They had nothing to do with...”

(I mean, if the Armenian genocide continues to reverberate in material ways in folks’ romantic relationships i would hope they were having hard convos about it.)

But in the case of the LW, her white boo not only has more wealth than her, but as a white man of presumably comparable education, more potential earning power than her, too.

Why is it wild to be like: maybe you need to pay for or pay for more of these dates/trips/whatever tf?

it’s worth considering all the ways family wealth shows up in people’s lives that aren’t necessarily about direct, month-to-month financial subsidization. Did you get a car for graduation? Could you take that unpaid internship or major in a field that isn’t remunerative?

Part of the theme in the comments at the time it first aired and now was simply that race shouldn’t matter in interracial romantic relationships — that it was disrespectful to treat race as if it had material consequences for the people in them.

People thought we were coming at/ for their white boos and...

Actually, lemme just be quiet.

Or more simply: https://twitter.com/Vanessa_ABee/status/1336301720939487233?s=20