What Black Women Need In 2020 Is Survival

By Kenya Hunter


In 2020 and in back of, what will electoral justice look like for Black ladies? Does it look like having a Black woman in the Oval Office despite a questionable political past? Does it mean picking a white woman with a checkered history? Does it look like falling in line with the best 2020 democratic presidential candidates and supporting whomever wins the nomination, in hopes that they are moderate enough to at least get Trump out of office? Is it none of these, or some mixture of those all?


Here’s what we know: Most Black girls don’t support the Republican Party, and have become a more and more vital voting bloc for the Democratic party. However 2020 candidates should understand that such support comes with a condition of awareness: Black ladies are not looking to prepare history this election. The candidate who will gather Black womens’ attention is one who addresses the survival needs of Black females. And categorize in attempt to do that, candidates will need to support policies that directly contribute to our survival, and follow through on those promises.


According to statistics from YouGov analyzed by MTV News, Black ladies were especially likely to cite issues like police brutality, law enforcement fairness, racial profiling, government-provided healthcare, and the minimum wage as top priorities for the 2020 election. More many candidates have unveiled policies related to these issues: Julián Castro is talking about police reform; Kamala Harris is discussing the racial wealth gap caused by disparities in residence ownership; Elizabeth Warren is discussing the woman’s maternal death gap, which affects Black ladies three to four times as much as their white counterparts; and Cory Booker is looking to reform the criminal justice system, in which Black people make up 33 percent of these incarcerated despite being just 12 percent of the U.S. Population.


Whether uncensored or implicit, the message is clear: Candidates want both Black women’s trust, and their vote. Platforms that center the issues they care about are a good way to begin. Yet candidates using identity politics, or the tendency of an audience of people to form political alliances, is not enough to garner the support of Black women.


Jill Cartwright, senior organizer for Southerners on the Ground, a Atlanta-based liberation sort for queer people of color, mentioned that “things that have to do with life or death” is crucial to getting Black females to pay attention.


“Quality-of-life issues are not something that Black girls are going to prioritize,” she mentioned. “We have to feel like we can survive before we pay attention to issues that have to do with excellent class of life.”


One of these survival issues is the matter of the wage gap, which affects Black females at disproportionate rates compared to white counterparts and Black boys. YouGov’s statistics shows that minimum wage is a top concern for Black girls, who are only paid 61 cents to a white man’s dollar as of April 2019. The median wage for Black girls who work full time is much less than $40,000. A candidate who offers solutions to close the racial wealth gap has the possibility to collect a persons vision of Black women.


“Wealth was stolen from our community, so it doesn't surprise me that...Livable wages are at the forefront,” mentioned Nelini Stamp, director of plan of action for the Working Families party. “I don’t know if I’m ever going to purchase a residence because of it.”


Both Harris and Warren introduced plans to close the racial wealth gap at Essence Fest in New Orleans, and by proposing grants of up to $25,000, Harris hopes to close the racial wealth gap through homeownership by aiding families in communities that are traditionally redlined. According to the New York Times, wealth for Black families would increase annually by $32,000 under such a plan. For Warren, her plan to close the racial wage gap involves an executive order; she wants federal contractors to be forced to diversity their workforces and be required by law to pay people of color and girls identically. She also wants to dedicate cash to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, and other Minority Serving Institutions as piece of her broader try to alleviate student debt.


for now, would-be voters have met such plans with interest and careful approval. However pandering with shiny new policies that have although to be implemented on any level and avowed promises aren’t likely to wash away the woes of candidates who have struggled with these issues in the past.


Pete Buttigieg has repeatedly been contained responsible for the racial inequality in South Bend, Indiana, where he is mayor; that conversation reached a national fever pitch soon after a white policeman killed a Black man in June. And Cory Booker’s tenure as mayor of Newark, New Jersey, included a “zero tolerance” policy on crime that ended in the Justice Department’s intervention against outsized police might. YouGov statistics states that law enforcement fairness is a top concern for Black ladies, and with good reason: Black folks are more likely to be targeted by police, incarcerated, and handed harsher sentences than their white counterparts. As the Washington Post reports, 21 percent of the 487 people shot and killed in 2019 for now were Black.


And while Harris has tried to meet other Black ladies where they are, not each person has been able to shake off the memories of her as a former prosecutor. While in her tenure as Attorney General for California, she drew criticism from criminal justice advocates for her stance on body cameras: if she agreed with the general public that the police should use body cameras, her advice on whether they should be required by the state was different.


Fast forward to now: The California senator has tried to rally support from Black females using sorority connections (she’s a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a historically Black sorority), historically Black colleges and universities (she’s an alumna of Howard University, a HBCU), along with a new column in Essence. However even with her enthusiastic confrontation with Biden while in the debates, she has still spent much of her town hall appearances explaining decisions she made as Attorney General.


“When you rub Black girls the incorrect way, we don’t forget,” mentioned Changa.


And while Joe Biden is in the lead with Black support, according to a new poll focused on South Carolina Democrat voters, the overwhelming national conversation about him routinely refers to his past stances on issues that disproportionately harmed Black people, and date back decades.


“Joe Biden is someone I'd like to go up for,” Cartwright mentioned, “But his stance on [certain] issues, along with what he did to Anita Hill can’t be ignored.” She was referring to Biden’s tough treatment of Hill throughout the 1991 confirmation hearings for future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, along with his work on the 1994 Crime Bill as issues that gave her pause. It took Biden years to address his treatment of Hill, who publicly mentioned she did not accept his much-delayed apology. As for the Crime Bill, he has mentioned publicly that he made a mistake; his newly-unveiled criminal justice plan would try to counter much of the precedents set forth by that bill. Nevertheless Cartwright says it may be also late of an apology.


“He should have apologized for those things a long time ago,” she added.


Biden also recently flipped on his stance involving the Hyde Amendment, a bill that does not let for federal funds to contribute to abortion care. Nevertheless Black people lead the Democratic party in states like Georgia and Alabama, where white conservative lawmakers are attempting to develop abortion bans; maternal healthcare and reproductive justice broadly, are big issues for Black girls. They are just likely because the general population to imagine themselves pro-choice, according to YouGov information. And according to the Guttmacher Institute, despite constituting 13 percent of the population, Black ladies receive 36 percent of abortions. (White females, at 38.7 percent, account for the biggest order of ladies who receive abortions.) Given that an enormous collection of Black ladies can neither afford an abortion, nor have adequate access to reproductive healthcare thanks to racist healthcare practices, something needs to change to better support their needs.


Political strategist Anoa Changa says that while the effects of an abortion ban might be devastating for Black ladies, the conversation surrounding abortion rights is also a chance for them to have a special voice in 2020. She told MTV News, “There's a lot of potential for our voices to count in a very meaningful way that probably hasn't ever really happened in a major election cycle.” She also believes the abortion rights conversation has allowed for intersectionality in a way that normally does not happen.


“Black females aren’t a monolith,” she added. “We’ve discussed about what's happening with Black trans ladies [being murdered] all over the nation. However there really are other issues, also. We’re underemployed, or we’re unemployed or underpaid.” She sees the current, months-long vetting process toward a final candidate as a possibility to have those conversations, with as several Black ladies from as several specific identity points as can supply insight.


That conversation won’t necessarily give one of our own a pass, and for pundits to propose otherwise is reductive. “We deserve both,” mentioned Stamp. “We deserve people who have our values, and who Black. There really are hundreds of Stacey Abrams out there, they just aren’t running for President.”


For Cartwright, once it comes to determining the ideal candidate for the job, especially in light of less-than-perfect track records and a Internet that does not forget, it’s all very simple. “The policies have to align, the history has to align,” she mentioned. “The candidate themselves have to align with the views of the people leading the campaign.”