Here’s the Real State of Our Union, as WOC See It

In this ZORA first, a roundtable of key women of color express shaky optimism, as well as willingness to harness the power that lies within

Melissa Harris-Perry
Feb 3 · 12 min read
Rep. Lauren Underwood (Photo courtesy of Congressional Staff); Vilissa Thompson; Rep. Karen Bass (Photo courtesy of Congressional Staff); Rosario Quiroz Villarreal (Photo: Bridget Badore); Rinku Sen
  • Melissa Harris-Perry: ZORA editor-at-large.
  • Lauren Underwood: Congresswoman representing Illinois 14th Congressional District.
  • Rinku Sen: Co-president of the Women’s March board of directors.
  • Rosario Quiroz Villarreal: Policy entrepreneur at The Next100.
  • Anjali Enjeti: ZORA Contributor, Georgia-based writer and activist.
  • Rajul Punjabi: NYC-based health journalist and educator.
  • Vilissa Thompson: Disability rights consultant, social worker, founder and CEO of Ramp Your Voice!
  • Karen Bass: Democratic congresswoman representing California’s 37th Congressional District, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
  • Jeannette Pai-Espinosa: President of National Crittenton.
  • Pramila Jayapal: Democratic congresswoman representing Washington’s 7th congressional district, co-chair Congressional Progressive Caucus.
  • Isabel Coronado: Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen, policy entrepreneur at The Next100.
  • Danielle Moodie-Mills: ZORA Contributor, host of #WokeAF and co-host of the podcast #democracyish.
  • Cristina Beltrán: Professor, New York University.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.


Melissa Harris-Perry: President Trump will tout a national unemployment rate below 4% and crow about new international trade deals negotiated during his administration. He is not likely to talk about the continuing struggles many of us face. What is the condition of our economy if we put women of color at the center of our analysis?

Congresswoman Lauren Underwood: We cannot claim the state of the economy is strong when there are so many unable to experience an improved quality of life — significant wage inequality, stagnant wages, inadequate worker protections, and inability to access adequate health care.

Rinku Sen: The economy is raced and gendered. In 2019, nearly 16% of mothers with young children held multiple jobs to make ends meet. Paid family leave is still a struggle in this country. In 2019, nearly 900 women’s health clinics serving the majority women of color lost federal funding affecting services such as breast cancer screenings and HIV tests. One in five Black, Native, and Latinx women live in poverty in the U.S. Over half of homeless families in the U.S. are Black and led by women. Trump’s economy punishes all women, but especially poor women and women of color, and we have to keep fighting for real change.

Rosario Quiroz Villarreal: Trump’s immigration policy is counterintuitive and destructive. I think about the impact DACA had on my life—I went from being an independent part-time contractor earning barely above the poverty threshold at $14,000 a year to becoming an educator in Texas with a $41,000 salary in the span of a few months. Nothing about me changed — not my skill level, my education, my work experience, nor my work ethic. The only thing that changed was federal policy granting me a work permit and opening up potential career pathways. Like so many others like me, my federal tax contributions significantly increased. What are local economies going to do if the federal government wipes out our talents and our economic contributions?

Anjali Enjeti: Discussions about the state of the economy are divorced from the reality of the financial health of women of color. Black women earn 65 cents, Native women 53 cents, and Latinx women 51 cents on a White, non-Hispanic man’s dollar. The number of new jobs has nothing to do with whether these new jobs are paying the kinds of wages families need to keep their lights on and their children fed. The state of the economy is really the “state of wealthy corporations” and says nothing about whether a family can afford to pay their rent every month.

Rajul Punjabi: The problem extends beyond having a job or even the wage gap. Black and Brown women are chronically undervalued in the workplace. Even if your direct supervisor is your ally, there are people lurking above her who are continuing to prioritize White men for every type of job.

Vilissa Thompson: And consider the realities faced by disabled women of color. Black and Latinx women have the highest unemployment rates among the disabled. And it is legal to pay disabled people below the minimum wage. At the same time, we are fighting for a living wage, disabled women of color are facing a subminimum wage while encountering discrimination from employers who assume we are not qualified and capable. And all this is happening in a context of real insecurity about the future of disability and social security benefits.

Congresswoman Karen Bass: These inequalities are not accidental. President Trump’s administration has done nothing directly to address the needs of women of color. He has offered no meaningful policies or practices to ensure that all Americans have an equitable opportunity to enjoy the expanding economy.

Jeannette Pai-Espinosa: To echo Congresswoman Bass, the “strength of the economy” heralded by the Trump administration is laughable in the lives of young women of color. The policies of the current administration fly in the face of their needs for safety, security, job training, education, safety net supports such as childcare assistance.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let’s go deeper than the statistical indicators. What do these numbers mean for the lived experiences of women of color?

Jeanette Pai-Espinosa: We work with young women impacted by chronic adversity, violence, and injustice. They witness oppression and experience personal and state-sanctioned violence. They feel their own marginalization and invisibility as girls of color. At the same time, they fight to hold onto hope and are restless for change even under the weight of multiple forms of oppression.

Representative Pramila Jayapal: Trump’s America is designed to drive down — not up — women of color. Young Dreamers fear deportation because Trump is trying to end DACA. Domestic workers, mostly women of color and immigrants, are struggling to make ends meet with few rights on the job and at risk of sexual harassment. Too many women, who are the center of their families and communities, are still fighting for a decent wage and the ability to take care of their families.

Isabel Coronado: Women of color are left out of public discourse. Take mass incarceration: Between 1980 and 2017, the number of incarcerated women increased by more than 750% with a majority of these women being Black, Brown, and Indigenous. Native American women are incarcerated at six times the rate of White women, according to a report compiled by the Lakota People’s Law Project. If we started centering Indigenous women to our understanding of mass incarceration and the solutions, we would gain a new perspective and insight into the mass incarceration issue in America.

Anjali Enjeti: Immigrant women of color in the U.S. continue to take hit after hit from the Trump administration. ICE targets their families and communities with raids. Their family members abroad can’t visit them in the U.S. because of the Muslim Ban. Under the new Public Charge rule, if they avail themselves of public assistance, they risk detention and deportation. If their partners are detained by ICE, these immigrant women of color solely carry the burden of childcare and earning enough income to support their families.

Migrant women of color are still being separated from their children at the border, and are languishing in ICE facilities in the U.S. or pursuant to the “Remain in Mexico” policy, in dangerous border cities to await the processing of their asylum petitions. Along the border, women and girls experience high rates of sexual abuse. Many immigrant women of color are too afraid to report domestic violence because they’re afraid they or their partners will be deported.

Danielle Moodie-Mills: President Trump and the culture of fear and hatred he enables have made it frightening to be a Black woman who speaks truth to power. This is work we are called to do, but it is much more complicated when you are wondering if you will be physically harmed. When Black women and other women of color are silenced in media, even fewer of our stories will be part of the public conversation.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What is the state of our resistance?

Congresswoman Karen Bass: We remain optimistic and hopeful. We have a chance to fix this in just a few months! And we know that even as the Trump administration has tried to push us backward, it has also touched off a new wave of activism and involvement, a wave led by women of color. Here in the House of Representatives, we are experiencing a historic number of women of color as members and their presence makes a difference.

Congresswoman Lauren Underwood: I can speak to that point directly. Many people didn’t think I could be here, in Congress, at all. As the youngest Black woman elected to the House of Representatives and the first millennial to represent my district, I am clear about how powerful it is when women of color and young voters show up to ensure their voices are heard. I have introduced 18 bills and held 14 town halls this year. I have no doubt about our collective power to make change.

We can see the manifestation of Black women’s political power by looking to the midterm elections in 2018, to the Virginia elections that ushered in a Democratic majority, and even to that infamous Alabama Senate race.

Isabel Coronado: As a young Indigenous woman, I feel compelled to be involved. I understand the impact today’s policy battles on the rest of my life. I stay optimistic about policy and politics — because I understand sometimes in a surprising moment, an issue can be pushed to the front and real change can happen.

Danielle Moodie-Mills: It is more than optimism; we can see the manifestation of Black women’s political power by looking to the midterm elections in 2018, to the Virginia elections that ushered in a Democratic majority, and even to that infamous Alabama Senate race. We have real power.

Melissa Harris-Perry: But are we all this optimistic about 2020? I trust Black women and believe in the transformative collective power of women of color, but we know the brutal history of American repression has made it difficult for women of color to exercise our power.

Jeannette Pai-Espinosa: Many young women make the same point by calling out how newly elected women of color were demonized and threatened. The treatment of the “Squad” in Congress was a stark reality check for young women as to what it will take to truly change society and politics. It was and is clear how deeply mainstream/White men and women were threatened by women of color — one young woman commented, “our power and one of the greatest threats to our safety.”

Rajul Punjabi: In all honesty, I am fearful. From my point of view, we don’t have anyone on the presidential ballot that gets us. But, I can confidently say we are engaged in the dialogue, and with the people on the ground standing behind the candidates, advocating for what we need — health care, reproductive rights, and an incarceration system that isn’t a parody of a plantation. So there’s fear but there’s a lot of feverish hope.

“This election will rest with women of color.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal: Absolutely. This election will rest with women of color. But our candidates too often forget this and don’t pay attention to — or aren’t willing to fight for — women of color and the disproportionate burdens they have from poor health care to endless wars. I believe women of color look for bold, progressive candidates who are willing to take on structural change that gets at the institutional racism, sexism, and classism; candidates who are willing to fight for them and not back down; and candidates who have a steadfastness about the problems and aren’t afraid to push for bold solutions, not ones that nibble around the edges.

Vilissa Thompson: I feel pretty energized. I was one of the original 100 Black Womxn For. We issued an enthusiastic endorsement of Senator Elizabeth Warren and I have been advising them on the progressive platform for disabled folk. Black women are at the table this political season.

Rosario Quiroz Villareal: Like many fellow immigrants or formerly/currently incarcerated women of color, there are policies currently in place to keep us disenfranchised. I can’t vote. I hate to feel helpless because I can’t vote, and sometimes that’s what it feels like when civic engagement is reduced to the question of whether or not you voted. It is especially critical that we look to each other and that we hold each other accountable to voting if we have that right. Black women, Indigenous women, and Brown women are amongst the only voices I currently trust in the political arena. We are each other’s hope and I have no doubt that for those of us who can vote, we will show up and show out for our families and communities.

Anjali Enjeti: Here’s the good news. We know from a recent study that Indigenous women and women of color led the way for electoral success during the 2018 election. They protested at a rate higher than White women. Black, Indigenous, AAPI, and Latinx women talked with their friends and family members about the importance of voting at a higher rate than White women did.

Black, Indigenous, and other women of color are some of the most realistic voters I’ve ever known. They already know what they’re up against. They know that political candidates aren’t reaching out to them to the same degree they cater to White voters. They know political candidates aren’t going to make enough effort to connect with them. They also know they’re facing voter suppression. But women of color are going to fight the hardest for policies that impact them the most. And they also know that if they don’t take the time to advocate for policies that will improve their lives the most, no one else will.

“Latinx feminists like Anzaldúa offer an ethos of community that can help all Americans wrestle with our sense of collective identity.”

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there other ways we can show up for one another as women of color beyond the ballot box?

Cristina Beltrán: What I’ve always found powerful in women of color feminism—particularly the work of lesbian feminists of color—is their simultaneous commitment to and wariness of community. Look to Gloria Anzaldúa’s poem “To Live in the Borderlands Means You” published in her classic text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Latinx feminists like Anzaldúa offer an ethos of community that can help all Americans wrestle with our sense of collective identity, speaking to the realization that although we arrive with radically different experiences, through dialogue and contestation and shared work, we can forge a shared vision of the world.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Taking this cue, what is our shared vision of the world? If this is the State of Our Union, what is the agenda for our work in 2020?

Representative Pramila Jayapal: Universal health care through a Medicare-for-All system, including full reproductive rights. Comprehensive and humane immigration reform. Economic rights, including a living wage, paid family and medical leave, and childcare.

Rinku Sen: Fighting GOP judicial appointments. Ending the Muslim Ban and family separation policy at the border. Getting the Violence Against Women Act passed out of the Senate. Gaining ground on reproductive health, rights, and justice.

Vilissa Thompson: Protecting and empowering trans women of color. Making massive investments in our K-12 systems of education. Remembering and acting on the truth that Black Disabled Voices Matter.

Isabel Coronado: Addressing the crisis of missing and murdered women and girls. If we put this issue at the forefront, then we can create solutions that interrupts the forces responsible for the disappearance of our women and girls of color.

Danielle Moodie-Mills: As I watch the House managers give daily AP government seminars to the American people, I realize it is crucial to invest in civic education for American schools.

Representative Lauren Underwood: Protect the Affordable Care Act. Address Black women’s maternal mortality. We now live in a country where getting pregnant and attempting to deliver your child is increasingly a death sentence for black women. We can and must do better.

Anjali Enjeti: Low-income women of color and their children are most impacted by climate change. 80% of those displaced due to climate change are women. The flooding from Hurricane Katrina affected Black women the most. The U.S. needs to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Paris Accord. And we need congressional legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Jeannette Pai-Espinosa: For young women we must end school pushout and implement juvenile justice reform that does not criminalize girls’ responses to trauma by focusing on what happened to them and not only on what they did.

Congresswoman Karen Bass: Foundational to all of these agenda items is the 2020 Census. It is absolutely critical that women of color participate in the census and are counted so that our communities will have the resources to enact change.

Melissa Harris-Perry: As I have listened to all, I am reminded of Zora Neale Hurston writing in her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, “I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrapped in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.” Perhaps 2020 is the moment when women of color, with our sorrow stained tongues, will ascend together, with harps and swords, to new political heights.

ZORA

Unapologetic. Ours. A Medium publication for women of color.

Melissa Harris-Perry

Written by

Escaped the evil of cable news to think and write for myself. Professor, Parent, Partner, Editor at Large for @ZoraMag

ZORA

ZORA

Unapologetic. Ours. A Medium publication for women of color.

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