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This year, the Black Futures Lab is teaming up with Phenomenal Woman to launch Phenomenally Black — and there couldn’t be a better time for a campaign that works to make Black people powerful in every aspect of our lives.

At the Black Futures Lab, we believe that Black people deserve to be powerful in politics. When it comes to elections, Black women show up to handle business. We made sure that an accused child molester did not take office again in Alabama, we changed the political landscape in Virginia and we voted in larger numbers than any other racial or ethnic group in the last three election cycles.

But Black women aren’t getting what we need from politics. Despite the fact that in 80% of our households we are the primary breadwinners, we still only are getting paid 61 cents to every dollar that white men are making — and 61 cents to the 80 cents that white women are making. Candidates rely on us to get votes, but can we rely on them to get better policy that improves the lives of Black women?

Black women are not a monolith. We are cisgender and transgender, and it’s time we blew the whistle on the unequal treatment of our trans sisters. In the Black Census, we learned that 87% of Black transgender women who took our survey reported incomes of less than $50,000 per year, and 29% reported an income of less than $15,000 per year. There’s so much that Black cisgender and transgender women have in common — imagine what we could accomplish if we joined forces to raise the wage for all of us?

Equal pay for Black women is not just a “woman’s issue” — all of our families, in whatever form they take, benefit when Black women are paid our due. Equal pay equates to greater access to healthcare, to quality housing and quality education.

The Phenomenally Black campaign is an acknowledgement of how much work Black women are doing to change the economy, society and our democracy — and it is a celebration of the ways in which we force America to live into its values of freedom, equality and justice for all. We’re proud to partner with the Phenomenal Woman campaign in lifting up Black women in the fight for equal pay and equal rights.

Black women are a powerful political force, and it's time we are treated that way. Candidates who want our votes should be knocking on our doors to find out what can be done to make our lives better, and should be following through with their commitments if they hope to keep our support.

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Alicia Garza is an American civil rights activist and editorial writer from Oakland, California. She is also the principal at Black Futures Lab and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter.

Alicia Garza

Writing since February 2019 · 1 story contributed