In the News
February 19, 2024
This article by Steve Hill in LAP Progressive features RepresentWomen's 2024 Black Women in Politics Brief. Read an excerpt below.
Black women are among the most politically underrepresented Americans. They are 7.7 percent of the total US population and 15.3 percent of the population of women, yet they are only 5.4 percent of all voting members of Congress, 5.2 percent of all state legislators, and only 3.5 percent of all statewide elective executives, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. No Black woman has served — ever — as governor of a state, and currently 8 percent of all mayors in the 100 most populous cities are Black women.
Black women are like the proverbial canary in the mine shaft. Coal miners would carry the canaries down into the tunnels with them so if dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide amassed in the mine, the gases would sicken the canary before killing the miners, thus providing a warning to exit the tunnels immediately. Like the canaries, Black women are an early indicator of potential danger with our representative democracy. If the most vulnerable of us can’t be included at the table, then none of us are safe.
A new report from the nonpartisan RepresentWomen, called “Breaking Barriers for Black Woman Candidates,” helps us understand why Black women have been so politically underrepresented, and what the US can do to rectify that historical wound. It’s much more complex than simply shouting “racism,” though that is certainly a significant cultural factor. It’s also about the specific rules of elections — the very foundation of our representative democracy — that are distorting the deserved representation of Black women, as well as of other racial demographics.
Read the complete article here.
