The uprising in response to the police murder of George Floyd on 25 May 2020 in Minneapolis lifted the veil of racism, intertwined with class and gender, in the United States. The killing generated massive protests in the country and around the world, including South Africa, UK and France. The fight is for black lives; the challenge to anti-black racism in the US has gone global. The lesser-known part of this story is the key role played by black women in organizing for racial justice and against precarity.
It should come as no surprise that black women have been at the forefront. They are among the poorest people in a deeply stratified society. They do a disproportionate share of poorly paid labour, care and essential work. Low wages, harsh working conditions and the precarity of essentials such as housing, food and healthcare fuel black women’s organizing for social justice. According to Nina Banks of the Economic Policy Institute: ‘In 2017, the median annual earnings for full-time year-round black women workers were 21-per-cent lower than that of white women, reflecting black women’s disproportionate employment in low-wage service and minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs.’ It’s a yawning wage gap, with full-time black women workers earning ‘48 to 68 cents for every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men in 25 states’.1
