Like George Floyd, she was also killed by the police, but her case remains largely disconnected from the broader narrative.
For years, black women have faced a double bind of racial and gender discrimination.
According to a 2017 report by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research, black women remain underrepresented in the political system, black women are more likely to work jobs that lack crucial benefits and protections, more black women live in poverty than any other group, black women experience higher rates of intimate partner violence, and the gender barriers in access to health care are higher for black women than white women.
The Covid-19 pandemic has deepened all of those fissures. The unemployment rate for black women is now 16.4 percent compared with 15.5 percent for women overall, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, leaving them in increasingly precarious positions.
