How Janelle Jones’ story about black women and the economy caught on

In recent years, Ms. Jones has developed one central philosophy: Because black women have traditionally been concentrated in low-paid caregiving jobs, which are often excluded from employment laws and benefits such as Social Security, they have built up less wealth and experienced worse health outcomes. Moreover, Ms. Jones argues, helping black women — through measures such as raising wages in healthcare professions and canceling more student debt — is the best way to build an economy that works better for everyone.

In 2020, she named her story, “Black Women Best.” She came up with it while working for a forward-thinking nonprofit called Groundwork Collaborative, which ran focus groups across the country to find a story about how the economy should work for working people.

“They were like, ‘I’d like not to be tired,'” Ms. Jones away from the participants. “’I want to buy school supplies.’ ‘I want to know that if my car breaks down, because I think it could, I won’t lose my apartment.’” Solving those basic problems for those with the least resources, she thought, would stabilize the job market from the bottom up .

Her starting point, which she expressed in a working document for the Roosevelt Institute, a leftist think tank, found an eager audience under President Biden, who owe his victory largely to black women. It was embraced by influential figures including business economists and a President of the Federal Reserveand formed the basis of a 133-page report commissioned by the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls.

It has not escaped criticism: some scholars, including Tommy J. Curry of the University of Edinburgh, counter that black men are more disadvantaged than black women. Dr. Currya professor specialized in African philosophy And Black male studies at the university, said that while he understands the “political popularity” of Ms Jones’s theory, the evidence did not support it. Black women, he said, “since the 2000s have seen higher levels of labor force participation, entrepreneurial endeavors supported by government subsidies and higher college degrees achieved, while black men have been shown to have higher unemployment, lower earnings per dollar — at 51 cents by some measures — and an overall downward mobility.