Black Women Demand Reparations & the Right to Live Free
Sheri Davis, PhD
BIPOC women leaders have for centuries been stitching our community stories into the US tapestry to correct the whitewashed narrative and reveal this nation’s bloody history. Black women have labored to produce and reproduce generations of possibility and freedom dreams, while countering the nonsensical mythmaking of “truth, justice, and the American way.” Putting our bodies on the line, we consistently expose the exclusionary, delusional, and violent truths that white supremacy is the United States’ true religion, patriarchal state violence is the weapon used to beat/keep Black people in their place, and exploitative radicalized capitalism is the system we live and labor under.
- Black mobility is restricted and controlled through violence by police, white vigilantes, and individual angry white men (Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Philando Castile, Renisha McBride, Jordan Davis, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, De’von Bailey, Laquan McDonald, Antwon Rose, Amadou Diallo).
- Black homes are raided, invaded, and shot into by police (Katheryn Johnston, Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson).
- Black churches are bombed and defaced, and clergy/congregants murdered by white men/boys (Addie May Collins, Denise McNair, Carol Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley AND Rev. Clementa Pickney, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Tywanza Sanders, Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Myra Thompson).
- Black girls are attacked and traumatized by white state officials in communities and schools (Dajerria Becton, Shakara).
- Black children are missing and murdered (Edward Hope Smith, Milton Harvey, Yusef Bell, Angel Lanier, Jeffrey Mathis, Eric Middlebrooks, Christopher Richardson, LaTonya Wilson, Aaron Wyche, Anthony Carter, Earl Terrell, Lubie Geter…).
- Black people are unjustly and disproportionately over-policed, arrested, incarcerated, and sentenced to death (Walter McMillan and Cyntoia Brown).
- Black mothers die during and after giving birth (Shalon Irving) and Black babies die being born at the highest rates due to subpar maternal care and the stress of being Black women in America.
- Black people are disproportionately impacted by and/or dying from COVID-19 as well as HIV/AIDS all types of cancer and environmental racism with natural (New Orleans, LA/Hurricane Katrina) and manmade (Flint, MI) disasters.
- Black workers are disproportionately injured and die because we are concentrated in the most dangerous low paying jobs (Health care workers specifically: Wayne Edwards, Deryk Braswell, Priscilla Carrow, Edward Becote, Rafael Cargill, Adiel Montgomery, Gary Washington, Tina Reeves, Michelle Abernathy, Jana Prince, Cassandra Grant Diaz, Deborah Gatewood; Construction; Black and Latinx immigrant workers).
- Black men are threatened by white women with state violence for asking them to follow rules/policies/laws (Christopher Cooper).
- Black cis/trans youth, women, and men are subjected to lynchings and white mob violence for white lies, discomfort, and abuse of power (Emmet Till, Ernest Thomas and Samuel Shepherd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, George Floyd, Charleena Lyles, Tanisha Anderson, Tamir Rice, Tony McDade).
Make no mistake this is an apartheid system undergirded by the latest in technology and weapons.
Black women hold all of this pain and suffering while organizing, mobilizing, building community, developing strategies, running campaigns, raising children, caring for elders, doing charity, starting organizations, running for office, having loving relationships, shopping, attending school, writing for our lives, and working (sometimes multiple) jobs while also managing the whims and harms of white co-workers and managers; storekeepers and bank managers; principals and superintendents; police and elected officials who do not see us as human worthy of care and concern. While this tells a story of white racism it does not begin to address the gendered interpersonal and intra-racial violence that cis-gendered Black men inflict on Black cisgender women/girls (Alisha Woodard) and transgender women/girls (Candace Towns, Iyanna Dior), and other Black cisgender men/boys and transgender men/boys often due to internalized racism.
Black women demand safety for ourselves and our families and communities from white racist violence in all its forms in our homes, communities, cars, public transit, commercial spaces, and workplaces in cities and states across this nation and the world.
Black women demand reparations and the redistribution of looted resources born of our creativity/sweat/reproductive labor and mined from our homelands. Black women demand health, peace, and the right to live free.
Sheri Davis, PhD is the Co-Director of the WILL Empower Program and a Senior Program Director at the Center for Innovation in Worker Organization (CIWO) at Rutgers University.