On a recent Zoom call with an organization doing research on low-paid workers in the direct care industry, I was struck by an anomaly that is so common as to be almost unnoticeable. These were all good, well-intentioned, highly educated people who genuinely want to advocate for better treatment of “essential” laborers who provide personal care to vulnerable people in nursing facilities as well as in the home. These workers - mostly Black and Brown women - are grossly underpaid, and with few work protections, frequently abused. The organization’s program design was detailed and comprehensive, the operational plan rigorous.
The thing about Zoom—as with the use of cell phones to document incidents of street-level racial injustice—is that images are worth a thousand words. Although low paid, poorly educated, direct care workers are primarily Brown and Black women, it did not escape my notice that on the team charged with conducting this research, no Black or Brown women were represented. In 2020, no matter how well intentioned the work, efforts to investigate unjust practices impacting people of color cannot be credibly undertaken without the participation of those people of color. Anything less is insulting, and doesn’t make sense.
My generation—the boomers, born between 1945 and 1964—is historic in a demographic kind of way. We are 85% White, 11% Black, and 4% “other” (the percentages of Hispanics and Asians were so small during that era of America as to invite lumping together). It was a Black and White world where Whites were overwhelmingly the majority and dominated. The boomers are the last generation where that dominant White numerical majority will characterize American society. As we die off, so will “White democracy”—liberal democracy predicated on the assumption of enduring White numerical supremacy. That is why there is so much tumult around the upcoming election. White democracy—and the privileged status it accords White people—cannot be sustained because its nemesis, irreversible population decline, is here to stay.
In my generation, a research effort investigating ways of bringing relief to “disadvantaged” Black and Brown female workers in direct care or any other occupation could put forth a work team sans Black and Brown female participants without questions being raised. No more. The institutional funders of such efforts need to take note. (For example, of the billions in funding foundations dole out annually, less than 3% goes to Black non-profits.) Underlying this is an economic reality. Social research is basically an employment program for the well-educated segment of our society from which Blacks have been systematically excluded until recent decades; that is, since well after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So people of color are “underrepresented,” not because they are inherently incapable of assessing the extent of their own oppression, but because the “social determinants of access” continue to minimize their opportunities.
This is another instance in which correcting minority exclusions and imbalances must be viewed in appropriate historical context: They represent structural economic obstacles, not moral faults or errors of judgment. Black and Brown people are marginalized even when it comes to measuring the extent to which they are marginalized whether in health care niches or any other aspect of American socio/economic organization (with the possible exception of pro basketball). The real solution is broad, deep change that can only be satisfied through reparations, by shifting power, capital, and control: forcing structural change by altering the economic landscape, eradicating existing privilege, disrupting hegemonic relationships.
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