Changing The Game

IN NEARLY 250 YEARS OF U.S. HISTORY, AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN WOMAN HAS NEVER BEEN ELECTED GOVERNOR. NOW TWO “SISTER” CANDIDATES ARE PLANNING TO TURN THE TIDE IN 2018 

- Donna M. Owens

Stacey Abrams, a Democrat who served nearly 11 years in Georgia’s General Assembly, is building a multiethnic, multiracial coalition in her gubernatorial bid. The New Georgia Project she founded has registered some 215,000 voters since 2014. “For too long, people and communities of color have been left behind,” says Abrams, 43, a Spelman grad and Yale educated lawyer raised in a “working poor” family. “And at every stage of the social justice and economic ladder, Black women face impediments. I want to represent everyone.”

Democrat Connie Johnson, a retired Oklahoma state senator, has also announced agubernatorialbid.Johnson,64,toldan Oklahoma TV station, “I’m willing to step up and serve.”

Black women have historically served in their communities, and stepped up to vote in record numbers. Yet in the era of President Donald Trump, the new political landscape requires a different level of engagement.

America’s forty-fifth Commander in Chief and his administration, critics contend, have attacked voting rights, affirmative action and LGBTQ equality. Anti-immigrant to anti-Muslim sentiment has escalated, while misogyny and White nationalism are on bold display.

“Last year’s presidential election should serve as a wake-up call” for the nation’s 46 million African-Americans, says Avis Jones-DeWeever, Ph.D., founder of the Exceptional Leadership Institute for Women in the Washington, D.C., area.

To tackle health disparities, criminal justice, economic development and twenty-first-century racism in today’s environment, experts say it’s critical that Black women amplify their influence.