Black Women, Labor, and America

-- By RuthSamuel - 21 Feb 2025

Tuesday, February 18th marked the birth of two literary icons: Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison, whose words still reverberate today. As we enter the confines of the legal profession, I think frequently about Morrison’s essay in The New Yorker titled, "The Work You Do, The Person You Are," published just two years before her passing. In the essay, she reflects on her first job as a youth in the 1940s — cleaning a wealthy woman’s house for minuscule pay — realizing that her identity and self-worth are not tethered to her job. In a world, in a country that insists on invoking Black women for free labor, I hold her words dear.

On that same Tuesday, The Hollywood Reporter shared that, according to a spokesperson, former Vice President Kamala Harris signed with Creative Artists Agency. As we’ve seen with countless predecessors, it is not uncommon for a public official to pivot to publishing, speaking engagements, and external opportunities as they vacate their roles. Nonetheless, there is still an expectation that Black women are laborers, evident in an outcry of Twitter users begging Harris to “do something” about the current state of our nation. Lest we forget, when she tried, the public rejected her. One user wrote, “It truly shows you how everyone wants [Black women] to do a job they weren’t even hired for.”

As I’ve written before, Black women are expected to perform like superhumans while being treated as subhuman. Rather than addressing the fact that 53% of white women willingly voted for the reelection of Donald Trump and asking them to take accountability, people continue to ask Black women to work for free in an unsolicited capacity. We’re paid in “words of affirmation” and reduced to a mammy stereotype under the guise of saving a nation that does not want to be saved from itself. We saw this with how white Americans talked about Stacey Abrams for years and most recently, Drew Barrymore’s ignorant plea for Harris to be our “Momala.”

The origins of the mammy caricature stem from chattel slavery. In an undergraduate theatre class offered by UNC’s Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies, I recall watching “Ethnic Notions,” an Emmy Award-winning documentary showing the origins of dehumanizing Black stereotypes in popular culture. The monikers ranged from Uncle Toms to carefree Sambos, and of course, Mammies, who were faithful, loyal, and proof that slavery was “humane.” What I gathered from watching the film is that the mammy, often a larger, darker-skinned, maternal figure, completely juxtaposes white femininity — and that dynamic pervades the real world today.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, since slavery, the dominant view of Black women has been that we are workers; amid COVID-19, we faced a steep drop in employment. Compared with other women in the United States, Black women have always had the highest levels of labor market participation regardless of age, marital status, or presence of children at home. In 1880, 35.4% of married Black women and 73.3 % of single Black women were in the labor force compared with only 7.3% of married white women and 23.8% of single white women. Yet despite all of that, despite the evidence, despite the unpaid labor, the median wealth for single Black women is $200 while a single white woman sits at $15,600.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the phrase “invisible labor” has been used to describe the unrecognized work underrepresented faculty members are called to do by that status, e.g. mentoring marginalized students or otherwise engaging in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work, regardless of whether they’re compensated or have expertise in antiracist work. As DEI initiatives come under attack, a survey showed those who did the most diversity and equity inclusion work were significantly more likely to self-identify as nonwhite, nonmale, or first-generation college attendees. We, Black women, are never just allowed to be students; we are expected to not only manage extracurriculars and grades but to also sit on institutional committees and myriad “task forces” vying for change — because if we don’t who will?

Beyond the ivory tower, this extends into the legal profession, an occupation that seemingly frowns upon boundaries, laughs at the notion of “work-life balance,” and wonders why attorneys grapple with substance abuse. As a student aspiring to join the 2%, i.e. the percentage of Black woman attorneys in the U.S., I am tasked with doing my job, and then some. I will shoulder the responsibility of not only managing my work but engaging in recruitment and retention efforts to sustain and support Black attorneys and law students when institutions inevitably fail us.

It's necessary work and still, we should not be_ expected_ to spearhead these efforts alone. For whom does this ultimately benefit? Although 92% of us Black women who voted in the 2024 election did our “jobs,” time and time again, we are told to be grateful to occupy the spaces we do, as if our mere presence is a nuisance. My worth is not tethered to my output or utility. As Audre Lorde once wrote,“Overextending myself is not stretching myself…Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." Black women are neither your mules nor your martyrs. It is not our job to rescue and restore America.

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