WATCH: How Voting and Policy Shifts Aid in Building Black Wealth and Power

Essence Virtual Events

Without political power it is impossible to generate sustained economic power that endures for generations. The effects from passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a clear example of this. After its passage, economic opportunities for Black people in the United States increased, as more jobs within the public sector became available and the Black-white wage gap narrowed. The ability to exercise this once removed power at scale led to advances economically for an entire community.  Now through extreme gerrymandering and restrictions on voting rights targeted at Black voters, the political power that was being built is now under threat. If these voters are disenfranchised, it could be detrimental to the goal of building generational Black wealth.  What can you do about it?

Transcript

00:00What is your message to folks that say, uh, you know, I don't really know if talking about the

00:08fairness at the ballot box is where we need to be. There are some other issues that we should be

00:13tending to. Well, I just want to say that I'm the president at Fair Count. We're a nonpartisan

00:18organization founded by my sister, Stacey Abrams. And what we do is we work. Yeah, go ahead, do that.

00:25Um, but what we do at Fair Count is we work in communities, right? And we see every day in big

00:32cities and small cities, especially in the South, there are barriers. Not, it's not just the long

00:38lines. It is the systems. Our communities, when they're not counted in the census, don't get the

00:44resources they need. We get the lines drawn, this extreme gerrymandering. We don't get, um, we don't

00:49get the power that we deserve in our communities. But while we have to make sure that everybody votes,

00:55we also have to think about the larger ecosystem.

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