There is a lot of talk these days among elected officials about essential workers being heroes. In Alabama, those heroes are two-thirds women, including 81 percent of health care workers and 89 percent of child care and social service workers. And we know in our state these heroes are disproportionately Black women.
So if I understand the calculus of the elected representatives who are ignoring this crisis, they want these women working shifts at their hospitals, or taking care of their elderly, or keeping their spaces and places sanitary, or stocking their grocery shelves, or producing their foods… they just don’t want people to have a well-resourced facility to take their own kids to while they are performing this essential work?
I also want our elected leaders to remember this: These essential workers and caregivers are someone else’s mother, or grandmother, or sister, or daughter, or partner who are loved every bit as much as the women in their own lives. And we know those who are standing in the way of funding childcare would never treat their own this way.
There is a message they are sending us that is loud and clear. The message is: You just don’t matter that much, and neither do your children.
I would love for them to prove me wrong. I would love for them to invest in these facilities as if these places were caring for their own children. I would love for them to invest in these workers as if they were investing in their own working daughters and sons. I would love for them to invest in these jobs as if they were held by a majority of wealthy people instead of a majority poor, Black women.
It’s time to move past the rhetoric about heroes and claiming to care about all children, and instead prove it with public policy. That’s where our elected leaders show their values—because during the struggles of this pandemic, a speech isn’t necessarily worth the paper it’s printed on.
