We continue our Black History & State of Black America series of conscious raising shows around systemic racism & oppression. This week we speak with two activists Amanda Jasso and Kellee Coleman, who work with the City of Austin Equity Office. They share the challenges, by race and gender, that particularly are faced by women of color, at the local level regarding inequities posed by systemic oppression. Rather than complaining, they share the adaptive strategies women of color blazed in Austin Texas, in order to ‘normalize self-care’ and the care of their born and unborn children. Recognizing oppression and realizing it is not only about adapting to challenges and obstacles they place in the way to equality but recognizing that they are ‘systems’ ‘that are built to do what they are supposed to do’, maintain and expand the inequities that some benefit from while the majority to different degrees, some based on race and gender, are left to struggle with. Additional insights are provided such as the clarity in defining different types of ways oppression is manifested, however what is ‘not nearly as clear is how we experience white privilege’.
Change is measured in incremental advances which hopefully will snowball into structural change. Oppression alienates us from our humanity, but we are inspired by how our guests minimize those impacts by the choices they make and teach us to make. We highlight the heroic role of Women in Austin in the context of their role throughout the world in mitigating the effects of poverty which is defined by Oxfam as “the worst form of violence perpetrated with the consent of society”. Insightful and empirically documented findings are reviewed of the Oxfam, Jan 2020 Report entitled, Unpaid and Underpaid Care Work and the Global Inequality Crisis: Even It Up. They include and document that ‘Economic inequality is out of control’; “The monetary value of UNPAID CARE WORK globally for women aged 15 or older is at least $10.8 trillion annually”; “at the bottom of the economy, women and girls, especially women and girls living in poverty and from marginalized groups, are putting in 12.5 billion hours every day of (essential) care work for free, and countless more for poverty wages” and “Oxfam has calculated that this work adds value to the economy of at least $10.8 trillion annually.” What makes women so heroic is the lives that they save every day in the face of the oppression they disproportionately are encumbered by.
