Whether it’s been saving Congress from Roy Moore’s disgusting ass, or Oprah’s inspiring speech during the Golden Globes that led to social media chants of #Oprah2020, or Beyoncé just being Beyoncé, black women are clearly the backbone of the American conscience.
We at The Root have been trying to tell America that black women are the hambone in their otherwise bland-ass collards; but it looks like the rest of America is finally starting to realize not only that black women have been saving America from itself, but also that they’ve always been a powerful, yet neglected, voting bloc. Well, all that’s starting to change.
On Sunday, during the Women’s March #PowerToThePolls rally in Las Vegas, the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, called on white women to do more to “save this country from itself.”
“All across the country, the Women’s March inspired doctors and teachers and mothers to become activists and organizers and, yes, candidates for office,” Richards said, CNN reports. “And from Virginia to Alabama and to last week in Wisconsin, women have beaten the odds to elect our own to office. ... Women of color, transgender women, rural and urban women.”
Richards then added: “These victories were led and made possible by women of color.”
At this point, Richards could have dropped the mic and walked off the stage to the chorus of “Loyalty.” However, Richards also challenged white women—some 53 percent of whom voted against their self-interests during the 2016 presidential election to help elect Donald Trump—to do better.
“So, white women, listen up. We’ve got to do better. ... It is not up to women of color to save this country from itself. That’s on all of us. That’s on all of us,” said Richards, who also heads the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
“The good news is, when we are in full on sisterhood, women are the most powerful political force in America,” she said.
Then she dropped the mic. Fine. Maybe she didn’t, but I wanted her to because this was a powerful mic-drop moment.
Read more at CNN.