Black Women On The Front Lines Of The Coronavirus

By Simone Johnson & Charise Frazier via https://madamenoire.com/

COVID-19 awakened a strange and uncertain hour for our country. But Black communities will undoubtedly stand to fall the hardest as our local and federal governments have proven to be unprepared in the wake of this unprecedented challenge. Black women, who have historically held front-facing and service-based positions, face the greatest challenge as the largest working demographic exposed to the public.

“These are the folks who are working and being exposed to thousands of possibly symptomatic and asymptomatic customers, while many others of us shelter-in-place,” said Astin Wangel-Brown, a 33-year-old licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist based out of Los Angeles.

For this special MadameNoire report, we interviewed 10 Black women across service-based industries to gain perspective on how this real-life pandemic will shape our futures, revising life as we know it for the foreseeable future. 

Since the first wave of African slaves set foot on American soil, Black women paid with their bodies, through sexual and physical abuse, forced into servitude. As the bondage of slavery was lifted, racist policies formed a gap in equity. Opportunities were created based on back-breaking labor in …

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