Commentary, articles and essays written by Dr. Julianne Malveaux.
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Walking down a busy urban street, one cannot help but notice the number of “help wanted” signs that grace the front of many establishments. Restaurants, grocery stores, and retail establishments all seem to want workers. Many of them indicate their starting pay is “at least” $15 an hour. Some list other benefits in the window, including things like vacation time, employee discounts, and more. Workers…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Not a day goes by that I don’t get a text or three from the Democratic National Committee asking for contributions. Sometimes they come from Vice President Harris. Sometimes, from President Biden himself. Occasionally, from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or DNC Chair Jaime Harrison Not to mention the texts that come from Congressional candidates all over the country, looking for $10, $17, or $27. I…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — One of the first Broadway plays I ever saw was Melvin Van Peeble’s Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death. A. Robert Phillips, who led the Black Talent Program at Boston College, arranged for a group of us undergraduates to attend the play, have dinner, and enjoy New York City. I was riveted by the powerful play, a series of vignettes performed by a talented ensemble, who…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — I had not planned to have a policy conversation when I boarded my connecting flight from Detroit to DC. But the young white woman, totally professionally dressed, seemed to want my ear. She was coming to Washington to do “advocacy,” she said, around workplace flexibility and “reimagining work.” I thought girlie just wanted to hear herself talk, so my responses were minimal – um hum,…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — When California governor Gavin Newsom woke up on Wednesday, September 15, 2021, I hope he fell to his knees and said, “Thank you, God, thank you, Black women.” To be sure, there are many others to thank, from the energized Chicanx/Latinx community to the Democrats who surged to the polls at the last minute. Some of the more prominent who thronged to his side were…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — So you are sitting on a park bench, just enjoying the weather. What is the likelihood that the next person that walks by you is of a different race than you? In 2010 the probability of a different race person walking by was 54.9 percent in 2010, and it rose to61.1 percent by 2020. We are more likely to see people who are different than…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Tuvalu is a tiny Polynesian island nation located midway between Hawaii and Australia. Home to just 11,000 people, it is just 10 square miles. It is smaller today than it was a decade ago. Thanks to world climate change, Tuvalu is sinking, and the evidence is everywhere. I’d never heard to Tuvalu until I attended COP15, the Copenhagen climate change conference, in 2010. It was…
By Julianne Malveaux — Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO) was once homeless. She wrote movingly about sleeping with her babies in her car, with no place to go, nowhere to wash except a McDonald’s restroom, nowhere to exhale. She was homeless and working, and among a group that has coined the term “unhoused” to convey the pain of living without a home, belongings stuffed into garbage bags, hot food an elusive…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — It takes Black women until August 3, or 19 months, to earn what a white man earns in a year. Most years, Pay Equity Day happens in March (this year on March 24), when ALL women must work to make as much as white men. Ain’t I a woman, though. It takes me five months to catch up with white women. Too often, this fact…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — There is lots of great news in the June Employment Situation report. Eight hundred and fifty thousand jobs were created! And while the unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged at 5.9 percent, the labor market is showing signs of life. The Biden-Harris administration doesn’t mind crowing about it, either, noting that the three million jobs that have been created since they took office in late January…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Frances Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner, our “National Anthem” was a dyed in the wool racist. He opined that “Negroes” were a “distinct and inferior race.” He was a slaveholder from a family of slaveholders who influenced the odious seventh President Andrew Jackson to appoint Roger Taney, the author of the Dred Scott decision (“Blacks have no rights that whites are bound to…
By Julianne Malveaux — High props go to 94-year-old Opal Lee, the Texas woman determined to make Juneteenth a national holiday. Thanks to her efforts and those of others like Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), Juneteenth is now a federal holiday, the eleventh national holiday, and the first since Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday was made a holiday. For federal employees, it means a paid…
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