slavery. In the United States, care work is still largely women’s work. Chattel slavery has formally been abolished; yet the dynamics that characterized it—abuse, dehumanization, exploitation, and invisibility—are alive and well. Immigrant women and women of color are still the backbone of the care industry, and black women, while occupying different roles within in it, are still a significant proportion of caregivers in the United States. Black women are still making less than our counterparts and still experiencing important disparities in every aspect of our lives, whether it be access to healthcare and childcare, or housing and education, or whether it be the ways in which black women are being criminalized for trying to access what we need to live well. We Dream in Black pays homage to the black women upon whose shoulders we all stand. Before the NDWA, there was Domestic Workers United (DWU) in New York, which in 2010 organized for and won the first Domestic Worker Bill of Rights in the country. Comprised largely of black immigrant women from the Caribbean, the motto of Domestic Workers United was “Tell dem slavery is done.” Before DWU, there was the National Domestic
Workers Union, led by Dorothy Bolden, in 1968. Before that, there was the washerwomen’s strike of 1881 in Atlanta, Georgia, where domestic workers organized a strike to raise the wages they received. Bolden pushed civil rights leaders, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to include the issues facing black women in the agenda for human rights. She worked with domestic workers to tie economic power to political power by requiring that all members of the NDWU were registered to vote. Though the demographics of domestic work has changed, black women are still key to transforming the industry and raising the profile and benefits of domestic workers. The industry today still functions off of exploitation and structural racism. Domestic workers are still exempted from most federal labor protections—a holdover from a racist compromise made between labor union leaders and Southern legislators during the New Deal. Technology has also reached the domestic work industry. In addition to their exclusion from most federal labor protections, cleaners, nannies, and caregivers on tech platforms are now fighting a push to classify them as independent contractors—a move that would further
“Today, the demographics of the industry have changed but the conditions under which this work is done retains vestiges of slavery. In the United States, care work is still largely women’s work. Chattel slavery has formally been abolished; yet the dynamics that characterized it—abuse, dehumanization, exploitation, and invisibility—are alive and well.” 2
FOREWORD