The reckoning on race in the field of economics began around 100 years ago. To put that in perspective, white women had only recently been granted the right to vote, and, in 1921, white people had burned Black Wall Street, in Tulsa, to the ground.
Yet, in that same year, at the age of 23, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander achieved the unthinkable when she became the first Black woman in the U.S. to earn a doctorate degree in economics. Throughout Alexander’s long and fruitful career, she championed civil rights for marginalized groups, especially Black women, creating a path for today’s Black economists, lawyers, and policy practitioners. She’s an example for all of us today on how to weather uncertain times at the nexus of political instability, racial injustice, and a global health crisis.
Ever since the death of Trayvon Martin, the senseless deaths of Black people have launched mass protests concerning police brutality and the systemic racism that permeates every aspect of our society. In 2020, industries and institutions that had long escaped close scrutiny found themselves facing uncomfortable, overdue questions.
As a young Black woman in the field, it’s strange to watch academia — and the economics profession in particular — only now begin grappling with how racism shapes the career trajectories of Black people. As of 2017, Black women still made up less than 0.6% of all doctoral recipients. There remains a glaring lack of literature highlighting race and ethnicity in the top economics journals. Yet so many non-Black experts — many of whom study and inform topics that shape Black communities, such as housing, health care, technology, and higher education — largely remain silent on the issue of discrimination and bias in our profession. The structural violence I feel subjected to, having not yet taken a full-time job in this space, is overwhelming.
The National Economic Association, the caucus of Black economists formed in 1969 to address the marginalization of Black economists by the American Economic Association, spoke out against this deafening silence last year. The organization decried the police killings of Black people as “part of the political, economic, social, and physical violence that has been built into America’s institutions since its inception.” My organization, the Sadie Collective, which focuses on addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics and related fields, also called on leaders in economics and related fields to “stand on the right side of history” — history that begins with America’s first Black economist.