This Black History Month, Recognizing Child Care as a Racial Justice Issue
“And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
As we celebrate Black History Month and remember the triumphs, achievements, and work of those that came before us, we too are reminded of this country’s history of exploiting, marginalizing, and disenfranchising Black people. We are also reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to examine racist structures that undermine Black prosperity and to rebuild them in a manner that pursues equality.
Here in Massachusetts, and across the country, our nation’s broken child care system is one of the greatest drivers of racial inequality. Black children, Black parents, and Black workers have been experiencing the consequences of our failure to invest in it for generations. It is time for that to change.
We have a solution in front of us right now: the Common Start Legislation, which would make high-quality early education and care affordable and accessible for all families in the Commonwealth and make long-overdue investments in raising the salaries of early educators, who are disproportionately women of color.
To advance racial justice and equity, Massachusetts needs to make this investment in equitable, accessible, and affordable high-quality early education and care now.
Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts Black children. By denying our early education and care system the public resources it needs, we tie a child’s education opportunity to a family’s ability to pay. If a family can’t afford an average of $30,000 per year for early education and care, we bar their children from entering the classrooms that set them up to thrive. Creating a more equitable high-quality early education and care system, as is outlined in the Common Start bill, is key to rectifying education disparities experienced by communities of color. If we want to close the racial education opportunity gaps that have existed for far too long, we must focus on when learning begins.
Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts Black parents. The child care crisis impacts the ability of Black parents to work and to pursue employment opportunities and the higher earnings that accompany them. A recent study found that Black and multiracial parents disproportionately experience childcare-related job disruptions — such as quitting a job, not taking a job, or making a significant job change — at nearly twice the rate of white parents. Further, many Black families suffer the cost of care even more acutely because of the enormous racial wealth gap that exists in Massachusetts. The Common Start legislation ensures that all families are able to access affordable care: families with household incomes below 50 percent of statewide median income would be able to access early education and child care options for free. No family would pay more than seven percent of their total household income for care.
Failure to solve the child care crisis hurts Black educators. Solving the child care crisis would also promote economic justice for our early education and care workforce. Despite high tuition rates, early education and care providers struggle to pay their staff more than minimum wage. When the cost of care exceeds the price at which the consumer can pay, it is the educator who suffers. Early educators earn wages as little as $14 an hour, 15 percent ofthem live in poverty, and 44 percent are food insecure. Our tolerance for expecting underpaid labor from Black women has deep and ugly roots. Racial justice requires committing the public funds needed to support the cost of an early education and care system that pays its workforce equitably. Until we make this public investment, our educators, and their commitment to our children, will continue to be exploited.
Child care should not be a privilege, it is a right that should be accessible for every family and every child.
Racial justice requires committing the public funds that are necessary to support the cost of an early education and care system that enables access for Black children, affordability for Black families, and fair wages for Black educators.