Over the past several years, Ms. Jones has been developing a core philosophy: Because black women have historically been concentrated in low-paying caregiving jobs, which are often excluded from employment laws and benefits like Social Security, they have accumulated less can and experienced worse health outcomes. Furthermore, Ms. Jones argues, helping black women, through measures like raising wages in the caring professions and canceling more student debt, is the best way to build an economy that works better for everyone.

In 2020, she gave her narrative a name, “Black Women Best.” She came up with it while working for a progressive nonprofit called the Groundwork Collaborative, which has held focus groups across the country to find a narrative for how the economy should work for workers.

“They said, ‘I wish I wasn’t tired,’” Ms. Jones recalled the participants. “’I want to buy school supplies.’ “I want to know that if my car breaks down, because I think it’s possible, I won’t lose my apartment.” Solving those basic problems for the poorest people, she thought, would boost the job market from the bottom up. above.

His premise, which he articulated in a worksheet for the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, found an enthusiastic audience under the Biden presidency, who owes his victory largely to black women. It was adopted by influential figures, including corporate economists and a chairman of the federal reserveand formed the basis of a 133-page book report commissioned by the Congressional Caucus on Black Women and Girls.

It has not escaped rejection: some academics, including Edinburgh University’s Tommy J. Curry, counter that black men are more disadvantaged than black women. doctor curryteacher specialist in african philosophy and black male studies at the university, said that while he understands the “political popularity” of Ms. Jones’s theory, the evidence does not support it. Black women, she said, “have seen higher levels of labor participation, entrepreneurial endeavors supported by government grants, and higher rates of college degree completion since the 2000s, while black men have been shown to have more unemployment.” , less earnings per dollar, by 51 cents by some measures, and general downward mobility.”