Not too long ago, I had the honor of meeting with the Rev. Dr. Johnnie Green, who leads the Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem. We spoke about a handful of issues, but one that stood out was how many of his congregants continue to face the lingering effects of COVID.
Although the pandemic is behind us, many Americans, especially those in underserved communities, still haven’t been able to fully recover. Others are struggling to make ends meet as prices remain high on everything from housing to food. Small businesses are fighting to stay afloat. Many families, especially in the African American community, are still grappling with the widening racial wealth gap, poor health outcomes, rise in maternal mortality, scourge of gun violence, mass incarceration, and continuing effects of environmental inequality.
While the pandemic greatly exacerbated many of these challenges, it did not create them. Members of the African American community have long dealt with the consequences of systemic racial inequities. It’s about time more legislators tackled this problem head-on.
The racial wealth gap has made it significantly more challenging for African Americans to build generational wealth. In 2020, the wealth gap between Black and white Americans was about as bad as it was in 1950. Much of that has to do with systemic inequalities that make it difficult for African American business owners and entrepreneurs to get funding and support.
To address this, I’ve called for more than $400 million to help entrepreneurs in underserved communities get more access to capital. This includes resources to support community development financial institutions, a growth accelerator fund, and a microloan program for small businesses.
These sorts of federal initiatives will help communities build wealth and spur economic growth in New York. As just one example of this, New York community development financial institutions provided $4.3 billion in loans between 2003 and 2018. This funding helped borrowers start or expand small businesses, create affordable housing, and provide health care and day care services to their communities. This, in turn, created more than 60,000 jobs across New York State.
Another issue that comes up repeatedly in my conversations with Black constituents is that of maternal mortality and the disproportionate impact it has on the African American community. Just recently, the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics released a report finding that the maternal mortality rate among Black women in the U.S. stands at 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, which is more than double the national average. What’s even more troubling is that four out of five of these pregnancy-related deaths are preventable.
I wrote a bill—the Into the Light for Maternal Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders Act—to address this rising problem and establish a maternal mental health hotline for pregnant and postpartum women. I’m proud that this bill passed in 2022 and the hotline has, to date, received more than 33,000 contacts.
As we fight to reduce health disparities, we must also do more to address gun violence, which affects the African American community disproportionately. Long before the racially motivated mass shooting that killed 10 innocent Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, gun violence was devastating New York communities, sowing fear among families, workers, and businesses.
Shortly after I became a senator, I met the parents and classmates of Nyasia Pryear-Yard, a 17-year-old victim of gun violence from Brooklyn. Nyasia had such a bright future ahead, and her life was taken far too soon. Her friends and family told me their concerns about the illegal guns flooding Brooklyn’s streets and motivated me to introduce legislation that would ban interstate gun trafficking once and for all. Finally, after more than a decade of sustained advocacy, the core of my gun trafficking bill was included in the bipartisan gun safety package that was signed into law in June 2022. Since then, my anti-gun trafficking statute has been used to charge more than 380 suspected firearms traffickers and take more than 2,600 illegal guns off our streets.
Addressing the gaps in our mental health care system is another key part of our fight against gun violence. The bipartisan gun safety law awarded nearly $100 million to New York State and New York-based organizations for mental and behavioral health services and programming, including multiple nonprofits and schools in New York City. For example, Fordham University was awarded nearly $250,000 to train teachers, administrators, and guidance counselors at dozens of Bronx public schools to recognize the signs of mental illness in children and offer referrals to licensed mental health providers.
These types of initiatives will broaden access to the mental health supports we need to help curb gun violence and offer early intervention for those suffering from serious mental illness.
We must also do more to help right the wrongs of the past. One way to do this is to combat mass incarceration and criminal justice policies that have disproportionately harmed African Americans.
While many failed policies enacted over the course of many decades have contributed to this inequity, one major failure has been the criminalization of marijuana possession. Even while rates of marijuana use are similar between Black and white Americans, Black Americans are 3.64 times more likely to be arrested for possession. It’s a major reason why I’m fighting to deschedule marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. I recently convened leaders in Harlem to call on the Biden administration to take action swiftly. While I’m grateful that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is moving to reclassify marijuana, I won’t stop fighting until we remove it from the list of federally controlled substances completely.
Another way that legislators can help right the wrongs of the past is by addressing the damage done by mid-20th-century infrastructure projects like I-81 in Syracuse, the Kensington Expressway in Buffalo, and the Cross Bronx Expressway in the Bronx. These projects divided Black and Brown communities, and cut them off from the local economy. Decades later, these communities continue to struggle, so I supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which has delivered billions of dollars to redesign and replace these and other similar structures. So far, this has included $180 million for I-81, $150 million for the Cross Bronx, and $55 million for the Kensington Expressway.
I’m also proud that this transformative legislation included key provisions from my bill to encourage state and local governments to train and hire local workers for these infrastructure projects, helping to ensure that the communities most harmed by the projects in the past will be the same ones that benefit most in the future.
We also need to do more to make sure Black and Brown communities can make their voices heard in the legislative process. For too long, lawmakers in many states have been systematically restricting and obstructing the right to vote in ways that disproportionately affect these underserved communities. It’s why I was proud to work with the late Congressman John Lewis on the Voter Empowerment Act, a bill that would modernize voter registration, expand and protect early voting and vote-by-mail, ban deceptive practices that keep people away from the polls, and get us one step closer to guaranteeing equal access to the ballot box.
If we win back the House and expand our Democratic majority in the Senate, protecting voting rights will be the first vote after we remove the filibuster in the Senate.
These are just some of the legislative solutions I’ve been working on to help address these deep inequities. I’m continuing to push for other policies to support and lift up the voices of Black New Yorkers. I plan to fight hand in hand with my constituents to make real progress in our quest for justice.
Kirsten Gillibrand is a U.S. Senator representing New York State.