Ayanna Pressley on anti-Blackness
In this Q&A, the Boston congresswoman talks about the pendulum swinging back since 2020, and how the movement for equity and justice can press forward
Below you’ll find an edited interview I conducted with Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, who was speaking to me from Boston earlier this month. She recognizes that the pendulum of popular support for racial equity and justice is swinging backwards. But she doesn’t see that as a reason to demand less. “For people to say ‘it's too much, it's too much’; this isn't charity. This isn't benevolence. This is reparative work, to undo centuries of harm.”
This interview is part of a series of conversations I am having about the state of race relations in this presidential election year. Earlier I spoke with DEI consultant Malia Lazu, Diana Hwang of the Asian American Women’s Political Initiative, and journalist Julio Ricardo Varela.
Bernstein: The 2020 Presidential election cycle took place against a backdrop of George Floyd and Black Lives Matters protests, and what seemed like a moment of support for equity and justice initiatives. What do you think of that time looking back at it? Do you feel like progress was made? Does it seem like a lost opportunity?
Pressley: First, I want to say that it's most unfortunate that great trauma has to be experienced in order for there to be collective awareness, consciousness, and commitment to address an issue. At the height of Black Lives Matter, it was shocking that for many people, that was the first time they came to understand fully just how systemic and codified anti-Blackness is in our culture, societal constructs and policies. And I want to be very specific in saying that: not just racism, discrimination, prejudice, bias—anti-Blackness. People are very desensitized to Black suffering, which is why you might feel less invested in what's happening in Haiti. It's why you might feel less invested in what's happening in any neighborhood in the Massachusetts seventh district that has a concentrated Black community. And so, do I think there was progress made? I think there was awareness raised.
Bernstein: But a lot of people feel that the awareness has faded.
Pressley: I've been Black my whole life. I've been in electoral politics and movement-building work since I was 10. And I'm used to this. This is not unique to Black folks; when issues dominate the headlines, they dominate the attention of the public and lawmakers. And when those headlines fade, so too does the interest and the commitment. That's true for any number of issues. That’s sort of the algorithm of this work. I think the reason there was a hard lean in [after Floyd’s death] was because we were in the middle of a pandemic—people were quarantined, and sheltering in place for all intents and purposes. It’s not that state-sanctioned violence or brutality against Black Americans has stopped since then. It's still happening. It just doesn't get the same oxygen. In that moment, we had the world's attention, because life was paused. And what we're in right now is a hard pendulum swing to the other direction. I think that that's been true throughout history. You don't see the gains of Reconstruction, to be undone by Jim Crow, and not understand that.
Bernstein: That has to be discouraging to activists though. Is there a strategy in your mind for injecting some of these issues into this year’s political conversations? Or do you have to wait until the next time that the pendulum swings back?
Pressley: Oh no, no, no, we can't wait. If you really want to do the work of justice, that work is not a linear path. It is a very disruptive algorithm. And that is why Coretta Scott King—who never got the due she deserved; the Massachusetts seventh claims her because their relationship was forged here—said that freedom is never really won in perpetuity, it is won and earned in every generation. Ultimately this is about strategy, it's about stamina, and it's about practicing the discipline of hope. That is how we saw the gains of the earlier chapters of the Civil Rights Movement, which we are still very much in. Strategy, stamina, and practicing the discipline of hope. And that strategy is a grassroots mobilization strategy with the aim of advancing legislation. Because David, at the end of the day, as a bold, unapologetically Black woman navigating these spaces, hate does not deter me. Hate does not frighten me. What frightens me is hate that is codified in law.
Bernstein: You recently introduced a bill addressing book bans, which would explicitly label that as a civil rights issue, placing it under federal civil rights laws. Why is that the right approach?
Pressley: Book bans really sit at the intersection in this sort of Venn diagram of an intersectional marginalization of the LGBTQ community, of women, and of Black folks. And it's very coordinated. In the states that had the most draconian anti-LGBTQ legislation, these are the same states that are the most active in voter suppression and anti-Black rhetoric, and the same states that are denying access to health care for women. With book bans, it is a denial of intellectual freedom, of Black history, of Black stories, of a diversity of Black lived experiences. I introduced legislation called the Books Save Lives Act, which is not me being hyperbolic—I’m an Aquarius, and that's my tendency, true enough—but a book saved my life. Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings saved my life, as a child who was experiencing inter-family abuse, and carrying tremendous shame because of that. When I first read that book, that was the first time I knew in my life that I was not alone. And so it is about belonging, and safe spaces and consciousness. At a time when people seek to erase the full telling of our history as a country, or to render the contributions of Black Americans as a footnote, or erase them entirely, these stories matter. This legislation would say that there must be diverse representation of authors and stories in our school libraries. And if you cannot access those things, then it is a violation of your federal civil rights.
Bernstein: You’re talking about anti-racism, but also intersectionalism.
Pressley: You want to talk about this pendulum swing: we find ourselves in a moment where they are banning our bodies, with a march towards a nation of forced birth—in a country where a Black woman is three to four times more likely to die in childbirth, or post-birth in complications. They are banning our bodies, so it's a threat to our bodily autonomy. They are banning our books; that’s a threat to our civil rights and our intellectual freedoms. They are banning our hair, which is why we have federal legislation pending, the Crown Act, to ban race-based hair discrimination. There is a coordinated effort from state legislatures, Congress, and all the way up to the Supreme Court with the overturning of 50 years of precedent when it comes to affirmative action in higher ed. The Supreme Court has now been enlisted as co-conspirators in this extremist march. We have seen a steady drip of an effort to defund Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at every level. That is the natural algorithm of the work of justice, where there will be periods of complacency and backlash. It also has to do with an emboldened white supremacy, which is a threat to everyone. It's why anti-semitism thrives. It's why anti-Blackness thrives, and Islamophobia. I've struggled with the characterization to identify as a person who is “oppressed.” But the fact of the matter is that you are marginalized, you are oppressed, when you have to legislate and litigate and agitate for those things that are a birthright for others.
Ultimately this is about strategy, it's about stamina, and it's about practicing the discipline of hope.
Bernstein: Your district in and around Boston includes or borders a number of colleges, which have become a hotbed of racially charged controversies, including that Supreme Court ruling on race based admissions, some of the recent protest clashes, and everything that happened with Claudine Gay at Harvard.
Pressley: People think that when you're in a Commonwealth like Massachusetts, that you're exempt from these sorts of threats. We imagine ourselves to be inoculated from such things, with our Northeast exceptionalism. But untrue. There have been challenges to books in Roxbury, in Randolph, in Milton. But to be fair, we elected our first black woman statewide, [Attorney General] Andrea Campbell, and we have the greatest representation of elected Black folk than we've ever had. We have a city council that affirms that racism is a public health crisis. That is something that would not have happened when I was serving on the Boston City Council. And they have a Reparations Task Force.
Bernstein: California is also doing reparations work, and some others. Do you think those are useful exercises at the local and state level? Do you expect to see any good coming from that?
Pressley: I haven't been following it closely enough. Obviously, I'm a supporter of HR 40, which is a study of reparations, the vehicle whereby it it would actually happen [at the federal level]. There's no real consensus. People who are unsupportive of it think reparations is just like a check, and we're debating the dollar amount. But other bills are forms of reparations. It's that actively anti-racist work, to acknowledge that there is a systemic anti-Blackness in our societal constructs, in our policies. I consider baby bonds to be reparative work. I consider student debt cancellation to be reparative work. I consider doing everything possible to stop Project 2025, which is anti-Blackness codified, as reparative. But the fact that these reparations task forces even exist, is a testament to progress.
Bernstein: Many of your major initiatives—you just named a couple of them, baby bonds and student debt relief; I'm also thinking of the MOMMIES Act, and the Tenant Empowerment Act—these are bills that would affect far more than just racial and ethic minorities, but they would have a disparate effect.
Pressley: Of course—a disparate uplifting effect.
Bernstein: Is that the way to make progress on equity and justice going forward?
Pressley: Yes. I don't want us to say all hope is lost because the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is not yet law of the land. There has not been the wholesale progress we would like to see, and many gains that we have made are being eroded, but public awareness was heightened. And I don't think that there's one bill that would undo centuries of harm. It takes sort of an omnibus, if you will; a suite of bills that do that work. It's everything from reparations; to baby bonds; to the MOMMIES Act, attacking the black maternal morbidity crisis; to student debt cancellation, which has a disparate impact on Black borrowers; to Books Save Lives; to the People's Justice Guarantee; to abolishing the death penalty; to the Tenant Empowerment Act, and I could go on. The harm that has been done to Black folks and other marginalized people has been very precise, and so the solutions have to be just as race-conscious. I bring that lens to every bill that I author, because I'm a Black woman. That lived experience and that focus is there in everything that I do. But my mother instilled in me early on a charge to do the work of liberation, yes for Black people, but for all people, because we're all deserving of our full freedoms.
Bernstein: But does all of this alienate people? There are people who thought of themselves as allies back in 2020 who don’t seem to now. And part of it, you're probably right, was that things went out of the headlines, and people went back to the office. But some would argue that there's been negative backlash from those would-be allies, who think: “these progressives are asking for too much. They start talking about reparations, they start talking about defunding police, that’s too woke for me, they've gone too far.” What do you make of that claim, that that's had a push-back effect on the pendulum?
Pressley: For me, the progressive movement is the civil rights movement. Because what is the work of the civil rights movement? It’s the work of disrupting the status quo in pursuit of equality. That is the same work that we're doing now. It's easy for people to say something is too much, if you don't know what it is to have to legislate, litigate, and agitate for those things that are a birthright for others. You could never understand what it is to be shamed for simply how you were born, how you show up in the world, how your hair grows out of your head; to have that be a barrier to your progress. You could never understand that, if simply how you show up in the world is enthusiastically embraced, and not criminalized, not politicized. I seek to be a consensus builder, David, not a consensus seeker. And that is harder work. It means that some days, you reflect the temperature like a thermometer, and some days you set the temperature like a thermostat. So to be a consensus builder, that means I do 20 more meetings, and maybe 50 more emails and 20 more phone calls. Not to try to convert or persuade people, but to raise their consciousness, to raise their awareness, to create space for them to hear different stories. And we have seen that over and over again, that when you can change hearts and minds, you can change policy. So all hope is not lost.
Bernstein: So there can be success even without ‘successes.’
Pressley: I fight like hell for what gains have been made, and to build upon them. I'm leveraging every tool available to me: the power of the pen as a lawmaker, the power of my letterhead. Let me give you one example. At the height of George Floyd, financial institutions made pledges to do the work of racial equity at their institutions, to the tune of $32.5 billion. A year after BLM had the world's attention, I said, as a member of the Financial Services Committee, we need an audit, because I haven't felt the impact of that $32.5 billion. And I do believe the financial institutions have a greater responsibility because they created this racial wealth gap with their disparate lending for our businesses, and for our attempts to purchase homes, with the practice of redlining. So I used the power of my letterhead and called for a comprehensive audit of the five biggest banks. They all replied, and we combed through some 200-plus pages of data, some of which we’re still disaggregating. And I was encouraged by a lot of what I read there, particularly when it comes to housing investment in opportunities. There's more than I want to see. But, we have to ask for these receipts. People thought their work was done because they put on a Black Lives Matter T-shirt, and usually it was a T-shirt they didn't even buy from a Black vendor. We appreciate that allyship, but we need accomplices. We need co-conspirators. If you believe that Black lives matter, then you believe that Black health matters, Black wealth matters, Black joy matters. So that's the work that we're doing every day.
Bernstein: It sounds like at least some progress came out of the 2020 movement.
Pressley: I think awareness was raised. I don't think we experienced a racial reckoning. I did grow up in the Baptist Church, so I don't play with words like reckoning. A reckoning would mean that we have advanced solutions that are commensurate to the harm that has been caused. I think we had a racial awakening. We've not yet had a reckoning. And, again, for people to say “it's too much, it's too much”; this isn't charity. This isn't benevolence. This is reparative work, to undo centuries of harm.
I wished you had asked her what she saw as the logic behind her call to impeach Brett Kavanaugh when there was little substance in it and it ran the risk of cheapening more meaningful Democratic impeachment efforts.