Rising Black Women Unemployment Exposes the Ideology Behind MAGA Politics
The increase in unemployment among Black women in 2025 reflects more than economic instability. It exposes a political ideology rooted in exclusion, backlash, and resistance to Black leadership. This analysis traces how conservative movements have historically targeted Black women’s economic power, examines the national and Minnesota specific impact, and calls for renewed investment in Black women’s leadership as essential to democracy and collective prosperity.
The rising unemployment rate for Black women in 2025 reflects more than a troubling economic trend. It reveals the core values driving the modern MAGA movement.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows clear job losses for Black women this year. While national news has largely focused on attacks on immigrants, including recent incidents in East St. Paul, few in the mainstream press are acknowledging an organized push to force Black women out of public- and private-sector employment.
This dynamic echoes the backlash against Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, but it also exposes a deeper ideological stance among radical conservatives. For generations, Black women have been targeted by social policies designed to destabilize Black families and undermine community success.
Even when most African Americans were registered Republicans before 1964, the conservative movement rarely advocated ending structural discrimination between 1877 and 1961. From 1961 to 2025, it was the Democratic Party that consistently supported the Civil Rights Movement.
Bipartisan efforts advanced equal rights for a decade, but that momentum changed when Richard Nixon courted segregationists in 1968. What followed were the War on Drugs and decades of mass incarceration that reshaped Black communities between 1972 and 2022.
Barack Obama’s 2008 election showed how a coalition of Black middle- and working-class voters, traditional Democrats, and new immigrant populations could reshape American politics. But the 2016 election revealed deep discomfort among many white voters with that vision.
The 2020 election exposed the limits of an administration committed to a mythology of white Christian individualism. Then Harris’ 2024 campaign fell short after tech billionaires aligned with the MAGA coalition to send a clear message: Many Americans still reject the possibility of Black women holding national leadership roles.
That rejection has deep historical roots. Thurgood Marshall’s legal work, from Brown v. Board of Education to his Supreme Court tenure, expanded civil and human rights and inspired the scholarship of Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw. Critical Race Theory (CRT), contrary to political distortions, offered a framework for identifying and challenging structural injustice. Black women scholars brought this work to life, shaping modern understandings of systemic inequality.
It was that intellectual legacy that conservatives sought to undermine by elevating Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court to reverse Marshall’s vision. For decades, Thomas has been central to efforts to restore segregationist legal principles under the banner of individualism and wealth privilege.
Today, this debate makes Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s insights crucial to restoring Marshall’s legacy and charting a future legal path that defends the freedoms of all people.
Impact in Minnesota
These national tensions are felt sharply in Minnesota. Black communities here are diverse and far from monolithic, yet they share a commitment to justice across ethnic lines. Despite a long history of segregation, documented extensively by the University of Minnesota’s Mapping Prejudice project, state residents broadly support legal interventions that expand opportunities in employment, housing and business ownership.
The economic landscape shows stark divides. Poverty and unemployment remain persistent, yet Minnesota is also home to longstanding Black middle-class and professional families who have built institutions dedicated to social justice and equal opportunity. This multi-racial democratic framework, a community working collectively for shared prosperity, stands in direct opposition to the ethnic nationalism animating the MAGA movement.
The conservative strategy is clear: Elevate individual Black figures who reject CRT and distance themselves from the traditions of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Condoleezza Rice’s ascent in federal leadership was used as proof that structural racism was no longer relevant. Colin Powell’s military career was positioned similarly until his credibility was damaged by the false claims that led to the Iraq War.
The myth at the center of this ideology is meritocracy, a narrative rooted in imperial power and corporate privilege. It ignores the truth that the most meaningful progress in America has come not from individual exceptionalism, but from collective struggles for labor rights, civil rights and human rights. The fullest expression of that legacy is embodied in the generations of Black women who built and sustained organizations under conditions designed to silence them.
A call to action
Historian Michael Katz documented how Black employment has shaped social justice movements throughout U.S. history. His research showed that momentum for civil rights legislation faltered only when the Black middle class was weakened after 1981.
Conservative leaders dismantled social service infrastructure under the guise of cost-cutting, when the real target was the stability those civil service jobs provided for millions of Black families and the political organizations they funded.
Despite segregation, Black communities built churches, schools, colleges and service organizations that guided the United States through the Great Depression, World War II and the Cold War. Today, as the political pendulum swings back against MAGA extremism, the question is whether Minnesota will again recognize the leadership of those who have always sustained the fight for democracy.
If Minnesotans want to expand the traditions of freedom and justice that shaped the state’s civic identity, Black women must be placed in leadership roles in 2026 and beyond. Their voices carry the lessons of generations, from Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Zora Neale Hurston to Angela Davis and Octavia Butler.
This moment demands nothing less than a new Black Reconstruction of democracy, one grounded in truth, collective struggle, and the leadership of the Black women who have always pointed the way forward.
Walter D. Greason, Ph.D., is a Twin Cities metro historian and Dewitt Wallace Professor of History at Macalester College. For more information, visit www.walterdgreason.com.