As her church distributed masks and hand sanitizer as it does each Friday, the Rev. Traci Blackmon said that black churches “have always been on the bottom rung ladder of all of this.”
“We’ve always had to figure out how to take care of our community, to take care of our neighborhoods and take care of our seniors, even when the economy is booming,” said Blackmon, associate general minister of justice at the United Church of Christ, who leads a church in Florissant, Mo. “So in some ways, we’re ahead of the game with this, because we know how to survive with less, because we’ve always had to survive.”
She said that “the way we are accustomed to being governed in this country is being challenged in ways that it has not been challenged in recent history before.”
“So I think it is all erupting and that makes this moment very different because we are in this moment partly created by a lack of leadership,” she added. “And now we have to navigate this moment without leadership.”
Black America has been hit harder by the virus and job losses. https://t.co/j1PmB3C4Vw
— Ninja Economics (@NinjaEconomics) June 8, 2020