What about Black Women?

Using the Urban and Economic Mobility initiative undertaken by President Obama, I explore how and if race-gender is recognized in the framing of urban policy during the Obama administration. There is a distinctive race-gender dimension to urban policy. In urban areas, data suggests that poverty is both raced and gendered. The purpose of this chapter is to engage in an analysis of the relationship between race-gender and space in relation to urban policy-making. This analysis specifically looks at how Black women are treated in the urban policy-making process of the Obama administration. However, it also serves as an analysis into how Black women are understood in Black politics more specifically as it grapples with the larger question of how ideologies of gender, which often engage a rather masculinist approach, influence the quest for freedom and equality. An analysis of the Obama administration is somewhat of a proxy for an analysis of how gender, particularly Black womanhood, is treated in Black politics. As I argue, the ideologies of gender that influence urban policy, resulting in the invisibility of Black womanhood, are also prevalent in Black politics. What should Black politics look like beyond Obama?