🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
This has already been a historic year for Black women running for public office. The list of candidates for office is long and filled with distinguished names.
From the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia, Stacey Abrams, to Rep. Val Demings in Florida, to Iowa's Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Deidre DeJear, to Democratic nominees for the Senate Cheri Beasley in North Carolina and Natalie James in Arkansas, if these women win their races, they will be all the media want to talk about.
But in the lead up to the Nov. 8 election, if you looked at the front pages of a newspaper or watched national networks like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, you might know about one—maybe two—races. Abrams' rematch against incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has garnered attention, certainly, but the more than 200 other Black women who are running for either statewide or national office might as well be invisible.
More than once, election results have created the "Year of the Woman," but the silence about the number of Black women who are or were on the ballot is noticeable.
And this is a problem, not just because it ignores the historic moment but also because in the absence of media attention, online trolls and racist front groups get to define the narrative about the Black women running for office.
Let's start with the facts: In addition to Abrams, there were eight Black women who ran for governor across the country this year: Beverly Miles (Illinois), Deidre DeJear (Iowa), Connie Johnson (Oklahoma), Deirdre Gilbert (Texas), Carnita Atwater (Tennessee), Constance Every (Tennessee), and Yolanda Flowers (Alabama)."
But from March 1 (the earliest state primary election date) to Oct. 30, excluding Abrams, none of these candidates received national cable attention other than Flowers. She was featured in a single solo interview on MSNBC's PoliticsNation on Aug. 27.
The lack of coverage is a startling statistic, especially since no Black woman has ever served as governor in our country's 246-year history.
National print media didn't fare any better in their coverage. The top five national newspapers (The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and The Wall Street Journal) ran only three articles about Black women running for national office from Jan. 1-July 31. Coverage has improved since, but only slightly.
Here's why this matters: This lack of national media coverage opens the floodgates for attacks and false information to spread, as there's little to no factual information standing in its way. Most, if not all, of this disinformation and targeting of Black women candidates is created online, frequently on social media platforms.
As the Center for Democracy & Technology points out: "Gendered, racialized abuse and disinformation are disproportionately targeted toward women politicians. ... An analysis of social media conversations about Kamala Harris during the 2020 U.S. presidential election campaign showed that she was targeted by four times as much misinformation as white men running for vice-president between 2016 and 2020 (e.g., Michael Pence and Tim Kaine.)"
The attacks generally follow the same playbook: They undermine the credibility of Black women candidates, and often hypersexualize them, question their intelligence, label them "angry," and criticize their physical appearance.
Beasley and Demings have faced a near-endless barrage of misinformation centered around reproductive rights online, and Flowers has been attacked in dozens of different ways, with the latest claim being that she was scared to participate in a debate last month.
Right-wing misinformation and narratives about Black women candidates define much of the coverage on nefarious networks like Fox News. From Jan. 1 to Sept. 15, a Media Matters for America analysis found that Fox News ran at least 395 segments on Vice President Kamala Harris, often attacking her for her laugh, mannerisms, and supposed lack of charisma. Hosts and guests also implied that Harris was a "diversity hire" or questioned her intelligence. Abrams is also frequently attacked by the network and just last month, a Fox News contributor stated that Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who is running for mayor of Los Angeles, would win the race only based "on gender and skin color."
Making matters worse, when mainstream media outlets do cover Black women in elected or other leadership positions, they do so hyper-critically, with a fixation on the negatives. They even, on occasion, elevate narratives that are either created by or fester on right-wing media outlets.
We also saw these kinds of attacks play out in U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's Senate confirmation hearings. Right-wing media figures and online bad actors accused Jackson of being everything from an affirmative action hire to a pedophile. Many of these disinformation threads were conjured up and promoted on social media platforms that have become a breeding ground for such attacks.
And while the targeted racist and misogynist attacks were many, because Jackson received relatively fair and plentiful national media coverage the public was able to see her for the exemplary nominee that she was.
The lesson is simple. Give Black women the media coverage they deserve. Give Black women the ability to speak for themselves and tell their own stories. And maybe we can see a world where a Black woman running for governor, or any elected office, isn't breaking yet another racial barrier.
Andrea L. Alford is the Director of External Affairs at Media Matters for America where she drives strategic partnerships and initiatives related to core organizational priorities. Aprill O. Turner is Vice President of Communications & External Affairs for Higher Heights for America, the political home for Black women. Learn more at https://www.higherheightsforamerica.org.
The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.
