BLACK WELL-BEING: MOVING TOWARD SOLUTIONS TOGETHER
The Black Well-being report was designed to elevate our brilliance and bring forward the approaches that will result in the world we want to see. It builds on a 2015 report, Creating an Equitable Future in Washington State by Byrd Barr Place.
Seven years later the landscape has shifted and accelerated the urgency for societal change. This report highlights where change is needed and illustrates a more truthful narrative — one that takes into account a diversity of voices, experiences, and approaches.
It is also an organizing tool. We hope you discuss the data with Black folks you work with to support community organizing, direct resources, and inform policy and systems change. Beyond the narrative in the report, there are over 150 data references for you to explore as you make the case for funding, policy change, and organizing strategies.
Rooted in Community Wisdom
This report is rooted in the wisdom of Black community from beginning to end. Almost a thousand Black voices contributed to this report.
A Report By Us and For Us
This report is a love note to Black Washingtonians, written for us and by us, to accelerate change. In each section, we offer approaches identified by Black Washingtonians — actions that we and our society can take to make necessary change across sectors.
Read the full report
Explore the topic areas
Key metrics that have moved since 2015
It is critical to note that although we’ve made progress, the gap between us and everyone else has not improved. The rules by which our social systems function are the same as they’ve always been — only the flavor of harm has shifted.
Civic Engagement
Civic engagement is acting individually or collectively on the issues that matter to us. There are both formal and informal ways to influence the policies, laws, and rules that shape our world. It isn’t just the legislative system, it’s school boards, churches, and mutual aid.
Contextual Factors
Who has a seat at the table?
The price of admission.
Whose voices are heard?
Inadequate civics education.
Community demystifying civics.
Social change has and will always take all of us.
Community Identified Approaches
Interrogate and shift harmful narratives.
Stop looking to a small handful of Black leaders to represent us.
Center the arts in civics because they are foundational to social change.
Increase and enhance civic readiness.
Fund community to plan and lead.
We envision moving more boldly to create the world we want to see: exercising individual and collective power, stepping into our joy, having time to be and rest so that we heal and dream, and listening, learning, and organizing intergenerationally, with attention to healthy interdependence.
Education
The education Black children receive is, by necessity, in two parts: in formal educational settings like schools and at home. Our education should lead us to a fulfilling career, the freedom to live our lives, and ultimately self-actualization.
Contextual Factors
The cost of quality early learning and child care.
Public school funding structures benefit the already resourced.
Cost of higher education.
Who is teaching our children and youth.
Eurocentric approaches to education.
Implicit bias of teachers and administrators.
Community Identified Approaches
Fund the Black community to plan how we want our education systems to function.
Utilize mastery- or competency-based learning toward self-actualization.
Redefine academic standards to recognize and cultivate Black brilliance.
Cultivate loving interactions within the education ecosystem.
Create practices of accountability and transparency at all levels of decision making.
Revisit job descriptions and organizational structures, and diversify the workforce.
We envision rich, integrated educational spaces that teach students how to grow into themselves and shape a better society. Education that is interactive, hands on, and culturally relevant.
Economic Mobility
Economic mobility is our ability to access more resources over time. It is the likelihood that our children can have a higher standard of living than they grew up having. Because this country was founded on dehumanizing us to extract our wealth, income, and labor, a structural wealth gap remains despite any advances we’re making around income or homeownership.
Contextual Factors
What we believe to be true.
Reparations and closing the structural gap.
Rising costs mean harsher economic realities.
Health care costs and medical debt.
College debt.
Who gets hired for the “good” jobs and racism in the workplace.
Owning a home or residential property.
Access to business capital.
Community Identified Approaches
Lean into each other as our most valuable resource.
Hire Black people, pay them well, and put them in leadership roles.
Partner with Black youth to create the jobs of tomorrow.
Change the nature of traditional human resources.
Start, invest in, and expand Black-owned businesses.
Increase and sustain Black homeownership.
Get more Black involvement in urban planning.
Our planning today is for generations to come because all of us, not just a few of us, are deserving of comfort and care. We recognize our abundance and move from the inner knowing that we have access to an abundant world. When Black people thrive, all communities will thrive.
Public Safety
Public safety is “learning how to keep each other safe without police, coercion, or the threat of systemic violence and oppression.” Public safety isn’t just physical, it starts with mental, psychological, and emotional safety.
Contextual Factors
Washington state has a history of leading the way … in harm.
Understanding transformative justice and abolition.
Structural violence undermines public safety.
Housing stability contributes to healthier people.
Neighborhood accessibility, conditions, and trust.
The impact of regional growth.
Access to economic opportunity
Community Identified Approaches
Educate, motivate, and empower Black communities, especially youth.
Fund Black brilliance to ideate, plan, and implement nuanced public safety solutions.
Dismantle systems that harm us and replace them with systems that heal.
Hold people, not just systems accountable.
Fund and create social systems that keep us safe while also addressing immediate needs.
Focus resources toward incarcerated people and their families, until we get rid of systems of punishment.
We want the freedom to be, to take up space, to be spontaneous. We want to feel relief, ease, peace, and joy. Despite the conditions of society, we have always managed to find moments and spaces of safety. To make those moments a constant reality, the conditions of society need to shift.
Health
Health is holistic well-being. It reaches beyond the physical and into the mental, emotional, and spiritual. When the conditions for health in all of those realms take place, health is the natural result.
Contextual Factors
Known, ongoing racism is built into medical practice.
Continuing to treat the symptoms, not the root causes.
Ongoing health inequities cost everyone, especially us.
Sickness as a business model.
Insurance and who “deserves” care.
Community Identified Approaches
Redefine what care means.
Address ableism and racism in health care.
Fund Black-owned, initiated, and operated care.
Create responsive, coordinated care models.
Restructure the way insurance works and what it covers.
Address family and community, not just the individual.
Reflect well-being in employer business models and practices.
As we begin to manifest the societal conditions for well-being, health care as we know it today will drastically shift. We’ll be able to easily get the care we need, when we need it from people we know, love, and trust. Black researchers, scientists, care providers, and community members will work together across sectors to develop innovations built on the wisdom of our ancestors.
Collective Action
To support collective action, please use the discussion guide and let us know what you talked about. We hope you utilize these tools to elevate statewide collaboration — organizing, directing resources toward Black-led solutions, and informing policy change. Collectively and cooperatively, we will manifest Black well-being across Washington state.