Black women lawmakers have seized on “relational” politics, bringing lived experience to the debate to find legislative consensus, a Georgetown University professor told the 2024 National Press Foundation Women in Politics Fellowship.

Nadia Brown, director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Georgetown University, said the unique political practice goes to the heart of “this cultural understanding of who Black women are in the United States.”

“What I want to argue or hammer home is that… Black women are always operating within a context of, ‘Who am I speaking to? What’s important? How can I compromise to get what I want? When do I need to stand tall and be more bullish in my approach?’” Brown said.

“It’s not like things are happening in a vacuum, but they’re happening within the cultural context of which Black women have been deemed ‘other’ in terms of gender, in terms of racism, in terms of sexism, in terms of patriarchy. And they know this and are thus operating as such.”

Brown said Black women in politics have been adept at forming coalitions by spotlighting new ways of looking at policy and government services that connect broader constituencies.

“We know that legislation only makes it though when you have critical mass of people – legislators that will support a piece of legislation,” Brown said. “What Black women are doing here are trying to find these coalitions that will work within what is supposed to be an already set coalition that doesn’t always see things that way.”

The key to finding that compromise, Brown said, is bringing more voices to the table.

“Because of Black women’s lived experiences, they bring this different lens of policymaking. They get to advocate, champion or even present new issues in ways that other people in the legislature hadn’t thought about.

“I think the bigger picture is that the deliberative democracies just do better when they’re more inclusive… We get to understand how policies hurt or harm some people in ways that probably weren’t thought about when they weren’t there. And that it’s a net benefit when there’s more people at the table, because then government can respond to things in ways they couldn’t if they didn’t have those people at the table.”

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