June 17, 2026

Care is foundational to our economy and how people live, work and stay connected; yet the systems that shape care in the United States have too often treated it as invisible, fragmented and expendable. For Black women in particular, care is not a private obligation or a narrow family duty, but a communal practice rooted in reciprocity, dignity and survival. This report, “Black Women Blueprints,” reveals:

• How Black women define care as collective, intergenerational and connected to joy, protection and freedom.
  
• How care labor has been consistently undervalued, over-relied upon and pushed onto Black women without adequate support.
  
• How dominant narratives continue to cast care as women’s work and obscure the public responsibility to sustain it.
  
• How Black women are already modeling care systems that are holistic, relationship-centered and built to hold communities together.
  

The report traces the ways care has been shaped by racism, sexism and economic exclusion, and shows how narrow ideas about productivity, deservedness and responsibility limit our ability to build something better. It argues that the path forward requires more than small policy fixes: it calls for a broader reimagining of care as an essential public good and a structural foundation for equity, wellbeing and liberation. For advocates, policymakers and movement leaders, the paper offers a clear invitation to build from Black women’s vision and to treat care as something we all have a stake in sustaining.

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