Black Women Best is not exclusive to/for cisgender women. When we say “Black women,” we mean ALL people who identify or may be identified as Black women, including transgender women and femme-presenting people. We acknowledge every structurally marginalized gender identity that’s oppressed by cisheteronormative patriarchy and misogynoir, including non-binary, gender-nonconforming, and other selfhoods.

BWB is about putting Black women at the center, which means centering all of us across every identity that we hold. This includes Black (im)migrants and undocumented people, Black women who are incarcerated or formerly incarcerated, queer people, people with disabilities, and Black women who are multiracial or multiethnic.

The inclusivity that is fundamental to the Black Women Best framework does not stop with Black women. The power of BWB is that it uproots oppressive systems — of white supremacy, capitalism, ableism, sexism, queerphobia, and xenophobia — and in doing so, demands more for all people.

BWB argues that if our government and society bring Black women from the margins to the center and intentionally create systems that pull us out of precarity and into prosperity, then everyone will benefit.

BWB disrupts systems of domination, exploitation, and extraction, and in their place, cultivates new social systems rooted in an ethic of community care, interdependence, and collective freedom.

This framework is our North Star in moving past oppressive norms and life-stealing expectations. It compels us to dream beyond restrictive white supremacist and capitalist modes of being, relating with one another, and studying the world around us.