As the say­ing goes, and his­to­ry has proven time and again, ​“If White Amer­i­ca catch­es a cold, Black Amer­i­ca gets pneu­mo­nia.” In 2020, that pneu­mo­nia is quite lit­er­al­ly the coro­n­avirus. Data con­firms that Black Amer­i­cans are dying from Covid-19 at sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates than oth­er racial groups, due to long­stand­ing fac­tors such as lim­it­ed access to health­care, pre­ex­ist­ing health con­di­tions, and over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion in ​“essen­tial” jobs that put Black work­ers on the frontlines.

Black people are often “the last ones hired and the first ones fired” when the economy takes a hit, and Black women undoubtedly bear the brunt.

While all Amer­i­cans stand to suf­fer hard­ships from the coro­n­avirus in one way or anoth­er, Black Amer­i­cans — and par­tic­u­lar­ly Black women — will like­ly face a swift and sure eco­nom­ic death from the pan­dem­ic, too. For the last eight months, I have talked with Black women around the coun­try for my forth­com­ing In These Times pod­cast, In The Gap, about the pay gap expe­ri­enced by Black women. These con­ver­sa­tions have shaped my thoughts and height­ened my fears. As I take in the dai­ly dose of news reports on the coro­n­avirus cri­sis fall­out, I can’t help but think of the women who have coura­geous­ly shared their sto­ries with me thus far.

There’s Hiwot, a barista at a Star­bucks in Den­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. She’s employed by a sub­con­trac­tor that oper­ates many of Star­bucks’ air­port loca­tions. Accord­ing to a nation­al sur­vey con­duct­ed by the Unite Here, the hos­pi­tal­i­ty union rep­re­sent­ing some of the air­port Star­bucks loca­tions run by Hiwot’s employ­er, Black work­ers like Hiwot are paid a low­er aver­age hourly wage than White work­ers at many of these loca­tions. After more than a decade with the com­pa­ny, Hiwot makes $15.50 an hour — only $1.50 more, she says, than the start­ing rate for most new hires. Hiwot counts on tips from Star­bucks cus­tomers to sup­ple­ment her wages, but the cri­sis has slammed the trav­el indus­try, turn­ing many air­ports, includ­ing where she works, into ghost towns.

Before the coro­n­avirus hit, Tam, a vet­er­an hos­pi­tal­i­ty indus­try work­er and sin­gle mom to a tod­dler, had already tak­en a pay cut of near­ly $30,000 to work in the din­ing depart­ment at a uni­ver­si­ty, because it was the only job that aligned with her child­care options. In March, just a week after we spoke, her cam­pus closed indef­i­nite­ly due to coro­n­avirus and she was laid off. She’s scram­bling to find work, but employ­ment options are bleak in the hard-hit hos­pi­tal­i­ty industry.

J, a Wal­mart work­er, does hair on the side to make ends meet for her­self, her three chil­dren and her elder­ly dad, who strug­gles with mul­ti­ple chron­ic health issues. Her side hus­tle has been com­plete­ly shut down due to self-quar­an­tine and ​“shel­ter in place” direc­tives. And in regards to the near future, let’s be hon­est: Laid-off work­ers prob­a­bly don’t get their hair done as much as gain­ful­ly employed ones do.

And then there’s Bran­dyn. Before the coro­n­avirus, Bran­dyn faced preg­nan­cy dis­crim­i­na­tion from two dif­fer­ent employ­ers, and felt she had no choice but to start her own home-based com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny. She joined a grow­ing wave of Black women entre­pre­neurs, who have been start­ing small busi­ness­es at astro­nom­i­cal rates over the past five years. Now, those start-ups are at risk. Brandyn’s main clients, an event com­pa­ny and a gym, are closed now and she’s been told to expect no new work. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions is an area that com­pa­nies often are quick to slash from their bud­gets at the first hint of an eco­nom­ic down­turn. What work she has left, she jug­gles solo while car­ing for two young chil­dren, ages 2 and 6, at home due to child­care clo­sures; not an easy feat.

As these women’s sto­ries sug­gest, along with our well-doc­u­ment­ed ele­vat­ed risk for con­tract­ing and dying from Covid-19, Black women face this cri­sis with the least eco­nom­ic secu­ri­ty of any demo­graph­ic. We are paid 62 cents for every dol­lar paid to white, non-His­pan­ic men, accord­ing to a new report from the Nation­al Part­ner­ship for Women & Fam­i­lies. This adds up to a medi­an wage of $38,036 per year, com­pared to white, non-His­pan­ic men’s $61,576. As a result of this and long­stand­ing inequal­i­ty and dis­crim­i­na­tion going back to the country’s ori­gins, sin­gle Black women aged 36 – 49 had an aver­age net worth of $5 as of 2010, while sin­gle white women in the same age group, by com­par­i­son, aver­aged near­ly $43,000.

Yet Black women’s earn­ings often sup­port an entire house­hold. We are the least like­ly of all demo­graph­ics to be mar­ried (and least like­ly to mar­ry out­side of our race, which means that the long­stand­ing hir­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion and pay inequities that per­sist for Black men adverse­ly impact us, too). By some esti­mates, about 80 per­cent of Black moth­ers are their family’s pri­ma­ry breadwinner.

I am cer­tain that this cri­sis will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dev­as­tate my Black sis­ters. As 2008’s Great Reces­sion notably demon­strat­ed, Black peo­ple are often ​“the last ones hired and the first ones fired” when the econ­o­my takes a hit, and Black women undoubt­ed­ly bear the brunt. We’re over­rep­re­sent­ed in ser­vice-indus­try sec­tors like restau­rants and hos­pi­tal­i­ty that have been dec­i­mat­ed by the coro­n­avirus stay-at-home orders. The result­ing trend is already clear. Accord­ing to a report released by the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics (BLS), Black and brown work­ers were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly slammed by the 700,000 lay­offs last month. Women, too, were hard­er-hit—mean­ing that Black women suf­fered a dou­ble blow.

The first stim­u­lus plan fell far short of a real safe­ty net, for Black women or any­one. It didn’t do enough to save the ser­vice indus­try, and by focus­ing on short-term unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits over mea­sures to pre­serve employ­ment, it didn’t stop mass layoffs.

We must demand that the next coro­n­avirus stim­u­lus include impor­tant pro­tec­tions for those who need it most. It must put work­ers and fam­i­lies ahead of cor­po­rate inter­ests in var­i­ous ways, such as incen­tiviz­ing busi­ness­es of all sizes to keep work­ers on, boost­ing and extend­ing unem­ploy­ment insur­ance for those already laid off, and com­mit­ting funds to sta­bi­lize work­ing fam­i­lies — for exam­ple, by strength­en­ing the child and earned income tax cred­its. Because let’s face it, those $1,200 stim­u­lus checks bare­ly scratch the sur­face of the great need.

Just as impor­tant­ly, it should ensure that crit­i­cal mea­sures like mail-in vot­ing are put in place to ensure that every­one can vote in this unprece­dent­ed elec­tion year. Based on the way this pan­dem­ic has been han­dled thus far, we must keep in mind that the num­ber one way to ensure that the have-nots, like many of my Black sis­ters, are not ignored, is to vote out those who demon­strate that they’re not com­mit­ted to ​“lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all.”