Black women are, by and large, on the front lines of the political fight for democracy. Last year, we saw a record number of Black women serving in Congress and a record number of Black women serving at the state level in politics. There’s data that shows Black, brown and Indigenous women are in the trenches  — as political activists, volunteers and everyday people — mobilizing Americans to get out and vote.

This week, Tonya Mosley talks with award-winning journalist and friend, Farai Chideya, who knows both personally and professionally why Black women show up each and every time. Chideya has a new radio show called “Our Body Politic” which unapologetically centers reporting on not just how women of color experience the major political events of today, but how they’re impacting those very issues.

Chideya calls women of color a “superdemographic.” What she means by that is, all women of color are people who can tip elections. “And as different as we are, we are all people who tend to get undervalued by the political system,” Chideya says. “Not hired as strategists, not given the advertising contracts to reach out to voters.” Because women of color are poorly marketed to and a misunderstood group compared to their political power, Chideya does not refer to the group as a “demographic” but rather a “superdemographic.”

Women of color are the secret sauce. We are the roux in the American gumbo. We are not just the parsley on the side of the plate. We are the base of the plate and we need to be understood as such. And, I would argue, Black women over the age of 70 are the secret, secret sauce.

Chideya believes that America is poorer intellectually and sociopolitically because the voices of Black and people of color have been excluded and censored. “We have to recognize that the act of truth-telling is an act of everyone bringing their gifts to the table and then fighting about how we write the first draft of history,” Chideya says. “It can’t be told by any one group or any one person.”

Still, Chideya and Mosley recognize that there needs to be a fight for a shared truth in order for a society and democracy to be preserved. Chideya created the term “psychic privacy fence,” which refers to people only being surrounded by others that are like them. “How you live is not the only way to live,” Chideya says. “And if you don’t understand how other people live, you’re never gonna understand America.”

Chideya’s time as a journalist and political analyst made her aware that America was, in what she calls, a culture war. “People’s decision-making was not based on logic — it was based on cultural affiliations. I like to think of elections as this great pageant of national belonging. And in a country this divided, people choose what kind of political affiliation they belong to,” Chideya says. “They will follow that sense of belonging off the cliff of logic.” As a journalist, Chideya believes it’s important to understand this part of the story,