Apparently in Seattle, the budget crisis comes in two flavors.
While ordinary taxpayers brace for service cuts, potholes, rising crime complaints and a looming $140 million deficit, Seattle City Council President Joy Hollingsworth says she’s working with not one budget — but two.
“So, I got two budgets every time I go to council member Dan Strauss every year,” Hollingsworth told attendees at the recent State of Africatown 2026 gathering. “I have a District 3 budget and then a black budget.”
And just in case anyone missed the point, the council president also urged Black Seattle residents to organize politically as a racial voting bloc.
“There are political parties in Seattle,” Hollingsworth declared. “And I believe that if Black people come together, we can be the most powerful political party in the city of Seattle. We have to coalesce our power.”
Imagine — just for five seconds — if a Republican councilmember in some red-state suburb announced he was carrying around a “white budget.” CNN panels would combust on live television. Blue-check activists would demand resignations before lunch. Instead, in progressive Seattle, it was treated more like another awkward city hall seminar between sustainability lectures and bicycle-lane studies.
The remarks surfaced after Seattle radio host Jason Rantz highlighted Hollingsworth’s comments from the February event. Rantz argued that whether “Black budget” was a literal budget category or simply activist branding, the language itself raises serious questions.
“But we’d rightly call out a ‘white budget,’” Rantz wrote. “And it’s worth asking why Hollingsworth doesn’t appear eager to offer other constituencies their own budget. Perhaps she doesn’t care enough about Asians or Latinos?”
According to Rantz, Hollingsworth later canceled a planned interview about the controversy.
The timing could hardly be worse for Seattle Democrats. Just days after Hollingsworth’s remarks, newly elected Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson reportedly ordered agencies to slash spending between 5% and 10% as the city confronts a projected deficit for fiscal year 2026.
Yet at the same time, city leaders continue steering massive sums toward race-focused initiatives tied to the city’s Africatown movement. Earlier this year, organizers at the conference touted a $107 million investment plan aimed at boosting Black homeownership, economic development and anti-displacement programs in Seattle’s historically Black Central District. Roughly $50 million of that total is expected to come from the city itself.
Hollingsworth insists the phrase “Black budget” simply refers to “targeted investments and resources directed toward historically impacted communities in Seattle.”
“This is about addressing long-standing challenges in public safety, infrastructure, small business support, clean and safe parks, roads and sidewalks and workforce development,” she said in a statement.
Fair enough. But here’s the obvious question Seattle progressives never seem eager to answer: if government money is being allocated through an explicitly racial lens, what exactly happened to the “equity” crowd’s old mantra about judging people as individuals?
Seattle’s political class spent years insisting America needed to move beyond race-conscious policies. Now city officials openly discuss budgets by race, encourage racial political organizing and defend it all as enlightened governance.
And Hollingsworth’s final answer may have been the most revealing part of all.
When asked what percentage of Seattle’s massive $8.9 billion city budget should qualify as the “Black budget,” the council president reportedly answered: “8.9 billion dollars. The city’s budget.”
Translation: apparently every dollar is now identity politics — they’re just finally saying the quiet part out loud.
