Like every New Yorker, I know this place is magic. I know this place is amazing. I know that we have come back time and time again from a great recession, from high crime rates, from 9/11, from crisis after crisis.

And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that's what we do every single day and in every single way.

When Superstorm Sandy churned up fourteen-foot walls of water that slammed New York's coastal communities in October 2012, they also washed away any false notions we had that we care sufficiently for poor people.

I am a Black woman raised by parents who were active in the civil-rights movement.

My mother was this White woman from Texas, from a racist town raised to believe in the inferiority of others by her community, not necessarily by her parents, but certainly by the community around her. And she fled it.

In fact, black students with college degrees are twice as likely to be unemployed as white students with college degrees. So, to say there there is not an issue for black Americans and Latinos in terms of the opportunity that college is supposed to create would be wrong.