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The Mis-Education of America. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America

In 1933, Dr. Carter G. Woodson—the founder of Black History Month—published The Mis-Education of the Negro. Although his critique focused on the schooling of Black Americans, his central warning now applies to the nation as a whole. Woodson argued that education could be used not to liberate minds but to control them; that distorted or incomplete history produces dependency rather than independence; and that true education must cultivate critical thinking and self-actualization. The ultimate goal, he wrote, was to teach people to think for themselves.

Nearly a century later, Woodson’s insight speaks to a broader crisis: the mis-education of America. Read more

The Week’s Top Stories

Political / Social

Jesse Jackson obituary. By Ewen MacAskill / The Guardian

The veteran civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who has died aged 84, made history when he stood for the White House in 1984 and 1988. He was not the first African American to seek the US presidency, but he was the first to mount a serious challenge, breaking through racial barriers, securing millions of votes and, at one point, becoming frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

His run opened the way for Barack Obama two decades later. But Jackson deserves to be remembered as more than a footnote in Obama’s biography. It took courage and self-confidence to stand in the 1980s, with memories of segregation and the civil rights battles of the 60s still raw. Read more

House Passes “Worst Voter Suppression Bill Ever” in Latest Push to Help Trump Take Over Elections. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to require proof of U.S. citizenship in the November midterm elections. If it becomes law, it would be the “worst voter suppression bill ever passed by Congress,” according to Ari Berman, national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones.

To talk about all of this and more, we’re joined by Ari Berman, the national voting rights correspondent for Mother Jones magazine, his most recent article headlined “The GOP’s ‘Show Us Your Papers’ Bill Is the Latest Effort to Help Trump Take Over Elections.” He’s also the author of Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People — and the Fight to Resist It. Read more

Trump Can’t Steal the Midterms. The case for being vigilant without panicking. By Nicholas Grossman / The Bulwark

DONALD TRUMP WILL NOT BE ABLE to steal this November’s midterm elections. He and his allies will keep trying to manipulate the midterms in their favor, which Democrats, pro-democracy activists, and all Americans who care about our constitutional system should keep working to counter.

But he won’t succeed: No matter how much Team Trump disregards norms and laws, there’s no mechanism for taking over state elections, reversing losses, or preventing newly elected members of Congress from sitting, especially if Republicans lose by substantial margins. Vigilance is warranted, but excessive fear plays into the authoritarians’ hands. Read more

It took one year for Black MAGA to crater. By Theodore R. Johnson / Wash Post

The African Americans who voted for Trump are no longer feeling the “love.” Here’s why. President Donald Trump hosted a reception honoring Black History Month at the White House on Feb. 20, 2025.

Today, however, new polling among Black Americans suggests the love is gone. Trump’s favorability has plummeted from 30 percent a year ago to as low as 13 percent last month. His job approval has fallen to 15 percent, less than half of what it was at that White House celebration. His current ratings are about what they were before he lost the 2020 presidential election. Read more

Trump officials condemned Don Lemon. He’s bigger than ever after arrest. By Drew Harwell / Wash Post

The administration’s attacks on Lemon and independent journalists have boosted their online attention and revenue.

In the nearly two weeks since he was taken into custody, Lemon has enjoyed a triumph of his own. A new audience galvanized by the arrest has flooded his online-media empire, earning him more than 300,000 new followers on Instagram and 140,000 new subscribers on YouTube. Read more

Scared to Talk About Race? Byron Donalds Campaign Bets on Issues Over Identity. By Fisher Jack / Eurweb

Florida GOP Candidate Tests Race-Neutral Strategy in 2026 Governor’s Race

The Byron Donalds campaign is centering its message on affordability and public safety. The Florida congressman and 2026 gubernatorial candidate talks often about lowering costs and tightening immigration policy. He aligns closely with President Donald Trump’s agenda while avoiding identity-driven messaging. Critics argue that sidestepping race can feel like sidestepping lived experience. Black unemployment rates remain roughly double those of white workers in many areas. Gentrification and rising housing costs continue to reshape historic communities. Read more

White men file workplace discrimination claims but are less likely to face inequity than other groups. By Donald T. Tomaskovic and Steven Boutcher / The Conversation

In December 2025, Andrea Lucas, the chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, invited white men to file more sex- and race-based discrimination complaints against their employers.

We did a deeper dive on sexual harassment charges. We found that while white men were 46% of the labor force, they filed 11% of sexual harassment charges and 11% of all other charges, most commonly tied to disability and age. The general pattern is that, while white men already file discrimination charges, they are less likely to experience employment discrimination than other groups. Read more

NAACP asks judge to protect against ‘misuse’ of voter data seized by FBI in Georgia’s Fulton County. By Kate Brumback / AP

The NAACP and other organizations are asking a judge to protect personal voter information that was seized by the FBI from an elections warehouse just outside Atlanta.

The motion asks the judge to “order reasonable limits on the government’s use of the seized data” and to prohibit the government from using the data for purposes other than the criminal investigation cited in the search warrant affidavit. That includes prohibiting any efforts to use it for voter roll maintenance, election administration or immigration enforcement. Read more

Education

3 generations of Black Philadelphia students report persistent anti-Black attitudes in schools. By Leana Cabral / The Conversation

As research demonstrates, U.S. public schools in general are not more integrated than they were just after the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954.

I am a sociologist whose research focuses on education, race and social inequality. For my dissertation research, I interviewed over 45 former and current Black students to learn about their intergenerational experiences in Philly public schools. “John” and the other names used in this article are pseudonyms to protect the privacy of the research participants. Read more

FAMU Community Members Say DEI Policies Impacted Black Studies Degree At HBCU. By Nahlah Abdur-Rahman / Black Enterprise

As Florida A&M University seeks to align its curriculum with state standards, the HBCU has consolidated one major degree program, which has angered community members.

The Board of Trustees at FAMU approved a measure to consolidate seven degree programs, including one that merges African American (Black) studies. That move, the Tallahassee Democrat reports, aims to help FAMU meet performance standards required by the state. Naysayers found multiple issues with the degree changes, calling out the measure as a way to appease anti-DEI officials in Florida. The board of trustees unanimously approved the measure during a Feb. 12 on-campus meeting. Read more

Justice Department sues Harvard over alleged withholding of race-related admissions documents. By Nadine El-Bawab and Jack Date / ABC News

The Justice Department has filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, accusing the school of withholding admissions data that the government says it needs to determine whether the university is discriminating on the basis of race.

Among its requests of Harvard at the center of the suit, the DOJ requested that Harvard certify that it “‘does not use race as a factor in making admissions decisions’ or ‘in awarding any scholarships, financial assistance, or other benefits to current or prospective students,'” the lawsuit said, citing a letter sent by the DOJ to Harvard last year. Read more

World

How one country stopped a Trump-style authoritarian in his tracks. by Zack Beauchamp / Vox

In 2018, Brazil elected a president named Jair Bolsonaro who attempted the sort of authoritarian power grabs that President Donald Trump is currently doing in the United States. What Brazil got right that America got wrong. President Lula waving and greeting a crowd of supporters

The important difference was that, in Brazil, the incentives for public officials looked radically different. The combination of a multiparty system and a culture of legislative self-dealing, even outright corruption, prevented the emergence of US-style extreme partisanship — producing a legislature and judiciary primed to protect their powers against an aggressive executive. Read more

The US is dragging Europe back to the days of white supremacism. Our leaders are playing along. By Shada Islam / The Guardian

Twenty-five years ago, George W Bush persuaded European leaders to back his “war on terror”. That disastrous project cost millions of lives and caused mass displacement of people from across the Middle East. It normalised racism and hatred for Muslims, refugees and racialised minorities in the US and Europe.

I fear Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, with its calls to defend white, western, Christian civilisation against supposedly contaminating racialised migrants – and the standing ovation he received from European elites – may mark a chilling sequel. Read more

Trump moves closer to a major war with Iran. By Barak Ravid / MSN

The Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most Americans realize. It could begin very soon.

Why it matters: A U.S. military operation in Iran would likely be a massive, weeks-long campaign that would look more like full-fledged war than last month’s pinpoint operation in Venezuela, sources say. Read more

In Cuba, is Trump seeking ouster of Communist leaders, or of China’s presence? By Howard LaFranchi / The CS Monitor

With ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in custody in New York, and his decapitated regime in Caracas quietly cooperating with the United States, President Donald Trump has shifted his hostile refrain to Cuba.

The oil blockade has quickly led Cuba to enact harsh measures, including a halt to all public transportation, the declaration of a four-day work week, the closure of the tourist hotels that provided much-needed revenue, and mounting blackouts. The rapidly deteriorating conditions in Cuba are feeding an intensifying debate in Washington: deal or regime change? Should Mr. Trump go for a Venezuela-type bargain that leaves a cooperative segment of the existing government in place? Or should he squeeze until he brings down a communist regime that has been a U.S. bête noire since 1959? Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

400 Christian leaders urge resistance to Trump administration on Ash Wednesday. By Jack Jenkins / RNS

The statement’s signers include a mix of denominational leaders, seminary presidents, scholars and leaders of prominent congregations.

“We are facing a cruel and oppressive government; citizens and immigrants being demonized, disappeared, and even killed; the erosion of hard-won rights and freedoms; and a calculated effort to reverse America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity — all of which are pushing us toward authoritarian and imperial rule,” reads the letter, which organizers said was spearheaded by a group of Christian leaders who have been meeting regularly to discuss how to respond to the administration. Read more

Where Christian nationalism is most dominant in U.S. states. By Russell Conteras / MSN

Christian nationalism is now deeply entrenched inside today’s Republican Party, according to a sweeping 50-state survey.

Why it matters: The once-fringe ideology holds that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation and should be governed according to strict Christian values, even as the country becomes less religious and more racially diverse. About one-third of Americans qualify as Christian nationalism “adherents” or “sympathizers,” a new survey released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute finds. Read more

Sister Mary Thea Bowman: Black Nun Moves Closer to Sainthood as Church Closes Key Phase. By Gee Ny / Shine My Crown

The path toward sainthood for Sister Mary Thea Bowman, a pioneering Black Catholic nun whose work reshaped ministry to African American Catholics, has reached a major milestone after the Diocese of Jackson officially closed the diocesan phase of her canonization process.

During a special Mass held Feb. 9, 2026, Bishop Joseph Kopacz presided over a closing ceremony that sealed years of documentation, testimonies, and research into Bowman’s life and legacy. The materials will now be sent to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints for further review. Kopacz described the moment as historic, saying Bowman’s life continues to inspire “faith, hope, and joy” across the United States and beyond. Read more

MAGA’s Reaction to the Epstein Files Reveals Total Moral Collapse. By Kali Holloway / The Nation

Every segment of the Trump-backing rightwing — America First nationalists, Trump loyalists and rank-and-file MAGA activists — has unsubscribed from the idea that there is any such thing as right and wrong, much less that wrongdoing should result in consequences.

In effect, there is no behavior Trump’s GOP sees as too wrong to vote for. In late July 2025, almost half of Republicans said they would keep voting for Trump even if he “was officially implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking activities.” Crime is legal, where right-wingers are concerned, however heinous the crime is. At least, for themselves. The right still has morals for days when it comes to Black folks, immigrants and trans people. Its moral code has always been selective and conditional; rigorously enforced and mercilessly punitive toward “outsiders” and “others,” but generally indifferent to even the worst acts by those on the right side of whiteness and power. Read more

Historical / Cultural

What the Royal Family’s Links to Slavery Mean in the Age of Epstein. By Sam Knight / The New Yorker

In December, 1660, James launched the first expedition of the Company of Royal Adventurers of England Trading into Africa, to search for gold mines. The Duke also instructed his men to trade for “Negroes, hides and other goods” with Spanish and Portuguese outposts along the way.

The Royal Adventurers found no gold. But they returned to the Duke with a business case for entering—and mastering—the transatlantic slave trade instead. English sea captains, with royal patronage, had been trafficking African people to the Caribbean and the Chesapeake Bay for decades, but on an ad-hoc basis. In January, 1663, the second charter of the Royal Adventurers granted the company a monopoly for the “buying and selling bartering and exchanging of for and with any Negroes Slaves Goods wares and Merchandize whatsoever.” Read more

U.S. Imperialism Was Built In from the Beginning. By Norman Stockwell / The Progressive Magazine

An interview with historian Aviva Chomsky. Chomsky is a professor of history and coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University in Massachusetts. She is the author of several books, including Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration,

Aviva Chomsky: The Monroe Doctrine is from 1823, and we should emphasize that it wasn’t any kind of treaty or law; it was just a statement by President [James Monroe]. We’re used to those, right? Articulating an aspirational policy that, in the context of 1823, was a policy proclaiming that the United States would not allow foreign—that meant European—influence and interventions in the Americas. Read more

America’s Most Overlooked Civil‑Rights Tragedy Marks its 58th Anniversary. By William Spivey / Level Man

The 58th anniversary of the Orangeburg Massacre just passed (February 8, 1968), and most Americans aren’t aware it ever happened.

Most adults know of the Kent State shootings in 1970, during which the National Guard killed four students on the campus. A much smaller percentage know of the killing of two Jackson State students by local police and state troopers in Mississippi. Few know of the Orangeburg Massacre; Three students were killed, Samuel Hammond Jr, Henry Smith, Delano Middleton, and another 28 were wounded when police opened fire on students who were gathered around a bonfire on a college campus. Read more

Revisiting the story of Clementine Barnabet, a Black woman blamed for serial murders in the Jim Crow South. By Lauren Nicole Henley / The Conversation

In April 1912, a young Black woman named Clementine Barnabet confessed to murdering four families in and around Lafayette, Louisiana. The widespread news coverage at the time effectively branded her a serial killer.

Her confession, however, did not align with the timeline of crimes that had gripped America’s rice belt region with fear. Even today, her guilt is debated. Read more

The Ghosts of Toni Morrison. By Judith Shulevitz / The Atlantic

In her novels, she located the missing stories of Black America.

I don’t like erasures,” the novelist Toni Morrison told a Princeton audience in 2017. She had been asked what she thought about Confederate statues, then being torn down throughout the South. Leave them up, she said: “Talk about the offense. You know, put another statue next to it and say the opposite.” Hang a noose around its neck, she added. The audience laughed nervously, but she wasn’t kidding. Read more

New Getty Exhibit Explores Legacy of Black Arts Movement. By Anoa Changa-Peck / Newsone

“Photography and the Black Arts Movement” explores the role of visual art at a time when Black culture is increasingly under attack.

“The works in this exhibition show how a wide range of artists and activists tapped the power of photography to strengthen respect for the Black community and culture,” said Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle, and Robert Tuttle, Director of the J. Paul Getty Museum, in a statement. “Amid the turbulence of the mid-20th century, they found powerful ways of using photography to support and advance social justice.” While art and innovation have always been a part of the Black experience, the Black Arts Movement came of age during a pivotal era in our history. Growing alongside the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, the Black Arts Movement represented a collective consciousness exploring Blackness across the diaspora through an art lens. Read more

More than 70 percent of Black women use this harmful hair product at least once a year. By Kay Wicker / The Grio

A new study published this week found that hair extensions, braiding hair, and wigs contain more than 160 harmful chemicals.

The findings land at a time when the hair rituals of Black women and the products marketed specifically to them continue to face renewed scrutiny over potential health risks. More than 70 percent of Black women use hair extensions at least once a year, underscoring the importance of their safety. In recent years, relaxers and other straightening products have also come under examination. Studies have linked frequent use of chemical hair relaxers and straighteners to a higher risk of uterine cancer, further fueling concerns about the long-term health impact of widely used hair products in Black communities. Read more

Sports

Did the USA v World format revive the NBA’s struggling All-Star Game? By AR Shaw / The Guardian

Critics say what was once a showpiece for the league has turned into a glorified practice session. But there are signs an updated version may have worked

From tip-off of the first game, this year’s All-Star Game (or, technically, games) had a different energy. Players from Team Stars and Team World contested shots on defense, and embraced motion offense instead of a reliance on one-on-one scoring. In the final, the youthful Team Stars dismantled Team Stripes by a score of 47-21, led by Edwards, who finished with 32 points in three games. Despite the rout, the players competed with purpose, and the league may have finally fixed a longstanding problem. Read more

Tony Clark scandal a setback for African Americans in baseball. By Clinton Yates / Andscape

Clark, the 14-year MLB veteran who stepped down from his position after an internal investigation revealed an inappropriate personal relationship in his personal life that very actively overlapped with his professional capacity.

Clark hasn’t just let me down, he’s let down a generation of Black folks who gave him the benefit of the doubt on his decency, because we just don’t have enough people in big league leadership positions not to support each other. Tony Clark’s behavior, never mind his ability to do the job or lack thereof, has set African Americans in baseball back in ways that aren’t truly calculable by time. Read more

Jemele Hill warns Democrats to take Stephen A. Smith ‘seriously’ as presidential candidate. By Brendon Kleen / Awful Announcing

“…if it means undermining the Democrats, you best believe a lot of Republicans will get behind Stephen A.”

The idea of Stephen A. Smith running for president has new life after Smith’s sitdown with CBS Sunday Morning over the weekend. And because CBS national correspondent Robert Costa likened his experience covering Smith to Donald Trump heading into 2016, the media is ablaze with debate over how seriously to take a Smith run. “If I’m the Democrats, given Stephen A.’s name recognition and his constant ability to attract audience, to speak in soundbites, to debate … and I see Stephen A. constantly talking about running for president … he’s already got the media wired. The Democrats need to take him seriously,” Hill said. Read more

Michael Jordan’s NASCAR Dream Reaches New Peak With Jaw-Dropping Daytona 500 Triumph. By Sadik Hossain / PFSN

Michael Jordan has spent a lifetime chasing greatness. Six NBA championships. Olympic gold medals. A billion-dollar brand. But on Sunday, the basketball legend added a trophy to his collection that he never thought he’d hold: the Daytona 500.

Tyler Reddick drove the No. 45 Toyota to victory in NASCAR’s biggest race, giving 23XI Racing, the team co-owned by Jordan and driver Denny Hamlin, its first win at “The Great American Race.” For Jordan, who turns 63 on Tuesday, it’s the perfect birthday gift. Read more

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Stories, Insight and Perspective

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