Featured
Strengthening the African American Family. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
African American families have survived slavery, segregation, economic exclusion, and profound social change through resilience and adaptation. Yet strengthening families for the future requires moving beyond the decades-old ideological divide between personal responsibility and public support. The two should be complementary. Government, communities, educational institutions, and families themselves all have important roles in giving the next generation the foundation for stable and flourishing family life.
Read complete essay. Strengthening the African American Family. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
Related: Centering Black Women And Women Of Color In The Child Care Debate. By Lenice C. Emanuel / Newsone
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Trump slammed as he claims America wasn’t built on diversity despite immigrant family members. By Jeremiah Hassel / The Mirror
President Donald Trump was eviscerated online for claiming America wasn’t built on diversity while he spoke in Ireland on Saturday, despite his own family’s history with immigration
As he gave a speech in Ireland, the president discussed his deployment of the National Guard to several cities, mostly run by Democrats, which he claimed were crime-ridden and needed intervention. He used it as a bizarre example of how he believes his administration champions merit over diversity, equity and inclusion. Read more
Related: Trump biographer says he has no idea he just staged his own ‘funeral.’ By Thomas Kika / AlterNet
Related: Trump’s Niece Exposes Sad Truth Behind His Kennedy Center Fit. Erkki Forster / Daily Beast
Supreme Court Blocks Trump’s Attack On Mail Voting — For Now. By
The court stopped an effort to undermine mail voting less than two months before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
“The Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge to the District Court’s preliminary injunction. And the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor a stay,” the ruling read. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurrence, while Justice Samuel Alito wrote a more lengthy dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Read more
Related: The Supreme Court Recognizes the Danger of Trump’s Election Plan. By Quinta Jurecic / The Atlantic
Democrats Hope Voting Rights Decision Will Drive Black Turnout in South. By Emily Cochrane / NYT
Black Democratic candidates for governor, the Senate and the House are hoping that attacks on Black representation will bring out Black voters in November.
Across the South, from the Mississippi Delta to Georgia’s suburbs, Black Democratic candidates are imploring Black voters to rise up and secure the representation this November that they were expected to be denied with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. The hill is high, and Republicans remain supremely confident, but Democrats are trying to contest races typically seen as too far out of reach. Read more
How Keisha Lance Bottoms and David Crowley Can Make Political History. By Perry Bacon / TNR
Keisha Lance Bottoms and David Crowley could show that anti-Black, anti-urban sentiment is no longer a barrier to Black candidates in swing states.
Many Americans who live in suburbs and rural areas don’t like the big, left-leaning metropolitan areas nearby. And while it’s hard to say exactly how much that anti-urban resentment is tied to race, we know that big cities often have high percentages of people of color, particularly African Americans. So in red and purple states, the Democratic Party has in the past sometimes shied away from nominating Black candidates for statewide offices, especially politicians closely identified with their states’ urban areas. Read more
Related: Angie Nixon, Candidate for Senate, Takes Florida by Storm. Patricia Mazzei / NYT
Florida governor matchup scrambles race, party lines. By John Pacenti / USA Today
On the surface, the Florida gubernatorial match between Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and former Democratic congressman David Jolly is about affordability, taxes, and ideology.
Yet race — whether it be the white rural voter in Liberty County, the Black electorate in Gainesville, or Cuban-Americans in Miami — permeates the gubernatorial contest and bleeds down the ballot. Read more
Related: Experts: Florida may be flipping as Jolly leads Donalds in shock poll. By Matthew Rozsa / AlterNet
Tim Scott Responds to ‘Morning Joe’ Hosts’ Prayer for Him. By Dan Clarendon / TV Insider
U.S. Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, wasn’t amused to be the subject of a Morning Joe prayer on Thursday, following his speech at the GOP midterm convention in Texas the night before.
“At the end of the day, now we know why Joe’s ratings are so darn low,” the senator said on Fox News’ Saturday in America today, per Mediaite. “They will hide from the truth, and they will publicly endorse a lie.” Read more
Related: How much more embarrassment can the Republican Party take? By Rex Huppke / USA Today
Related: MAGA delusion is hurling the GOP towards a bloodbath: report. By Alex Henderson / AlterNet
Black Unemployment Is America’s Labor Warning Light. By
The gap between Black and white joblessness has outlasted administrations, booms and busts. That is a warning about the whole economy, not one community.
While politicians tout the strength of the economy, many hardworking Americans are still struggling to find meaningful work that pays a respectable wage. One statistic consistently reveals a harder truth about the state of our economy. For decades, Black unemployment has typically run at roughly twice the rate of white unemployment. Read more
Education
The Slow Disappearance of Black Studies on College Campuses. By Alecia Taylor / Capital B
Northwestern is the latest university to restructure its program as the Trump administration continues to target DEI in higher education.
The university began transitioning the Program of African Studies from the Office of Research to the Office of the Provost on Sept. 1. In a statement to Capital B, Northwestern said: “We are engaging African Studies faculty in a coordinated process to determine future opportunities for the program that will reinforce its distinguished status in the field. The program will continue its activities, and its endowed funding will not change.” Read more
How Bates College’s Curriculum Became a National Argument. By Jasper Smith / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
After years of debate, a proposal to embed race in every major remains in limbo.
In 2021, when professors at Bates College set off on an ambitious effort to reform the curriculum, a racial reckoning sweeping America was making itself felt on college campuses. Presidents were bringing down Confederate statues. Administrators were mandating diversity training. And at dozens of colleges, faculty were reimagining one of the most fundamental parts of college life: What do students learn about race and power in the classroom? Read more
Inside the DOJ’s Campus DEI Crackdown — and the Colleges Caught Between Compliance and Backlash. By Jatika Hudson / Eduledger
In January 2026, Yale President Maurie McInnis presented Harvard University President Alan M. Garber with the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s Legend in Leadership Award for his resistance against the DOJ’s investigation of the university and his stance for the suggested settlement.
Four years after the Supreme Court ruled in Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College that race-conscious admissions programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, more than 50 higher education institutions are facing off or settling with the DOJ over similar concerns about preferential treatment through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on campus. Read more
Related: Trump slashed DEI. Now it’s making a surprising bipartisan comeback. By Jessica Guynn / USA Today
World
Benjamin Netanyahu has overseen a genocide: In his telling, he’s a victim. By Simon Speakman Cordall / Aljazeera
Ahead of Israel’s national elections, Netanyahu reaches for an old playbook: grievance, blame-shifting and victimhood.
Benjamin Netanyahu is Israel’s most electorally successful — and longest-serving — prime minister. He has overseen Israel’s greatest internal security failure and a genocide in Gaza, yet clung on to power. Now, as he heads to his 13th parliamentary election, Netanyahu is relying on an old strategy that he has deployed for years, critics say — responding to accusations that might normally end a political career with deflections, subterfuge and claims of victimhood. Read more
Related: U.N. experts say U.S. may have committed war crimes with 2 Iran strikes. By Frank Andrews / CBS News
Alleged discrimination vs. White people prompts new U.S. sanctions on South Africa. CBS News
The Trump administration has announced that it will impose travel bans on officials it claims are responsible for discrimination against White people and other minority groups in South Africa.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday he would revoke U.S. visas or reject visa applications from foreign nationals found to be responsible for, or complicit in, enacting or enforcing laws and policies that allow uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination and the incitement of violence against minority ethnic and racial groups in South Africa. Read more
Related: Trump Bars Some South Africans Over Claims of Anti-White Discrimination. By John Eligon / NYT
Trump and Rubio allies are vying for control of Cuba’s assets if regime falls. By Lee Schlenker and Ed Augustin / The Guardian
Washington and Florida insiders are exploring lucrative deals for a post-communist Cuba crushed by ever-increasing US sanctions
Spanish hotel chains. A Canadian mining firm. European shipping giants. Visa and Mastercard. Scores of foreign companies have been driven out of Cuba this summer over fear of being hit with potent, new secondary sanctions. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, told Axios last month there are “no escape valves” from his unprecedented pressure campaign against the island. Read more
Related: Cuba’s Old Economic Model Is ‘Exhausted.’ By Vivian Salama / The Atlantic
Related: Cuban official on Trump’s threats as tensions with U.S. rise. By Amna Nawaz and Veronica Vela / PBS
Ethics / Morality / Religion
T.D. Jakes’ megachurch pays tribute to his 50 years of ministry. By Adele M. Banks / RNS
‘The Potter’s House is never just Bishop Jakes,’ he told his megachurch congregation. ‘It never was, and it never will be.’
Celebrities, fellow pastors and his Dallas megachurch’s next-generation leaders celebrated Bishop T.D. Jakes’ 50th anniversary of ministry during a service Sunday (Sept. 13), as he thanked his congregation and family for their support during a tenure in which he “dared to be talked about.” Read more
RNS tracked the religious lawsuits against Trump’s immigration policies. Here’s what we found. By Jack Jenkins / RNS
Eighty religious plaintiffs from 11 major faith traditions have joined lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s immigration policies, according a tracker developed by RNS with the Law, Rights, and Religion Project.
It’s a dynamic that has haunted almost the entirety of Trump’s second term: While the president insists he has “done more for religion than any other president,” he has been repeatedly sued by faith groups — particularly over his attempts to restrict immigration and facilitate mass deportation. Read more
Bishop Barron of Word on Fire fuels debate on empathy’s role in society. By Jeromiah Taylor / NCR
In a YouTube video posted Sept. 6, Barron said, “If you put empathy, so defined, in the center of your preoccupation, truth, reality, justice and love are going to be threatened.”
Barron was preaching on marketing professor Gad Saad’s New York Times best-selling book Suicidal Empathy: Dying to be Kind, which Barron characterized as the “best exposure and takedown of the lunacy at the heart of much of the wokeist philosophy that dominates things today.” In his book, Saad writes, “A society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance and empathy than invoking its survival instinct.” Saad’s theories have been supported by a number of prominent right-wing figures, including Elon Musk. Read more
Related: Against Empathy. By Paul Bloom / Boston Review
Historical / Cultural
Slavery was not a footnote to British history. It helped shape the nation. By William Pettigrew / The Guardian
Register of British Slave Traders reveals how deeply the trafficking of Africans was embedded in the country’s politics, economy, institutions and culture
Two obstacles have prevented us from appreciating the significance of the slave trade in British history. The first arose from the abolition campaign, which finally overcame opposition in parliament in 1807. The abolitionists promoted the idea that opposition to the slave trade flowed naturally from British values: justice, freedom and Christian benevolence. The success of this strategy obscured the role those same British values had played in supporting the trafficking. Today, Britain’s leaders place abolition in the pantheon of great and definitive national moments. Read more
The Return of the Enslavers’ Republic. By Bill Webb / The Progressive Magazine
In his new book, Tad Stoermer explores why resistance movements in the United States face uphill odds.
What is the history of resistance in the United States? What separates effective resistance from performative noise? Most importantly, why are most resistance efforts doomed to failure? These are the questions that Tad Stoermer addresses in his urgent new book, A Resistance History of the United States. Read more
Native American ideas helped shape the Revolution – and the America of today. By Scott Baldauf / CS Monitor
About a 40-minute drive west of Albany, the Iroquois Museum here is hosting an art exhibit that explores the impact of 250 years of American independence on the people who have called this land home for thousands of years. Onondaga Nation artist Brandon Lazore’s piece entitled “Broken Treaties,” from 2014, is on display at the Iroquois Museum in Howes Cave,
Brandon Lazore, a member of the Onondaga Nation and painter on the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, has two works on show that hint at how layered that relationship was as America got its start. He details the profound effect of Native American ideas and practices on the American colonists attempting to form a more perfect union in Philadelphia. “That term – ‘We the People’ – comes from us because we’re governed by the people; they were learning from us,” says Mr. Lazore. Read more
The Unique History Of Afro-Latinos In America. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
Afro-Latinos have a rich and complex history in America, shaped by their diverse African and Latin American roots.
Every year, from Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, National Hispanic Heritage Month celebrates the histories, cultures and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans. But within that story is another rich and sometimes overlooked one: the history of Afro-Latinos. Read more
The Black Intellectual Traditions That Shaped Frederick Douglass. By Russell Crosthwait / AAIHS
The United States recently marked 250 years since the adoption of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. For this occasion, a quote has been circulating from Frederick Douglass: “This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Most Americans will hear it as proof that the Republic bends; a Black man at the lectern holding the country to its founding promises. That reading has scholarly backing. Waldo Martin places Frederick Douglass’s mind inside Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment, and romanticism. Nicholas Buccola calls him a “philosophical statesman” devoted to self-ownership and liberal individualism. Both readings have real evidence behind them. Douglass had read Locke and Jefferson, and he handled their language like someone who had earned it.
63 Years Later: Remembering the Four Black Girls Murdered in Birmingham’s Church Bombing. By
On Sept. 15, 1963, a Klan bomb killed Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair. Sixty-three years later, a new center opens steps from where they died.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously described Birmingham as “probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States.” The city earned the grim nickname, “Bombingham,” after at least 21 separate bombings targeted Black homes and churches in the eight years leading up to 1963. Yet, none of those racist attacks resulted in fatalities — until September 15, 1963. Read more
Despite a star-studded field of nominees, only one Black actor won a Primetime Emmy this year. By Brandon Caldwell / The Grio
Ernest Harden Jr.’s historic win for “The Pitt” stood alone as several of Hollywood’s biggest Black stars were passed over.
But when it came to other notable stars like Sterling K. Brown, Zendaya or the cast of “Abbott Elementary,” other actors and shows won out in other categories. During the pre-show, Sheryl Lee Ralph called out the Television Academy over its Best Comedy category, stating that “Abbott” had an unusual fight, given that it was the only true comedy series in the group. “Abbott Elementary, top of the conversation. Nominated for best cast, I’m looking forward to a win since we’re the only real comedy in the category,” she told “Entertainment Tonight.” Read more
Antonia Hylton on natural hair, confidence and making space for Black women in journalism. By Jahaura Michelle / The Grio
Antonia Hylton spent much of her childhood trying not to stand out. Today, the award-winning journalist wears the natural curls she once tried to hide on television and says embracing who she is has made her a better reporter.
As she entered adulthood and began building her journalism career, Hylton said she started to see her appearance and her work differently. Straightening her hair no longer felt like an insignificant beauty choice. “I just realized that wearing my hair straight made me feel inauthentic,” Hylton said. “And if I’m asking people, I sit in front of people and I’m asking you to be your most authentic self as you talk to me, as you confide in me, well, I should be authentic. I should be me. I should look like me as I do this job.” Read more
Sports
Colin Kaepernick set an example. Nobody wants to follow it. By Will Leitch / Wash Post
A decade after his protest, the price he paid for speaking out has scared off other athletes.
Colin Kaepernick was trying to make a difference. In that, the former Super Bowl quarterback who got pushed out of the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem was wildly successful. But unfortunately his impact was exactly the opposite of what he intended. This wasn’t Kaepernick’s fault, but it’s unquestionably true. Read more
NAACP CEO Derrick Johnson Slams the Protect College Sports Act. By Rashad Grove / The Root
On SportsCenter, Johnson slammed the Protect College Sports Act for a proposed cap on Black student-athletes’ open-market earning power.
Johnson dismissed claims of NIL “chaos,” arguing the bill would strip student-athletes of basic civil and economic rights while insulating power-hungry conferences and wealthy executives from antitrust laws. His remarks echoed his previous call for Black athletes not to support schools in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) that are located in states that attack voting rights. Read more
Racist Incidents at High School Events Are Raising Alarms Across the Country. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root
Recent incidents at school sporting events in three states have prompted investigations, student protests and renewed calls for accountability.
A troubling string of reported racist incidents at schools across the country is raising new questions about how districts handle discrimination. In Florida, Georgia and Illinois, Black students have been confronted with alleged racial slurs and racist behavior at athletic events. Now, some communities are demanding more than statements of condemnation from school officials. Read more
Ben Shelton Makes History at the US Open as First Black American Man to Reach Grand Slam Final Since Arthur Ashe. By Rashad Grove/ The Root
Decades after Arthur Ashe broke barriers, Shelton and Tiafoe honored the trailblazer while battling for tennis’s biggest stage.
Long before the iconic stadium bore his name, Arthur Ashe forged a pathway for Black tennis players. On Friday night, that path led directly to Frances Tiafoe and Ben Shelton. Representing the past, present, and future of Black excellence in tennis, the pair carried Ashe’s mantle into a new era with unmistakable flair and fearless play. Read more
Related: Taylor Townsend wins US Open doubles final, praises black ‘representation.’ ByJon Root / Fox News
Site Information
On Race in America is published every Saturday. Some articles may be AI-assisted.
Articles appearing in On Race in America are archived on our Archive Page in the drop down menu. A collection of Books, Podcasts, and Video Favorites can also be found there.
On each page you can register your email to receive notifications of new editions of On Race in America
Click here for earlier Editions.
The site is fully searchable by name or topic—see the Search option at the top of the page.
You can contact the editor by emailing onraceinamerica@gmail.com
At the bottom of each Blog page, you’ll find custom share buttons that let you email the Blog or post it directly to your Facebook, or LinkedIn accounts.