Featured
Equal Opportunity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
Artificial intelligence promises to transform nearly every aspect of human life by making knowledge and intellectual capabilities more widely available. Yet it presents a paradox: AI could diminish differences among human beings while creating greater inequalities through unequal access and control. Who will benefit from this extraordinary power, and who will determine its distribution?
Read complete essay. Equal Opportunity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Trump’s presidency could end sooner than you think. By Robert Reich / AlterNet
So how long will he last, and what’s likely to do him in? I’ve posed that question to an array of president watchers, advisers, and historians, and I’ve grouped their responses below. (None talked about him dying in office, although that possibility can’t be entirely discounted.)
Please select the one that best matches your own sense of how Trump will go. Read more
Related: Corruption in the White House: Does Anybody Care? By William W. Taylor III / The Nation
Hakeem Jeffries on the Democratic Party’s agenda if they win the House. By Francesca Chambers / USA Tiday
With just over a month to go before the midterm elections.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries joins The Excerpt to discuss the rise of the DSA within the Democratic party, his private meeting with Trump adviser Jared Kushner, and why he believes the U.S. is in the midst of an “AI safety crisis.” Watch here
Byron Donalds is Trying to Convince Black Floridians to Trust a Top Trump Ally. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root
Byron Donalds needs Black voters to help him make history – but they aren’t exactly sold.
Byron Donalds wants to make history as the first Black elected governor of Florida. But first, he has to convince Black voters that electing a Black governor who is one of President Donald Trump’s biggest allies is actually a win. That’s proving harder than the Republican candidate might have hoped, as critics wonder if electing a Black governor counts as progress if they are advancing politics they believe hurt Black Floridians. Read more
NAACP launches voter protection hub for midterm elections. By Patrick Marley / Wash Post
The civil rights organization is stepping up efforts in response to President Donald Trump’s push to change voting rules.
The legal hub, launching Oct. 24, will vet claims of voter intimidation and voter suppression and take such incidents to court, according to the NAACP. Attorneys with the group will take calls and review online submissions to help ensure eligible voters can cast ballots, said Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel. Read more
White nationalism’s appeal runs deeper than partisan politics. By Patrick Egan, Joshua A. Tucker and James Bisbee / Salon
How extensive is white nationalism’s appeal among the broader public, and who is drawn to this extremist ideology?
We are political scientists who study political behavior, identity and social media. In recently published research in the scientific journal Nature, we offer some answers to these questions using national surveys we conducted with nearly 8,000 non-Hispanic white Americans from 2021 to 2025. Read more
Black Freedom in an Age of White Oligarchy. By Aaron Ross Coleman / The Nation
Justin Leroy’s The Lowest Freedom points toward the limits of liberty under racial capitalism.
Wading through this discursive dilemma over what to call the political purgatory between slavery and freedom, the Duke historian Justin Leroy offers a new heuristic: “low freedom.” In Leroy’s The Lowest Freedom: Racial Capitalism and Black Thought in the Nineteenth Century, he adds to a growing body of scholarship that describes slavery not as ending so much as transforming. Read more
The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE. By Lottie Joiner / The Nation
Trump’s federal workforce cuts dismantled a job pipeline for Washington, DC’s Black community and gutted the well-being of the women who hold up that community.
When Trump eliminated diversity, equity, and inclusion programs by an executive order in January 2025 and empowered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to gut the federal workforce that February and March, thousands of Black women lost their jobs. But the job cuts did more than just dismantle a longtime pipeline that helped lift DC’s majority-Black community into the middle class; it also gutted the well-being of the Black women who hold up that community. Read more
Related: Trump establishes committee to investigate Fed governor Lisa Cook. By Gaya Gupta / The Guardian
Related: Black Women Are Joining Gun Groups in Atlanta Amid Political Tensions. by
After redistricting, a Black community in Louisiana faces a future without a champion in Congress. By Gary Fields / PBS
If you cross the Mississippi River on the Huey P. Long-O.K. Allen Bridge, pass the Exxon Refinery, then head north for a few minutes, you’ll find a pocket of Louisiana that’s unlike any other place in America’s never-ending battle over what it means to have equal representation.
Here is Scotlandville, which was once its own unincorporated town but is now part of Baton Rouge. It’s a nearly all Black community of 10,000 people that has been, for the second time, shuffled around on the state’s congressional map to make it part of a majority white district. Both times it was during the term of the same representative. Read more
Trump administration probes Wells Fargo over efforts to boost Black homeownership. By Brandon Caldwell / The Grio
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is examining whether the bank’s programs aimed at helping minority homebuyers violated federal fair-housing laws.
Per a report from the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf a letter stating that it would examine whether the bank violated fair-lending laws in its programs to assist potential minority homeowners. Per HUD, it could be considered a violation of the Fair Housing Act. Read more
Education
The impossible dilemma that Black parents face. By Saida Grundy / The Guardian
Having to choose between academic rigor and cultural inclusivity puts some families in an untenable conundrum
I don’t recall what provoked me, well into adulthood, to ask my parents what the hardest part of their more than 50-year journey together had been. It was an impromptu inquiry spurred by nothing in particular, but I remember how astonished I was by their answer. “Choosing schools for our Black children,” they said, with no hesitation and in full agreement, as though they had considered and resolved this question long before I asked. Read more
Lincoln University Students Sue Missouri Over Alleged Decades of Unequal Funding. By Stephen A. Crockett Jr. / Newsone
Students and alumni say Missouri shortchanged its historically Black land-grant university by hundreds of millions of dollars compared with the University of Missouri.
In what could be a game-changer for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Missouri is being sued for allegedly doing what states have been doing for generations: giving a historically Black institution less money and then acting like nobody should notice. Read more
The Black Gay HBCU Experience I See in A Different World. By Brandon D. Elmore / The Eduledger
Amir Rodale moves through the new A Different World with a sense of ease that still feels rare on television. He is a Black gay student, but his friendships are allowed to be friendships.
Played by Jordan Aaron Hall, he is a confident young man figuring out college alongside everyone else. I know something about that kind of belonging. I found it at my HBCU, Fayetteville State University. Read more
Who Was Rod Paige?: The Nation’s First Black Secretary Of Education. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
For decades, Dr. Rod Paige championed one belief: every child deserves a chance to succeed. From Texas classrooms to Washington, he challenged and reshaped education. Let’s explore his legacy.
Yet despite his remarkable career and lasting impact on education, many people may still be unfamiliar with his story. Before his passing in 2025 at the age of 92, Paige had built a legacy that stretched from his early days as a teacher and coach to his historic tenure as the first school superintendent to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education. So, who was Rod Paige? Read more
Why faculty diversity at universities still lags far behind the changing demographics of college students. By Rodney Coates / The Conversation
U.S. colleges and universities have long struggled to increase the racial diversity of their faculty.
And after they are hired, some faculty of color say they feel that their qualifications and scholarship are subjected to greater scrutiny, or that they do not feel valued by their colleagues and schools. As a scholar of critical race theory, I have studied these barriers, and I think that it is helpful to understand what universities, students and academic research all stand to gain from a more diverse faculty. Read more
World
How three years of Israel’s genocidal war have changed Gaza. By Maram Humaid / Aljazeera
War has devastated Gaza’s economy, education, healthcare, infrastructure and public services, transforming life.
The war has shattered the lives of a population of around two million people. Repeated displacement and evacuation orders have uprooted families and communities, while more than 74,245 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Although a “ceasefire” was announced in October 2025, it has not brought an end to the suffering. The Ministry of Health says 1,462 Palestinians have been killed since the “ceasefire” took effect, while Israeli attacks and other military activity have continued across the Strip. Read more
Related: Gaza became a stress test for Western democracy. And the West is failing. Ayman Mohyeldin / MS Now
I Went to Uganda and Saw the Authoritarian Future. Megan K. Stack / NYT
This essay is part of “The New World Disorder,” a series exploring the disintegration of the postwar international system and how countries are adjusting as America steps aside.
Plainclothes thugs frog-marching a radio commentator from the microphone mid-broadcast. An opposition activist dying after reportedly being barricaded in his house, which was then set on fire. Security forces raiding a powerful independent media company, cutting electricity and imposing a monthlong closure. Read more
Related: ‘What Authoritarian Governments Do to Promote Their Leaders.’ By Jamelle Bouie / NYT
Cubans See Hope in Reforms But Worry Over How the US May Thwart Them. By Rodrigo Acuña / Truthout
Residents of Havana discuss the obstacles facing the revival of the Cuban economy amid the US fuel blockade.
Last month, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz declared that 158 new economic and social measures, out of an original package of 176 approved in July by the Cuba’s National Assembly, were being implemented and backed by 197 legal decrees. The measures include allowing private business to import medicines and other goods, loosening restrictions on private tourism, and authorising privately owned banks — under Central Bank supervision — on a regulatory basis equivalent to state banks. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Columbus’ own writings reveal how tightly religion and conquest were intertwined from the start. By Peter C. Mancall / The Conversation
A manuscript with the text of the letter Cristopher Columbus wrote in February 1493, giving his account of the first voyage to the Americas. Archivo General de Simancas/Spanish Ministry of Culture via Wikimedia Commons
As a historian who writes about early encounters between Europeans, Indigenous Americans and Africans in North America, I believe it is important to recapture this period as much as we can from existing documents – including Columbus’ own writings. Those texts reveal the enormous importance the push to spread Christianity played in Europeans’ colonial plans from the start. Read more
Christian Nationalism’s Grip on American Faith Is Finally Breaking. By Rob Schenck / Mother Jones
I have been trying to make amends for having played such a significant role as an evangelical Christian minister in the aggressive push to transform the United States into a “Christian nation.” I helped lay the groundwork for Donald Trump’s presidency and the imposition of Christian Nationalism as America’s officially privileged and highly destructive religion. I was dead wrong in doing so.
I am committed now to “put the same level of energy and commitment into causes aligned with the teachings of mercy, tolerance, and love that first drew me to evangelical Christianity.” I saw Minneapolis as such a cause, as was Texas. And, as it turned out, Maine. Read more
Here’s what to know about Pete Hegseth’s new Office of Religious Affairs. By Yonat Shimron and Jack Jenkins / RNS
A memo announcing the establishment of the Office of Religious Affairs said it would ‘oversee research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience’ of soldiers.
The office, and its director, would report directly to him, Hegseth said, to ensure soldiers have “religious support” in the form of chaplains with religious expertise rather than “secular careerists” and “lawyers.” “Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God, because while we wage physical war, we all know the real battle is spiritual. God is good; evil is not, and America’s military must understand the difference,” Hegseth said during an hour-long talk at a base in Virginia. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Jefferson’s link to Sally Hemings’s children may have been settled by a hair. By Gregory S. Schneider / Wash Post
A strand stuck in glue that Thomas Jefferson used to make a Bible is further confirmation for historians and descendants of the third president and the enslaved woman.
Most historians already accept that the author of the Declaration of Independence fathered children with Hemings, but the DNA testing done over the years to settle the case did not involve samples from Jefferson himself. There was enough wiggle room that some skeptics continue to believe it could have been another male relative, such as one of Jefferson’s nephews, who fathered the children. The results, chronicled in his new book, “History by a Hair,” suggest with 99.9 percent certainty that Jefferson himself was the father of at least one of Sally Hemings’s sons. Read more
‘Love Black children like a revolt’: Dr. Stacey Patton wants America to see ‘machinery’ behind violence against Black children. By Kay Wicker / The Grio
In her latest book, “Strung Up,” the award-winning journalist and historian confronts America’s dark history and its impacts on its children.
To be writing history while you’re living in the echoes, there’s a whole different set of you know feelings that come with it,” the historian continued. “I spent many years writing about a history that many people want to be safely sealed in the past, and then this summer we were suddenly confronted again, and again, and again with Black people found [dead] under circumstances that generated fear and suspicion and just profound distrust.” Read more
From Racist Toys to Hate Artifacts: Inside the New $22M Jim Crow Museum. By Angela Wilson / The Root
Packed with 30,000 artifacts of hate—ranging from the toys that conditioned generations to the relics that enforced segregation—Ferris State University’s brand-new $22 million Jim Crow Museum of Racist Imagery is now officially open.
Housed within the nation’s largest publicly accessible collection of intolerance, the state-of-the-art facility invites visitors to witness historical oppression, and the enduring resistance of those who refused to be silenced. Read more
Banned Books Week Demands Our Attention To Protect Our Literary Heritage. By Nicky Childers / Newsone
During Banned Books Week, we must protect our stories against an ongoing coordinated campaign to restrict Black literature.
This month, as we enter the annual Banned Books Week, we are reminded that the campaign to restrict titles by Black authors is an effort to deny Black Americans literacy and access to books that reflect and preserve our history and offer fresh perspectives on how to think about and imagine our futures. This current movement to dissuade Black people from reading and writing books that capture our unique experiences has deep historical roots. During enslavement, white Americans understood that an educated person would be harder to keep in chains and they passed strict anti-literacy laws that criminalized educating Black people. Read more
Related: 11 Books by Black authors releasing in October. By kay Wicker / The Grio
Beloved Quiet Storm Crooner Freddie Jackson Dies At 69. By Joe Jurado / Newsone
Freddie Jackson rose to fame in the ‘80s with several chart-topping hits, including “Rock Me Tonight,” “You Are My Lady,” and “Jam Tonight.”
“Freddie was more than a legendary voice. He was a kind, generous soul who loved his fans, his family, his friends, and his music with everything he had. For decades, he gave us the songs that became the soundtrack to our love stories, our celebrations, and our most treasured memories. That gift will live on forever,” the post read. “Rest in peace, Freddie. Your legacy and your voice will live on forever.” Read more
Sports
We Can’t Let the Kaepernick Era Be Erased From History. By Dave Zirin / The Nation
Critics say the Black Lives Matter movement in sports went too far. In reality, it didn’t go far enough, and the backlash to it has been brutal.
During four years of steady protest, Kaepernick was more than an icon. He was an inspiration—and this has been left out of every retrospective I have read—for hundreds of high school athletes who also took a knee during the anthem, sparking (depending on the community) violent backlashes but also positive changes in school policies. It was young athletes as much as any other force who kept the connective tissue of Black Lives Matter alive, contacting each other over social media and taking action. Read more
Coco Gauff says online racist abuse was ‘draining’ after China Open exit. By AFP / Aljazeera
Coco Gauff admits the racism she suffered during the China Open exhausted her after the US tennis star missed out on the quarterfinals.
The world number four, a Black American, turned in an uncharacteristically listless performance in Beijing on Wednesday, double-faulting eight times as she went down 6-3, 6-3 to her Belgian opponent. Gauff, 22, was playing a day after she called out the “insane” amount of abuse she had received on the internet following her win over Chinese teenager Sun Xinran in the previous round. Read more
New Tuskegee soccer programs provide opportunity for athletes to compete while fulfilling HBCU dreams. By Bradmond-Lee Harewood / Andscape
University fields men’s and women’s soccer teams for the first time in its 145-year history
For the next two seasons, Tuskegee’s teams will compete independently in the NCAA’s Division II, despite the HBCU being a member of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SIAC) for other sports. The Southwestern Athletic Conference and the HBCU Athletic Conference, formerly known as the Gulf Coast Athletic Conference, are currently the only two HBCU athletic conferences that offer women’s soccer. Read more
A’ja Wilson wins her third straight WNBA MVP and record fifth overall. By AP and Alljazeera
Former US Vice President Kamala Harris among those to hail Wilson as Las Vegas Aces centre continues record run.
“Obviously, that is an honour,” Wilson said. “A woman of our history, and I’m so appreciative to be able to share that moment with her through the phone call and the message of her delivering that I won my fifth MVP.” In addition to becoming the first player to three-peat, Wilson won the award in 2020 and 2022. Read more
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