Featured

The Four Horsemen of American Decline. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race In America

Throughout history, societies in decline have exhibited warning signs that were often ignored until the damage became irreversible. Borrowing from the enduring image of the Four Horsemen, I propose a distinctly American version of that warning: war, pestilence, greed, and avarice. These are not the classical horsemen of religious tradition, but modern forces that threaten the nation’s democratic institutions, social cohesion, and moral character.

Read complete essay. The Four Horsemen of American Decline

The Week’s Top Stories

Political / Social

Americans know something is deeply wrong. They’re not imagining it. By Chauncey Devega / Salon

Surveys and data confirm a country in crisis — stressed and divided, but not yet ready to give up

Civil rights activist and former sharecropper Fannie Lou Hamer was weary when she spoke alongside Malcolm X at a church in Harlem in December 1964. “I’ve been tired so long,” she said, “now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” More than 60 years later, many Americans share this feeling but in a different context. More than ten years of the Age of Trump — and the great problems that birthed it — have left us full of dread and weariness. The evidence is clear: Donald Trump’s return to power is taking a deep toll on the American people’s psychological and overall health. Read more

This racist con is literally killing white Americans. By Thom Hartman / MSN

America has 51 billionaires who made their money from our profit-driven healthcare system, the only one in the developed world. It’s not only obscene that they’re taking so much money from so many of us who have so little; it’s also killing all of us. We’re among the worst — and most expensive — healthcare systems in the developed world, with Thailand and Ecuador even beating us out.

And the reason it stays that way, according to a shocking new study, is because about half of all white people would rather inflict pain on all of us (including themselves) than allow for a system which may also benefit Black people. If that sounds irrational, it is. But it’s also completely consistent with a history that includes white communities closing their own schools and swimming pools back in the 1960s when LBJ forced them to allow Black children in. Read more

Clyburn’s district stays intact as South Carolina Republicans scrap redistricting. By Sam Gringlas / NPR

The majority-Black district held for 34 years by South Carolina Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn will survive intact, for now, after Republican state lawmakers rejected a plan to redraw congressional maps.

South Carolina was the latest Southern state attempting to redraw district lines after the U.S. Supreme Court weakened a key section of the Voting Rights Act that protected majority-Black districts. The proposed map backed by President Trump, which state senators declined to advance on Tuesday, would have targeted Clyburn, the lone Democrat in South Carolina’s congressional delegation and an institution in state and national politics. Read more

Congressional Black Caucus Demands Corporations Oppose Voting Rights Rollbacks. By Chris Walker / Truthout

Around 200 of the corporations that received the letter had pledged to protect voting rights five years prior.

The CBC noted that many of the businesses receiving the letter had pledged to support the John Lewis Voting Rights Act five years ago, on the first anniversary of the late lawmaker’s passing. At that time, the corporations “spoke clearly…about the importance of protecting democratic participation” and “advancing racial equity,” the CBC said, adding that, “today, those commitments are being tested.” Read more

Non-whites set to become majority in US for first time by 2050 — with NY, NJ and Conn. reflecting same change. By Anthony Blair / NYP

Non-whites are set to become the majority for the first time in the US by 2050, a situation mirrored in up to 16 states — including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to new census data.

The expected transformation reflects astonishing demographic changes projected to sweep across America by between 2040 and 2050, fueled by international and internal migration, as well as falling birthrates, the US Census Bureau figures show. In 1980, the US was 80% white, but that figure is expected to drop to 47% by 2050 and 44% by 2060. Read more

DNC autopsy report vindicates Kamala Harris, exposes party’s ‘Black infrastructure’ problem, critics say. By Gerren Keith Gaynor / The Grio

As national Democrats process the fallout of the Democratic National Committee’s “autopsy” report released Thursday, Black Democratic strategists say that the report — intended to explain why Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election to President Donald Trump — somewhat vindicates the former U.S. Vice President and exposes a party sin by not adequately investing in a Black infrastructure to win elections.

Most Democrats agree that the “autopsy” report does little to help the party better understand the 2024 election outcome and merely regurgitates already known truths about the party’s organizational failures. One of those truths is how wholly unprepared the White House and the Biden-turned-Harris presidential campaign were in positioning Harris, and thereby the party, for success. Read more

Education

Nonwhite Students Now Represent the Largest Share of U.S. College Enrollment. By Jacquelyn Elias / The Chronicle of Higher Ed

Nonwhite students now make up the largest share of American universities’ enrollment — though the diversity on campuses varies widely by institution, according to The Chronicle‘s updated database with the latest enrollment figures (from the fall of 2024).

Bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral institutions have grown more diverse over time, but associate institutions are still the only group to be majority nonwhite. Read more

The Blueprint for Banning DEI: How Texas Is Using Department Consolidation to Reshape Higher Ed. By Shawntal Z. Brown / EduLedger

Across the United States, the rapid shift in equity work and initiatives has had a substantial impact on universities’ functions and operations. Amid backlash and the rollout of anti-DEI efforts, higher education stakeholders have seen state and federal governments push to neutralize “gender and race ideologies.”

Specifically in Texas, university professors in gender and ethnic studies are navigating a tense sociopolitical climate, as many professors in the fields of Women’s and Gender Studies, African and African American Studies, Latino/x Studies, American Studies, and other ethnic studies are being heavily attacked and surveilled by state and university policies. Increasingly, Texas institutions are beginning to condense their identity-based programs in ethnic and gender studies under broader administrative department names. Read more

What Is Driving The Decline In Public School Education Enrollment Across The US? By Re’Dreyona Walker / Newsone

Falling birth rates, low budgets and funding cuts, and a rapid expansion of school choice are the few forces most responsible for the decline in traditional public school enrollment, and they are all accelerating. Between fall 2019 and fall 2023, public school enrollment dropped from 50.8 million to 49.5 million, a loss of more than 1.2 million students, and the National Center for Education Statistics projects the number will fall below 47 million by 2031.

When you look at where enrollment decline hits hardest, a clear pattern emerges that reflects decades of disinvestment rather than simple demographic math. In majority-Black districts, nearly a third of students have left traditional public schools, a rate almost twice as large as in white or Hispanic districts, according to Brookings Institution research. The closures that follow enrollment loss also fall disproportionately on Black neighborhoods. Read more

Trump’s war on free speech extends far beyond campus walls. By Bruce Schneier and Jon Penny / Salon

Younger Americans have soured on the second Donald Trump presidency, but they are not protesting it.

Despite an unpopular Iran war and an even more unpopular Trump administration, college campus protests nationwide have gone silent. And at many schools, student activism is virtually nonexistent. This silence comes in the wake of a relentless Trump administration war on campus speech that has involved lawsuits, arrests, deportations and expulsions. Read more

World

Exclusive: Trump’s accelerating squeeze on Cuba. By Marc Caputo / Axios

The Trump administration is bracing for the potential collapse of Cuba’s totalitarian government as early as this summer, and has war-gamed new military response plans in case the island descends into chaos, U.S. officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: President Trump hasn’t authorized an invasion and prefers a peaceful transition to a free Cuba, so the administration will keep pushing economic sanctions to try to strangle the regime in Havana in a slow-motion constriction. The big picture: The Cuba operation aims to eliminate Latin America’s source of Marxist agitation and anti-U.S. activism ever since Fidel and Raul Castro led their successful revolution in 1959. Read more

Why Iran’s Leaders Think They’ve Won. By Arash Azizi / The Atlantic

An interim deal promises to meet a lot of Iranian demands, but it won’t solve the problems of peace.

An interim agreement to end the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran looks likely, and it may very well find Donald Trump acceding to Iranian demands he has long resisted. Many in the Iranian regime are feeling triumphant, and understandably so, despite the exchange of some strikes in the Persian Gulf this week. But an end to the war will leave the Islamic Republic with a host of unsolved problems. Read more

Ebola outbreak risks becoming ‘deadliest on record’: Aid group. By Ashleigh fields / The Hill

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said Tuesday the Ebola outbreak in Congo risks becoming one of the “deadliest on record” if global health groups don’t prioritize containing the viral disease.

The global nongovernmental organization (NGO) said the outbreak is spreading faster than the response as Congo and Uganda have already documented more than 900 suspected cases and at least 223 deaths amid a sharp decrease in aid. Read more

Trump administration raises US refugee cap, but only for white South Africans. By Rebecca Santana and Seung Min Kim / AP

The Trump administration said Tuesday that it will admit an additional 10,000 white South Africans into the U.S. as refugees this year, increasing its historically low annual cap but still blocking people from other countries from entering through the program.

Trump suspended the refugee program on his first day in office and, since then, has turned it into a vehicle to allow Afrikaners — a group of white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers — into the U.S. Advocates say the decision to focus a decades-old program on one group has left people around the world fleeing war and strife stranded and with few options. Read more

The Gaza Peace Plan Has Gone Nowhere. By Isaac Chotiner / The New Yorker

More than six months after the U.S.-negotiated ceasefire, Israel still controls more than half the territory in Gaza, and Hamas refuses to disarm.

The situation remains unsettled, with Israel still striking the parts of Gaza that it does not control, killing more than seven hundred people since the ceasefire began. (Last weekend, three people were killed during an Israeli drone strike on a food-distribution center in Gaza.) Meanwhile, Hamas shows no signs that it plans to disarm. Read more

The West only discovers property rights when the landowners are white. By Tafi Mhaka / Aljazeera

As Zimbabwe returns 67 farms to European nationals, the dispossession that created white land ownership remains unrecognised in law.

On May 7, Zimbabwe’s Agriculture Minister Anxious Masuka announced in parliament that the government would return 67 farms seized during the country’s land reform programme to European nationals from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The farms, he said, were protected under bilateral investment protection agreements signed between Zimbabwe and the four European states before the land seizures. Read more

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Black Catholics Demanded An Apology For Slavery, Pope Leo XIV Just Gave Them One. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone

After decades of advocacy, Black Catholics received a long-awaited apology from Pope Leo XIV over the Catholic Church’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Pope Leo XIV issued a historic apology on May 25, openly acknowledging the Holy See’s role in legitimizing slavery and condemning the Church’s centuries-long silence on the practice. In the document, the pope described that legacy as a “wound in Christian memory,” according to ABC7. Read more

Rev. William J. Barber: ‘It’s Time To Bring ‘Moral Mondays’ To The Nation’s Capital.’ By Rashad Grove / The Root

Barber is leading faith leaders to mobilize in Washington, D.C., calling for a national movement against “policy violence.”

In 2013, Bishop William J. Barber came to national prominence as one of the major prophetic voices of Moral Mondays,” a grassroots, faith-based movement of nonviolent civil disobedience launched by the North Carolina NAACP. Now, the renowned clergyman and social activist has brought the “Moral Mondays” to the nation’s capital. Read more

The real danger of Islamophobia? It rarely announces itself as hatred yet shapes how millions think. By Kenneth Mohammed / The Guardian

There is a growing sense that the world is slipping backwards – not through dramatic rupture, but through the steady normalisation of hate, the coarsening of public discourse and politicians increasingly fuelling division and racism.

Across the world, anti-Muslim abuse has risen sharply: mosques vandalised, women in hijabs assaulted, online spaces saturated with hate, and far-right marches openly calling for the eradication of Islam. Yet such incidents rarely command sustained outrage. They appear briefly before disappearing into the churn of the news cycle. Read more

Historical / Cultural

How slavery built Connecticut and still shapes the state more than 250 years later. By Tyler Fedor / CT Insider

The first recording of enslaved Africans in Connecticut is in 1639 when an enslaved Black boy named Louis Berbice, from Dutch Guiana, was killed by his owner in Hartford, according to the The Yale and Slavery Research Project.

Connecticut went on to become the largest slaveholding state in New England by 1774, with 5,085 people enslaved within its borders, according to Dartmouth University Libraries’ website. Read more

Memorial Day started with freed Blacks decorating soldiers’ graves in 1865. By Erick Johnson / The Chicago Crusader

The date was May 1, 1865. One year after Arlington National Cemetery was founded in Virginia, another cemetery 532 miles south was becoming part of history. Located in Charleston, SC, it was the final resting place of over 200 soldiers of color who died during the Civil War.

What happened some 152 years ago would remain buried for over a century until David Blight, a renowned Yale University professor, scholar and author, discovered that Blacks founded what is now known to millions of Americans as Memorial Day. Read more

The South: Stuck in the Sunken Place Ever Since the Civil War. By William Spivey / Level

How the former confederacy keeps repeating the same descent, one generation at a time.

This isn’t about a single political party. The South has followed the same pattern regardless of the controlling party. In the post-Civil War era, it was Democrats who chose white supremacy over Democracy. In the post-Civil Rights era, it’s been the Republicans. Immediately after the Civil War, the South was truly in the sunken place. Before the war, enslaved people represented over half of all wealth in the Deep South. Slaves were often the collateral supporting loans from Northern banks. In some states, enslaved people were more valuable than all land and buildings combined. Cotton exports powered the national economy. Read more

A Black community fled a Virginia island. Reclaiming their history opened old wounds. By Gregory S. Schneider / Wash Post

In 1915, a fight on the Chesapeake Bay community of Gwynn’s Island precipitated an exodus, the memory of which remains fraught.

In the isolated Chesapeake Bay community of Gwynn’s Island, men of both races worked together on fishing boats. But within a year of that fight, most of the island’s 135 Black residents had left — pushed away, according to family accounts, by threats and rising racial tensions. By 1921, all were gone, ripping out roots that stretched to the 1600s. Read more

The Last of the Jazz Titans. By David A. Graham / The Atlantic

In August 1958, Esquire invited 58 jazz musicians to meet on a stoop in Harlem for a photo shoot. The last living participant of that shoot was the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who died on Monday at the age of 95.

By the end of his life, no jazz musician of his importance was left—but then again, hardly anyone ever reached Rollins’s colossal stature. Rollins made his first recordings in 1949, when he was 18 years old, and over the next several decades, he played with nearly every modern great: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane. Rollins didn’t just make some of the genre’s finest recordings; his muscular sound and intense intellect turned him into an embodiment of jazz itself. “He may be the greatest virtuoso that jazz has ever produced,” the influential critic Francis Davis once wrote. Read more

Top Civil Rights Activist and Lawyer For MLK Jr., Clarence B. Jones, Dies At 95. By Caroline Wilburn / HuffPost

Clarence B. Jones, the esteemed civil rights activist and lawyer who helped author Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, died on Friday. He was 95.

Jones, a critic of President Donald Trump who slammed his redistricting efforts just last month, was among the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his famed speech in front of more than 250,000 demonstrators at the Lincoln Memorial. Read more

The Deep Spirituality of Earth, Wind & Fire Explored in a New HBO Documentary by Questlove. By Lori Dorn / Laughing Squid

Earth, Wind & Fire (to Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World) is an HBO documentary by Questlove that explores how the band’s deep spirituality, combined with their incredible talent, wove such a rich tapestry that made them cultural icons and enduring musical legends.

The documentary uses historical footage and interviews with people involved with Earth, Wind & Fire, either directly, tangentially, or inspirationally. This includes surviving band members, musicians, and friends, as well as President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
The documentary premieres June 7, 2026, on HBO. Read more

Sports

NAACP’s big ask is admirable, impossible and mostly unfair. By Candace Buckner / The Athletic

In an alternate reality where community is a greater motivating factor than personal prosperity, the NAACP wants Black boys to lead.

It’s their bodies and their talent that propel and bankroll the dominant Southeastern Conference in football and basketball. And yet, across the South, it’s their people’s representation and their people’s rights under the 15th Amendment that could suffer if the Republican Party is allowed to redraw congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms. Read more

Naomi Osaka Claps Back at Critics for Hosting Landmark Black Tennis Celebration at Roland Garros. By Fahad Hamid / First Sportz

Naomi Osaka co-hosted the first-ever “Black Party” alongside Taylor Townsend just before the 2026 French Open. She brought together stars like Coco Gauff, Gaël Monfils, Chris Eubanks, and Asia Muhammad for an evening of community and celebration.

When some commenters questioned why the event focused only on Black players, Osaka didn’t hold back. In a detailed Threads post, she clearly and emotionally explained her perspective. She wrote: Read more

Worth it? Spike Lee Pays $300K a Year for Knicks Tickets, Total Spend Over 30 Years Will Shock You. By Nicole Duncan-Smith / Finurah

According to The Sporting News, Lee revealed during a 2020 appearance on ESPN’s “First Take” that he was spending roughly $300,000 per season on his courtside Knicks tickets. At the time, the director estimated he had already spent more than $10 million attending Knicks games over nearly three decades as a season-ticket holder.

And the costs have only climbed as the Knicks returned to playoff relevance. Read more

Site Information

About On Race in America

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 home page. 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. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find custom share buttons that let you email the edition or post it directly to your Facebook, LinkedIn, or X (formerly Twitter) accounts.

On Race in America

A publication on race, history, and democracy

On Race in America (May 30) – Stories, Insight and Perspective

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Featured

The Week’s Top Stories

Political / Social

Education

World

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Historical / Cultural

Sports

Site Information

Like this:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Featured

The Week’s Top Stories

Political / Social

Education

World

Ethics / Morality / Religion

Historical / Cultural

Sports

Site Information

Share this:

Like this: