Featured
The Ways of White Folks. By Langston Hughes / Wikipedia
The Ways of White Folks is a collection of fourteen short stories by Langston Hughes, published in 1934. Hughes wrote the book during a year he spent living in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.[1] The collection addresses multiple dimensions of racial issues, focusing specifically on the unbalanced yet interdependent power dynamics between Black and White people.[2] According to Hughes, the short stories are inspired either by his own lived experiences or those of others he encountered.[1]
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Political / Social
This Is Why Dictatorships Fail. By Anne Applebaum / The Atlantic
The Republicans who lead Congress have refused to use the power of the legislative branch to stop him or moderate him, in this or almost any other matter. The Cabinet is composed of sycophants and loyalists who are willing to defend contradictory policies, even if doing so makes them look like fools. The courts haven’t decisively intervened yet either. No one, apparently, is willing to prevent a single man from destroying the world economy, wrecking financial markets, forcing this country and other countries into recession if that’s what he feels like doing when he gets up tomorrow morning.
This is what arbitrary, absolute power looks like. And this is why the men who wrote the Constitution never wanted anyone to have it. Read more
Related: Trump’s retribution sends a chilling message to dissenters. By Zachary B. Wolf / CNN
DEI Legislation Tracker. Explore where college diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are under attack. By Chronicle Staff / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
The Chronicle is tracking legislation that would prohibit colleges from having diversity, equity, and inclusion offices or staff; ban mandatory diversity training; forbid institutions to use diversity statements in hiring and promotion; or bar colleges from considering race, sex, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions or employment.
All four proscriptions were identified in model state legislation proposed in 2023 by the Goldwater and the Manhattan Institutes. In 2025 The Chronicle started tracking bills that would prohibit colleges from requiring classes to graduate that promote concepts such as systemic racism, reparations, and racial or gender diversity, or from offering student-orientation programs with such content. For more coverage, read the articles in our Dismantling of DEI package. Read more
Related: States That Refused To Comply With Trump’s Anti-DEI Directives. By Zack Linly / Newsone
Accreditation Is Trump’s ‘Secret Weapon.’
If colleges do not act, accreditation may no longer be about quality; it will be about politics. Editor’s note: Politics does not favor HBCUs
The most immediate and devastating consequence of accreditation instability is the potential loss of federal student aid. Title IV funding — totaling over $160 billion in fiscal year 2024 — provides essential grants and loans to millions of students. However, this funding is only available to institutions accredited by recognized agencies: If colleges are forced to switch accreditors to maintain eligibility, or if they lose accreditation altogether, students could lose access to these vital funds. Read more
Related: How an Accreditation War Could Start. Robert Shireman / The Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Related: What happened to sending education ‘back to the states’? Editorial Board / Wash Post
NASA shamed into firing top DEI executive after trying to ‘hide’ her. By Stephen M. Lepore / Daily Mail
The chief DEI officer at NASA‘s jet propulsion lab was fired after her title was changed to hide her from Donald Trump‘s war on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Neela Rajendra had run the lab’s central diversity office, at one point arguing that having deadlines for work projects undermine inclusion, according to The Washington Free Beacon. Neela Rajendra is no longer working at [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. We are incredibly grateful for the lasting impact she made to our organization. We wish her the very best,’ lab director Laurie Leshin wrote in an all-staff email on Thursday. Read more
Related: Black pilots respond to Trump’s anti-DEI message. By Pete Muntean / CNN Video
Related: Military schools threaten pro-DEI student protesters with disciplinary action. By Cybele Mayes-Osterman / USA Today
Amid tariff chaos, Republicans plot “massive redistribution” of wealth from workers to the rich. By Russell Payne / Salon
The cost of tariffs will eclipse any tax cuts most households see, experts say
While conservatives hail the Republicans’ budget plan as the “biggest tax cut in history” and say that President Donald Trump’s tax plan is necessary tax relief, Trump and his allies are working to execute an enormous transfer of wealth from working Americans to the wealthiest. Elizabeth Pancotti, a former adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and a managing director at the Groundwork Collective, described the current GOP plan as a “triple whammy of massive redistribution in a society that is already tilted toward the wealthy.” Read more
Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Civil Rights Office Freezes 600 Cases. by J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam / Propublica
The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS into a mass-deportation machine, analysts say. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem
“All the oversight in DHS was eliminated today,” one worker texted after the announcement that they’d been fired. Read more
Judge refuses to dismiss Central Park Five’s defamation case against President Trump.
A federal judge has rejected President Donald Trump ‘s effort to dismiss a defamation lawsuit against him filed by the men formerly known as the Central Park Five who were exonerated after spending more than a decade in prison for the 1989 rape and beating of a woman who was jogging.
The five men the sued Trump in the midst of last fall’s presidential election campaign, accusing him of making “false and defamatory statements” about them during the Sept. 10 debate in Philadelphia with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Read more
World News
U.S., China barrel toward the bottom in escalating trade war. By Cate Cadell , Lily Kuo and Katrina Northrop / Wash Post
The world’s superpowers are closer to a full economic break than ever before, as President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping refuse to back down.
The world’s two largest powers are closer to a full economic break than ever, as President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping refuse to back down in a trade war that has become a high-stakes game of chicken — raising the specter of mass economic fallout and heightened risk of conflict between Washington and Beijing. Read more
Related: Why China Won’t Give In to Trump. By Michael Schuman / The Atlantic
Trump May Be Triggering the Fastest Nuclear Weapons Race Since the Cold War. By Michael Hirsh / Politico
The new nuclear powers aren’t just the rogue nations that have long been the focus of U.S. concern, countries like Iran and North Korea.
Increasingly, the nations considering going nuclear are longtime U.S. allies, from Germany to South Korea, Japan to Saudi Arabia. Faced with the threat of U.S. withdrawal from its defense commitments, more and more countries are now openly talking about embracing the bomb — and just as worrisome, actually deploying nukes if hostilities break out. Read more
Most Americans view Israel unfavorably in new Pew poll. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
Israel is no longer perceived as David, but as Goliath, the poll suggests.
More than half of U.S. adults now express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, and younger generations on both sides of the political divide are growing more negative in their view of the country. Those are among the findings of a new Pew Research Center poll released Tuesday (April 8). The poll found that 53% of Americans now express a “somewhat” or “very unfavorable” opinion of Israel. This marks an 11-point increase in unfavorable views since March 2022, when Pew asked the same question. Read more
How the G.O.P. Fell in Love With Putin’s Russia. By Jonathan Mahler / NYT
What explains the Trump administration’s radical reversal toward Moscow?
President Trump, it seems, has been radicalized. During his first term, he made no shortage of startlingly pro-Putin comments, and even sided with Russia’s president against his own intelligence agencies. But in the first few months of his second term, Trump has gone much further, overturning decades of American policy toward an adversary virtually overnight. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Black Americans are more likely than other racial groups to express their faith in the workplace. By Elaine Howard Ecklund, Christopher R. Scheitle and Denise Daniels / The Conversation
Nearly 40% of Black workers feel comfortable talking about their faith with people at work, the highest of any U.S. racial group, our two recent studies found. But they also risk facing religious discrimination.
For the past 15 years, we have been studying religion in workplaces. Recently we conducted two studies, including two online surveys involving 15,000 workers and in-depth interviews with nearly 300. Our respondents included Christian, Jewish, Muslim and nonreligious individuals. The majority of Black Americans – nearly 8 in 10 – identify as Christians. And we found that Black workers from all faiths are more likely than other racial groups to use their traditions to find meaning and purpose in their work and to feel “called” to their work. Read more
MAGA’s war on empathy exposes misogynist fears. By Amanda Marcotte / Salon
Elon Musk and the Christian right call empathy “toxic” and “suicidal” — blame their shared misogyny
Much was made in the media, for good reason, of billionaire Elon Musk’s crusade against empathy, an emotion he describes as “suicidal” and the “fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Musk is an atheist, but in this attitude, he is increasingly joined by the Christian right, as Julia Carrie Wong documented at the Guardian this week. A growing chorus of evangelical leaders has taken to calling empathy “sinful,” “toxic,” and “satanic.” Right-wing Catholics are going there, too, with Vice President JD Vance rejecting Jesus’s exhortations to love your neighbor and welcome the stranger, drawing a rebuke from the Pope. Read more
The Rev. William Barber II’s “Hands Off” Rally Speech: “We Cannot and Must Not Bow.” By Rev Dr. William J. Barber II / The Nation
“We cannot be at ease in America. History is pushing us; the present is demanding us; the future is calling us.”
Fifty-seven years ago, Dr King said on the night before he died, “Nothing would be more tragic than for us to turn back now.” God, help us not to turn back from the Constitution’s call to establish justice, promote the general welfare, provide for the common defense, and ensure domestics tranquility. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Could Trump whitewash D.C.’s African American history museum? By Deborah Barfield Berry / USA Today
Adam Sanchez remembers tears streaming down a student’s face as his high school class left the lower level of the National African American Museum of History and Culture a few years ago. “Everyone understood why he had tears in his eyes,” said Sanchez, a former high school history teacher.
The Smithsonian Institution museum opened with much fanfare nine years ago and has been lauded for its mission to share the good and the bad of the Black experience in America, including slavery. Now, it’s also in the sights of President Donald Trump, who called its work part of a “widespread effort to rewrite our nation’s history.” Read more
Appomattox Exposes the Dangers of Myths Replacing History. By Elizabeth R. Varon / Time
Trump’s order included critiques of historians “interrogating institutional racism” and an exhibit at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which suggests that “[s]ocieties including the United States have used race to establish and maintain systems of power, privilege, and disenfranchisement.”
However, modern scholarship asks us to reckon honestly, and unflinchingly, with complex facts and not gloss over painful parts of our history. Trump’s order therefore raises the question: should Americans accept incomplete, or inaccurate, stories of national “greatness” in place of the messy realities of history? The case of one of the famous moments in American history—Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox—dramatically illustrates the dangers of letting myth substitute for accurate history. Read more
What was the Jewish record on slavery? It’s (very) complicated. By Julia M. Klein / Forward
Richard Kreitner’s ‘Fear No Pharaoh” unpacks the myths surrounding Jews and slavery in and around the Civil War and its aftermath
The central thesis of Richard Kreitner’s Fear No Pharaoh is unsurprising: In the 19th-century, American Jews, like their compatriots, were all over the map in their attitudes toward slavery. Geography was a key factor, but not necessarily determinative. Some Jews in the South were slave owners. But some northern Jews were slave traders; others were abolitionists; yet others chose to sit on the antebellum sidelines or inhabit the (shrinking) ideological middle ground. Read more
New Harriet Tubman sculpture in St. Petersburg inspires young storytellers. Douglas R. Clifford / Tampa Bay Times
Students observe and inspect the 13-foot bronze statue, Harriet Tubman — The Beacon of Hope, created by award-winning sculptor Wesley Wofford, while visiting the Woodson African American Museum of Florida’s Legacy Garden on Friday in St. Petersburg
The visit offered students a unique opportunity to report on the intersection of history, art and activism. They experienced firsthand how storytelling can take many forms Wesley Wofford’s sculpture, Harriet Tubman —The Beacon of Hope, symbolizes the legacy of the American icon. Read more
Race isn’t a ‘biological reality,’ contrary to recent political claims − here’s how scientific consensus on race developed in the 20th century. By John P. Jackson Jr. / The Conversation
In the recent flurry of executive orders from President Donald Trump, one warned of “a distorted narrative” about race “driven by ideology rather than truth.” The executive order condemns the Smithsonian exhibition because it “promotes the view that race is not a biological reality but a social construct, stating ‘Race is a human invention.’”
Scientists reject the idea that race is biologically real. The claim that race is a “biological reality” cuts against modern scientific knowledge. I’m a historian who specializes in the scientific study of race. The executive order places “social construct” in opposition to “biological reality.” The history of both concepts reveals how modern science landed at the idea that race was invented by people, not nature. Read more
Sports
50th Anniversary Of Lee Elder: The Black Golf Icon. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
His incredible journey began with humble beginnings in Dallas, Texas. Born in 1934 to Charles Elder, a coal truck driver, and his mother Sadie Elder, Lee grew up in a household that struggled to make ends meet. To help out, the star, then a teen, took up caddying at local golf courses, quickly developing a passion for the sport, The Texas Golf Hall of Fame noted. Read more
Related: The Legacy of the Black Caddies at the Masters. Paul Sullivan / NYT
Related: The week that the Masters color barrier finally fell. By Rick Maese / Wash Post
Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame to honor three legendary journalists in inaugural event. By Gabrielle Heyward / Andscape
William C. Rhoden, Claire Smith, Michael Wilbon among first inductees at North Carolina A&T
History and legacy will be on full display as three legendary Black sportswriters will be honored on April 12 in the inaugural class of the Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame at North Carolina A&T. The inaugural Black Sportswriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony will take place in Deese Ballroom on Saturday at 6 p.m. and tickets can be purchased online. Rob Parker, the first Black sports columnist at the Detroit Free Press, developed the idea after conducting a baseball masterclass at North Carolina A&T in the spring of 2023. Read more
Dwyane Wade’s Greatest Challenge. By D. Watkins / The Atlantic
The Hall of Famer reached the highest heights of the basketball world. Now he’s figuring out the type of man and father he wants to be.
Dwyane Wade speaks during his statue unveiling outside the Kaseya Center, in Miami. The statue’s likeness was immediately mocked online. To Wade, if the sculpture looked strange or monstrous, it befitted that moment in his career: an outburst of raw competitive energy, a pure expression of the rage that had driven him on the court. “It’s not a beauty shot of me,” he later told me. Read more
Michael Jordan has made his feelings on Tiger Woods clear after golfer’s bold claim about NBA star aged just 14. By Mark Sanderson / Sportbible
Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan are two of the biggest icons in the history of sport, as well as friends.
Woods has won 15 majors in golf, including the Masters on five occasions. While Jordan won basketball’s NBA title three times in a row for the Chicago Bulls twice in the 1990s. Not only have both achieved greatness, they both know a thing of two about a comeback. Read more
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