The Rio Stanton Report

Category: Notes On Race & Power

  • Same Old Politics, Different Welfare Stereotype

    Same Old Politics, Different Welfare Stereotype

    Well, well, well. Republicans around the country, especially in Arkansas, are upset that Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ new political ad shows a young White man as a “welfare queen.” They are now turning against her for portraying a White man on welfare. They argue that White people have been discriminated against for decades (who has the “victim mindset” again?) and that the commercial should have shown a woman, particularly a Black woman (or a Black person in general), as the problem welfare recipient.

    And part of me agrees that the welfare recipient in the ad was not an accurate portrayal… but not for the racist and sexist reasons they are citing.

    The trope of the lazy young gamer is problematic by itself and many of these unemployed gamers are not on welfare. If they are not actively looking for work, they are usually being financially supported by parents, spouses, domestic partners, siblings, or other family members. Plus, most people who game regularly are employed.

    As for actual welfare recipients, more White people are on welfare than Black people. This is the part where the racists start talking about per capita. But in this case, per capita doesn’t matter. Most people in Arkansas who are on welfare are White (54%). Only 31% of welfare recipients in Arkansas are Black. This means that the face of welfare in Arkansas should more than likely be White, since more White people are on welfare than Black people by sheer number.

    The trope of lazy welfare recipients was popularized in the 1960s after Black people were allowed to participate in those programs. This was also when many conservative Southern politicians from both parties started imposing eligibility rules for welfare that removed men, especially Black men, from the home. Contrary to a popular talking point, it was not President Lyndon Johnson who removed Black men from the home. It was conservative Southern and Midwestern legislatures and governors, most of them Democrats, who started these policies locally and pushed for them to be implemented nationally. These policies were designed to punish Black families for participating in programs originally intended only for White families. Since then, Black people using public housing, housing assistance, food stamps, and other programs we collectively think of as “welfare” have been classified as “lazy” and saddled with other negative stereotypes. This happened despite many of them working low-paying jobs and despite many White families receiving welfare for generations.

    White conservatives need the narrative of Black welfare abuse to advance White supremacy and mask their own dependence on government assistance. In their minds, they use assistance because they need it. Black people use it because they supposedly lack morals and diligence. That is what they think. And then they wonder why they are constantly called “racist” and “bigoted.”

    They also hate that the commercial didn’t feature a woman. Because, Lord knows, you can feature a man with a chronic disability receiving Social Security benefits while mostly appearing able-bodied, and that disability never seems to bother them except when asked to work. But let’s demonize the woman he had children with while ignoring his failure to provide for them. Behind many women who need welfare is a deadbeat father who doesn’t provide for his children.

    This is not to shit on people receiving any form of welfare, including disability benefits. However, we need to stop with the racist and sexist tropes, stereotypes, and narratives around welfare.

    Do people abuse welfare? Yes. All types of people abuse welfare, including the rich…especially the rich. Elon Musk is one of the biggest “welfare queens” out there, spending much of his time playing video games and reposting Nazi propaganda on X. But no one talks about him or gets angry at him. “But Elon Musk is a ‘job creator!’” So are the Somali daycare owners you are now demonizing based on a deceptively produced and edited video by a conservative, made to make the whole community look bad. Again, you wonder why we think of you as “racist” and “bigoted.”

    The point is that all tropes are bad, especially when they are used to demonize the economically downtrodden. Whether it is a Black family, a single White mother, or a young unemployed gamer (of any race), these tropes and stereotypes need to go. We need to stop trying to punish individuals and families for being poor. We need to stop defining and demonizing whole groups of poor people based on the actions of a relative few. We need to stop the exploitation of labor and theft of wages by large corporations that underpay their employees and make them need welfare to live.

    This is my problem with Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ campaign commercial. It’s the same old conservative pastime of punching down. With Sanders, the targets are unemployed gamers and all welfare recipients. With her conservative critics, the targets are women and Black people. It all has to stop.

  • Nation-Building Requires Reality, Not Conspiracy Theories

    Nation-Building Requires Reality, Not Conspiracy Theories

    One of the biggest mistakes I see in some corners of the Black community is the tendency to give white people far too much credit.

    White people are not omniscient.

    They are not omnipotent.

    They do not spend centuries carrying out flawless master plans that unfold exactly as intended. History simply doesn’t support that view.

    Most governments, corporations, and powerful institutions don’t operate like the cartoonish villains in a Hollywood movie. Their conspiracies (when they exist) are usually messy, short-sighted, reactive, and often exposed much sooner than people imagine. They make mistakes. They fight among themselves. They pursue immediate political or economic gains without fully understanding the long-term consequences of their decisions.

    History is full of examples where powerful people achieved one objective only to create entirely new problems they never anticipated.

    That doesn’t make oppression any less real. I am certainly not arguing that. Rather, it simply makes the oppressors more human.

    Unfortunately, some people have embraced a worldview where every historical event is interpreted as evidence of an elaborate, centuries-long conspiracy that only a handful of self-proclaimed “enlightened” YouTubers can supposedly decode.

    I don’t buy it.

    Ironically, this kind of thinking can become a form of white supremacy itself.

    Why?

    Because it assumes that Europeans and their descendants possess almost supernatural intelligence and foresight, and that every outcome in history happened exactly as they intended. It turns them into all-knowing masterminds while reducing everyone else to passive spectators with no agency of their own.

    History is far more complicated than that. Empires rise, and empires fall. Wars produce unintended consequences. Economic systems evolve. And, technology changes societies in unexpected ways.

    Entire civilizations have been transformed by accidents, disease, environmental changes, and decisions that looked reasonable at the time but produced completely unforeseen results.

    The world we live in today wasn’t built from one perfect blueprint. Instead, it emerged from countless successes, failures, conflicts, compromises, and historical accidents.

    The same applies to European dominance.

    Europeans didn’t become globally dominant because they were biologically smarter than everyone else. Wealth, geography, trade networks, military competition, access to resources, political institutions, and centuries of technological development all contributed to that outcome. And let’s not forget the unfortunate accidental “luck” of wiping out most of the people on two continents with new diseases. The Innovation tends to flourish where societies have the resources, security, and incentives to pursue it.

    More importantly, what we choose to believe affects what we choose to do.

    If we convince ourselves that every aspect of our current reality was perfectly engineered hundreds of years ago, we risk believing that nothing can be changed. This fatalism has never liberated anyone and saps people of any real empowerment.

    This is one reason I have little patience for theories claiming that the countless slave ledgers documenting the forced transportation of Africans across the Atlantic are all fabricated because “they” supposedly want us to believe we’re Africans instead of Native Americans or ancient Israelites.

    The historical evidence overwhelmingly points to the fact that Black Americans are primarily descendants of West and West-Central Africans. Accepting that reality doesn’t diminish us. It does the opposite. It connects us to one of the richest, oldest, and most diverse regions in human history.

    Instead of spending our energy chasing increasingly elaborate conspiracy theories, we should be asking far more practical questions:

    How do we build stronger Black-owned businesses?

    How do we create institutions that outlive us?

    How do we increase homeownership?

    How do we educate our children about African and African American history?

    How do we develop economic relationships with countries throughout Africa and the wider African diaspora?

    How do we build wealth instead of merely talking about it?

    These questions are much more important than hanging on to weird conspiracy theories.

    Nation-building is harder than conspiracy-building. It requires discipline instead of speculation, investment instead of internet debates, and cooperation instead of division.

    If we truly want liberation, then our greatest challenge isn’t uncovering another secret plot.

    Our greatest challenge is building communities that are economically independent, culturally confident, politically organized, and connected to the broader African world.

    That’s work worth doing. Everything else is just a distraction.

  • America’s Racial Problem Is Not in the Past, And I’m Tired of People Pretending It Is

    America’s Racial Problem Is Not in the Past, And I’m Tired of People Pretending It Is

    One of the most frustrating parts of talking about racism in America is how often people act as if it is either exaggerated, isolated, or long behind us. Every time I say that most white Americans have, at minimum, participated in or benefited from racist systems and behavior, there is always a predictable backlash. The conversation shifts from the reality of racism to defensive utterances, including people charging me with racism, exaggerated claims of Black culpability in slavery, sloppy attempts to “both-sides” racism, and arguing that racism was a past reality that black people need to get over.

    But history (and the present) tell a very different story, and I’m not pulling that conclusion out of thin air.

    I’m looking at history, voting patterns, where people choose to live, how they react when Black people move into their neighborhoods, what they tolerate politically, and what I have personally watched happen over and over again in this country.

    In 1991, David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, won 55% of the white vote when he ran for governor of Louisiana. Let that sink in. A man whose public identity was openly tied to white supremacy won a majority of white voters, including 40% of white Democrats. That was not the distant 1800s. That was the early 1990s.

    And this pattern is not an isolated one. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Democratic presidential candidates have consistently struggled to win the white vote. Even in 1976, when Jimmy Carter performed unusually well among white voters, Gerald Ford still won them overall. That should force us to ask uncomfortable questions about what racial backlash has looked like in American politics for the last half-century.

    These are not random or meaningless occurances. And it is not just “economic anxiety.” This is racism built into the bloodstream of American politics and manifest through voting decisions and patterns.

    The same dynamic has shaped where people live, where they send their children to school, and how they define “good” neighborhoods and “bad” neighborhoods. White flight did not happen by accident. It was not simply about “better schools” or “quality of life.”

    For decades, study after study (and plain old lived reality) has shown that white people love to talk about diversity until Black people actually start moving in next door. White families will say they want “good communities” and “nice neighborhoods,” but once a place becomes “too Black” (usually with a Black population at or above 10%), all of a sudden the moving trucks come out and the “For Sale” signs start multiplying like weeds.

    In community after community, once Black families moved in, white families moved out. I have seen it with my own eyes. Entire white communities expanded further and further outward, into what had once been farmland, not because they were escaping crime or collapse, but because too many Black people had moved nearby.

    And it did not matter if those Black families were educated, professional, stable, or middle class. Their Blackness alone was enough for those white families to flee further into the suburbs.

    We want to act like racism was just Bull Connor, George Wallace, fire hoses, and white robes. We want to tell ourselves that racism was a regrettable chapter that “we overcame,” and now the only real racists are a few cartoonishly evil people at the margins.

    That is a lie.

    Racism in America was never just about the loudest extremists. It has always depended on ordinary white people making racist choices in ordinary ways: where they live, who they vote for, what schools they support, what fears they indulge, what policies they excuse, and what kind of treatment of Black people they are willing to rationalize.

    I saw white parents rage against school bussing while talking about Black children as if they were grave threats. I saw anti-Black hostility dressed up as “concern” and “standards.” I saw white resentment toward Barack Obama, a man raised largely by white family members, treated as if he were some dangerous racial radical simply for existing in the White House while Black.

    So no, I was not surprised when Donald Trump rose to power by openly winking at white grievance and white nationalism. I was not surprised when racist attacks on women of color energized parts of his base. I have seen this movie before.

    A lot of white Americans want to be absolved without being examined.

    They want credit for not wearing a hood while still supporting racist politicians, racist policies, racist housing patterns, racist school systems, and racist cultural assumptions.

    That’s not how this works.

    America’s racial problem has never been confined to a handful of extremists in white robes. That is the lie people tell themselves so they do not have to examine the everyday racism embedded in housing, education, politics, media, and social life. Racism in America has never just been about “bad people.” It has been about a society that trained millions of ordinary people to see whiteness as the norm, the standard, and the default.

    And that is the real issue.

    If white Americans are tired of being associated with racism, then the answer is not to get offended when people point it out. The answer is to stop supporting racist policies, racist politicians, racist assumptions, and racist social arrangements. Stop demanding that people of color quietly assimilate into a system built to marginalize them. Stop treating whiteness as the universal model of what is “normal,” “civilized,” or “American.”

    Because America’s racial problem is not ancient history. It is not dead. And pretending otherwise is part of the problem.

  • Reanimating History: Using Deepfakes to Educate, Not Deceive

    Reanimating History: Using Deepfakes to Educate, Not Deceive

    When most people hear the term “deepfake,” they immediately think of misinformation. This is immediately what I thought. I think of fake speeches, manipulated videos, and the erosion of trust in what we see online. And to be fair, that concern is still very real for me. Deepfakes have already been used to put words in people’s mouths and create events that never happened.

    But what if we flipped that narrative?

    What if deepfake technology could be used not to deceive, but to educate?

    For this project, I propose a beneficial use of deepfakes: recreating historical figures like Huey P. Newton and Fred Hampton in a clearly labeled, transparent, educational format. The goal is not to trick viewers into believing they are watching real footage, but to bring history to life in a way that is accessible, engaging, and emotionally impactful, especially for younger audiences.

    Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and Fred Hampton, the charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter, were central figures in the struggle for Black liberation in the late 1960s. Their words, ideas, and activism continue to resonate today.

    They are two of my favorite heroes in the fight for Black Liberation and Black leftist thought and activism.

    But for many people, they remain misunderstood and distant historical figures rather than living voices.

    Using deepfake technology, we could recreate these figures delivering their actual speeches, drawn directly from verified historical texts and archives. For example, Newton’s writings on self-defense and community programs could be presented in a video format that allows viewers to “see” and “hear” him speak. Similarly, Hampton’s speeches on economic unity and coalition-building can be reconstructed to highlight his vision vividly and compellingly.

    Importantly, this project would be built on transparency. Every video would include clear disclaimers stating that it is a digitally recreated performance based on historical records. The script would be sourced from credible materials such as the National Archives and educational foundations, ensuring accuracy and respect for the historical record.

    This approach could be especially powerful in classrooms and digital media spaces, where attention spans are short and traditional text-based learning can struggle to connect. Seeing Newton and Hampton speak, even in a recreated form, could spark curiosity, empathy, and deeper engagement with history.

    If done responsibly, deepfakes don’t have to be a threat. They can be a bridge, connecting past and present, and helping important voices continue to be heard.

    An AI image of Huey P. Newton and Fred Hampton having a discussion in an office decorated with pictures, books, and slogans.
    A deepfake video of Huey P. Newton and Fred Hampton having a conversation based on speeches, writings, and other evidence could educate many people on the mission, impact, and legacy of the Black Panther Party.
  • Pan-Africanism, Repatriation, and the Hard Truths I Didn’t Want to Admit

    Pan-Africanism, Repatriation, and the Hard Truths I Didn’t Want to Admit

    It gives me no pleasure to write this, but I need to be honest with myself… and with everyone who has followed my thoughts on Africa, Pan-Africanism, and repatriation.

    For the past several years, I have seriously considered repatriating to Africa, especially Ghana. I’m not trying to do this as some fantasy vacation or “spiritual journey,” but as a real-life project. I saw myself, and still see myself, as part of something bigger. I saw myself as contributing, building, and helping blaze a trail for other people in the African diaspora who wanted to reconnect materially, politically, and culturally with the continent.

    And to be clear: I never went into this thinking Africa would be paradise.

    I already understood that many things Americans take for granted, such as reliable utilities, stable infrastructure, predictable bureaucracy, clean drinking water, consistent internet, traffic laws, and public systems that mostly function, are not guaranteed in many African countries. I also already knew that corruption, bribery, and dysfunction are real parts of daily life in many places.

    But there is one issue that I have tried to rationalize for too long. That issue is scam culture.

    More and more Black American expats and Diasporans are citing it as one of the main reasons they leave Africa and return to the United States. And honestly, I can no longer dismiss that as whining, cultural ignorance, or anti-African cynicism.

    When people constantly raise prices, exploit your unfamiliarity, or see you first and foremost as a walking wallet, it destroys trust. And without trust, there can be no real unity.

    Yes, poverty is real. Yes, exploitation by the global North has devastated much of Africa. Yes, many people are surviving however they can. I understand all of that.

    But theft is still theft.

    And if the relationship between Africans on the continent and people in the diaspora is going to mean anything, it cannot be built on symbolic slogans while one side is constantly being hustled by the other.

    That does not mean I have abandoned Pan-Africanism.

    Far from it.

    I still believe deeply that unity among African peoples and the diaspora is essential to Black liberation. I still believe that a strong Africa (economically, militarily, scientifically, and industrially) is necessary if Black people anywhere are going to be taken seriously in a world that often sees us as little more than labor, entertainment, or obstacles to resource extraction.

    However, belief in unity cannot mean dishonesty.

    If we are serious about building a future together, we must be willing to say hard things out loud. We cannot build solidarity while normalizing exploitation among ourselves. We cannot discuss nation-building while preying on each other for crumbs.

    I still believe in African settlement. I still believe in African people.

    I still believe the diaspora has something valuable to offer the continent, and that Africa has much to teach us in return.

    But if we are ever going to build real bridges between us, those bridges will have to be built on more than romance, symbolism, and rhetoric.

    They will have to be built on trust.

  • Africa Is Not One People… And That Changes How We Should Think About Slavery, Identity, and Pan-Africanism

    Africa Is Not One People… And That Changes How We Should Think About Slavery, Identity, and Pan-Africanism

    A picture of Fulani women from iStock. The women have blue traditional garb, makeup, and Fulani jewelry and braids with headdresses on.
    Fulani women wearing traditional garb.

    One of the biggest lessons I keep learning while in Africa is something uncomfortable, but necessary to understand:

    In a deeply twisted way, chattel slavery and apartheid in the Western world helped force Africans in the diaspora into a single racialized identity.

    The “Black” identity became politically real and socially unavoidable in the Americas and much of Europe. But Africa itself did not historically evolve around that kind of singular identity. And if we are serious about understanding African history, slavery, and even Pan-Africanism, we have to start there.

    A group of San people. Some of them are standing. Some are sitting on the ground.
    San bush people gather in the setting sun, Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana, Southern Africa. The San are an ancient indigenous tribal people who inhabited much of southern Africa, and although few in number today remain proud of their culture, ancestry, and traditional ways of dress, customs, and behaviour that included subsistence hunting and foraging

    Africa Is Not a Monolith

    Africa is the most ethnically and genetically diverse continent on Earth. That matters more than most people realize.

    Many people outside the continent talk about “Africans” as if they are one people who are arbitrarily divided by colonial borders. But that is not really how Africa works. Across the continent, and even within individual countries, there exist many different ethnic groups with their own languages, cultures, religious traditions, histories, and political identities.

    A selfie taken at the Meskel celebration with my fiance.
    A picture of me and my fiancé at the Meskel festival in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

    Take Ethiopia as an example. To outsiders, they are all simply “Ethiopian.” But within Ethiopia, people may identify first as Oromo, Tigray, Amhara, Afar, or something else entirely. Those identities are not cosmetic. They are rooted in deep histories, sometimes cooperation, sometimes rivalry, and sometimes conquest. These groups have their own languages, cultures, and histories that may seem similar to outsiders but are very distinct to Ethiopians themselves.

    An AI generated image comparing the different ethnicities of Ethiopia.
    Some of the ethnicities in Ethiopia.

    That is one reason why the question, “Why did Africans sell their own people into slavery?” is often framed misleadingly.

    In many cases, they did not see the people they were selling as “their own people” in the way we mean that phrase today. That doesn’t excuse it morally, but it does make it historically legible.

    A Weird Thought Experiment as a Comparison

    An AI generated picture with different hypothetical ethnicities of people on a map of the mainland United States.
    A relatively small number of the hypothetical American ethnicities in my thought experiment. These are the different people I imagined if the current makeup of the United States were allowed to develop separately for a long period of time.

    Let’s imagine that the United States is much older than it is. Let’s, in turn, imagine that each region was able to evolve in some isolation for a long time. The Californians will have a different culture and possibly a different language from the Cajuns, the Appalachians, the Lakers to the North, the Dixies, the Floridians, the Plains Folk, the Northeasterners, etc.

    Even right now, with all of us identifying as “American”, except with a hyphenated race identifying prefix, we are different people regionally, with different political ideologies.

    The Dixies (the people of the Deep South) have ALWAYS been very conservative, religious, and loyal to hierarchical systems, whether it was ruled by Republicans, Democrats, Whigs, Democratic-Republicans, Federalists, Loyalists, or whatever party or faction.

    This is different than the Lakers of the eastern parts of the upper Midwest (from Michigan to Minnesota). The Lakers have always been more liberal, regardless of their political party allegiance.

    Lakers and Dixies are different.

    An AI generated picture highlighting the differences of the Lakers and the Dixies.
    The Lakers and the Dixies are different people in this thought experiment, but their attitudes and sentiments come from reality.

    Dixies are the descendants of Scots, Irish, Africans, and Native Americans. Lakers are the descendants of Scandinavians, the French, and Native Americans.

    Please keep in mind that this is a weird thought experiment to explain African sentiment.

    If the Dixies and Lakers were separated by up to 300K years and have evolved their own languages and customs, then why should we expect them to think of each other as “one people?” If the Dixies and Lakers are different now after only 250 years. Imagine how different they would be after 500 years, 1000 years, 10K years, 50K years, 70K years, 100K years, 150K years, and 300K years. And naturally, the Lakers and Dixies will branch into smaller subgroups and so forth.

    A Better Comparison

    A better comparison would be asking:

    • Why did the Greeks enslave the Macedonians?
    • Why did Spartans dominate Athenians?
    • Why did rival European peoples conquer one another for centuries?

    The answer is simple: they did not see themselves as one people.

    That is much closer to how many African societies historically understood themselves. Ethnicity, kinship, language, and political allegiance mattered more than some broad racial solidarity that would only become more meaningful later under European domination.

    What Slavery and White Supremacy Changed

    For Black people in the diaspora, however, the story was very different.

    In the United States, especially, people of African descent were stripped of their original ethnic identities and grouped into a single racial caste. Whether your ancestors were Igbo, Wolof, Mende, Akan, Kongo, or something else became socially irrelevant in a white supremacist society that only saw one category: Black.

    That process was violent, dehumanizing, and catastrophic.

    But it also produced a single peoplehood forged through oppression. This is something new.

    Black Americans today may have major internal cultural differences, such as Gullah, Creole, Black Midwesterners, Black Southerners, Black Northeasterners, and so on. However, we are still socially treated as one people. In that sense, our race had become our ethnicity and historical/cultural marker.

    A royalty free image from Dreamstime of Gullah.
    The Gullah people.

    Africa and the Diaspora Are Related, But Not the Same

    That is part of what makes the relationship between continental Africans and the diaspora so complicated.

    We are connected by ancestry, by history, and by racialization in a white-dominated world. But we are not simply interchangeable. Africans are not automatically “us,” and we are not automatically “them,” at least not in a cultural or ethnic sense.

    That doesn’t mean the connection is fake. It means the connection has to be understood honestly.

    This is the same for Black Americans, Black Canadians, Black Jamaicans, Afro-Latinos, and other Diasporans. We’ve been separated long enough to have different cultures, different linguistic rules, and different sets of values.

    And that honesty matters because it opens the door to a more mature version of Pan-Africanism based not on fantasy, but on political solidarity.

    The Future of Pan-Africanism

    An AI image of the African Diaspora represented by a tree.
    The Black World Tree by Dike Obioma Matthew. He had permitted me to use this image on my blog. In this, he makes the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade the Trunk of the tree uniting the people of many different roots before they are branched off.

    The encouraging thing is that many Africans and people across the diaspora are increasingly embracing a broader consciousness.

    More and more people are beginning to see that, whatever their ethnic or national differences, they share a common struggle against White supremacy, neocolonialism, extraction, and domination.

    In that sense, Pan-Africanism is not about pretending all Black people are the same. We are not. But neither are White people nor Asians.

    It is about recognizing that we do not have to be the same to fight for one another.

    That is the challenge and the promise.

    Africa does not need to dominate the world. Neither does the diaspora.

    The goal is about something much more meaningful than some bullshit race to the top.

    Our goal is about self-determination, dignity, cooperation, and the power to shape our own destiny without the aid, supervision, or permission of powerful developed countries run by those of European or Asian descent.

  • American History Myths #6: The Myth of “Northern Innocence”

    American History Myths #6: The Myth of “Northern Innocence”

    One of the most persistent myths in American history is the idea that legalized segregation and anti-Black racism were primarily Southern problems.

    According to this narrative, the South was the land of slavery, Jim Crow, and overt racial hostility, while the North, especially the so-called “liberal North,” was supposedly a place where racial equality flourished, and people lived together in relative harmony.

    For decades, this is essentially how American history was taught.

    But the reality is far more complicated.

    Anti-Black racism was not confined to the South. It existed throughout the United States, including in Northern cities that often presented themselves as progressive and tolerant. While Southern states openly enforced segregation through Jim Crow laws, Northern states frequently relied on other mechanisms to achieve many of the same results.

    One of the most powerful tools used to maintain racial segregation in Northern and Western cities was the racial covenant.

    Racial covenants were clauses written into property deeds by real estate developers, neighborhood associations, and homeowners. These clauses prohibited the sale or rental of property to certain groups, most commonly Black Americans, but also often including Asian Americans, Jews, and other minorities.

    Example of a racial covenant. Note the words “Restricted to the Caucasian Race”

    These restrictions were widespread across the country. Entire neighborhoods were built with the explicit condition that homes could not be sold to non-white residents.

    The consequences were enormous.

    By restricting where Black families could live, racial covenants effectively barred them from access to wealthier neighborhoods, better public schools, and the property values that allowed many white families to accumulate generational wealth through home ownership.

    Racial covenants were only one piece of a larger system of discrimination often referred to as racial steering or social steering. Through practices by real estate agents, banks, and government institutions, different racial groups were deliberately directed or confined to specific areas of cities and metropolitan regions.

    Although the Supreme Court ruled racially restrictive covenants unenforceable in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlawed many forms of housing discrimination, the patterns created by decades of segregation did not disappear overnight.

    Ethel Shelley reads a May 4, 1948, St. Louis Post-Dispatch story about the Supreme Court decision outlawing racial covenants. (Courtesy St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

    In many cases, they persisted.

    Even today, many American cities remain deeply segregated along racial lines. Schools often reflect the same residential patterns, meaning that educational opportunities can still be shaped by where families are able… or allowed… to live.

    Click on the link attached to the word “schools” in the paragraph above for more information on this map.

    Understanding this history challenges the comfortable narrative that racism was solely a Southern problem. The structures that created racial inequality in the United States were national in scope, and their effects continue to shape American society today.

    The myth of Northern innocence obscures that reality.

  • Trust, History, and the Controversy Over Leave the World Behind

    Trust, History, and the Controversy Over Leave the World Behind

    A line from the film Leave the World Behind has recently sparked outrage among conservative commentators:

    “I’m sorry, but if the world falls apart, trust should not be given easily to anyone… especially white people.”

    The quote, spoken by the character Ruth Washington (played by Myha’la Herrold), has been interpreted by critics as an example of “anti-white racism” and “woke propaganda.”

    But the reaction misses the larger historical context behind the sentiment.

    The scene itself depicts a tense, pre-apocalyptic situation. A Black family returns to their own home, even though white vacationers are renting it through Airbnb. The white family, especially the matriarch, is immediately distrustful of them. Although the house belongs to the Black family, the white characters initially assume they must be staff or impostors.

    Even when the owner of the house offers to refund half of their money and has the key to a locked drawer, the white matriarch still views them as dangerously and criminally suspicious.

    Anyone familiar with American racial dynamics knows that situations like this are not purely fictional.

    But the deeper issue raised by the quote is not about a single awkward interaction. It raises a broader question:

    What historical reasons do Black Americans have to extend unconditional trust toward white institutions or white society as a whole?

    The history of the United States complicates that question.

    After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, the promise of freedom for Black Americans was quickly undermined by a series of legal and social systems designed to recreate racial hierarchy. Black Codes, vagrancy laws, convict leasing, peonage, and sharecropping placed many formerly enslaved people back into conditions that closely resembled slavery.

    When Black political power briefly emerged in parts of the South during Reconstruction, it was violently suppressed through campaigns of racial terrorism carried out by groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the Red Shirts.

    The pattern did not stop there.

    From housing discrimination to segregated schools, from redlining to unequal policing, institutions throughout American history have repeatedly produced outcomes that harmed Black communities. Even today, debates continue over disparities in healthcare, environmental exposure, policing, and incarceration.

    The writer James Baldwin addressed this exact problem during a debate on The Dick Cavett Show in 1969. Baldwin explained that distrust was not based on abstract hostility toward white people but on lived evidence produced by American institutions.

    He said:

    “I don’t know what most white people in this country feel. But I can only [conclude] what they feel from the state of their institutions.”

    Baldwin’s point was simple but powerful. His point was that people judge a society not by its ideals, but by its outcomes.

    If institutions repeatedly disadvantage a group of people, it is unrealistic to expect that group to respond with automatic trust.

    This helps explain many of the cultural dynamics that outsiders often misunderstand. Black Americans frequently “gatekeep” aspects of their culture, remain skeptical of institutions, and react strongly to racial issues that others see as trivial.

    Those reactions are not random or irrational. They emerge from decades and centuries of historical experience.

    None of this means that every individual white person is malicious or untrustworthy. But collective histories shape collective perceptions.

    If trust is going to grow between communities, it cannot be demanded through outrage over a line in a movie. It has to be earned through meaningful changes in the institutions and behaviors that produced the distrust in the first place.

    History matters.

    And until that history is confronted honestly, lines like the one in Leave the World Behind will continue to resonate with many viewers, even as others find them uncomfortable.

  • Diaspora Divisions and the Cost of Infighting

    Diaspora Divisions and the Cost of Infighting

    One of the trends I have become increasingly frustrated with in recent years is the rise of diaspora conflicts among people of African descent, particularly the rhetoric coming from the Foundational Black American (FBA) movement and the American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS) movement.

    My criticism is not about recognizing the unique historical experience of Black Americans whose ancestors endured slavery and segregation in the United States. That history is real and deserves to be studied and acknowledged.

    Nor is my disagreement with these groups over the fight for reparations and the hypothetical distribution of any amount of personal funds that is a direct result of said fight.

    The problem arises when that recognition turns into hostility toward other Black communities, such as Africans, Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and others within the broader African diaspora (the sixth region of Africa).

    Movements that frame liberation as a zero-sum competition between groups of Black people misunderstand the history of Black struggle.

    Black liberation movements have always been global.

    Pan-African thinkers, such as Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, and many others, understood that the struggle against racism and colonialism was not confined to a single country. Activists, intellectuals, and artists from across the African diaspora have participated in and led movements for civil rights, cultural expression, and political freedom.

    This global exchange of ideas and customs had always shaped Black American culture.

    Music, political ideas, literature, and social movements have flowed back and forth between the United States, Europe, Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America. That cross-pollination helped create many of the cultural forms and political traditions that people celebrate today.

    For that reason, turning these relationships into ideological battlegrounds does not strengthen Black communities. Instead, it weakens them.

    Diaspora conflicts often distract from the structural issues that affect people of African descent globally: economic inequality, systemic discrimination, political marginalization, and the long historical legacy of colonialism and racial hierarchy.

    Even debates about policies such as reparations often become framed in ways that pit Black communities against one another. Yet those discussions are largely hypothetical at the moment, given that meaningful reparations programs in the United States remain politically distant.

    Arguing among ourselves over potential future policies does little to advance the broader goals of empowerment, economic development, and collective liberation.

    If the goal is Black power, Black wealth, and meaningful progress, then building solidarity across the African diaspora is far more productive than deepening internal divisions.

    That does not mean ignoring real disagreements or historical differences.

    But it does mean recognizing that the struggles of people of African descent have always been interconnected, and that fragmentation ultimately benefits those who would prefer those struggles to remain divided.

  • Being Pro-Black Is Not the Same as Being Anti-White

    Being Pro-Black Is Not the Same as Being Anti-White

    Every so often in public conversations about race, someone will attempt to discredit a person’s arguments by accusing them of hatred or extremism that they never expressed. This tactic usually relies on exaggeration, misrepresentation, or outright fabrication.

    Recently, someone repeatedly accused me of calling for genocide against white people. This is an accusation that is not only false but absurd.

    Let me be clear about something.

    I will never apologize for being pro-Black. I will never apologize for identifying as a Pan-Africanist, and I will never apologize for calling out anti-Black racism wherever I see it. Advocating for the dignity, safety, and advancement of Black people does not require hostility toward anyone else.

    But I do care about being truthful about what I believe.

    I do not hate white people. What I oppose, firmly and unapologetically, is the ideology and practice of white supremacy. Those two things are not the same.

    White supremacy is a political and social system that places one racial group above others. It has shaped laws, institutions, and cultural narratives throughout much of modern history. Criticizing that system is not an attack on individual white people; it is a critique of a structure of power and inequality.

    In fact, many of the people who helped shape my life in positive ways have been white.

    Throughout my life, white friends, mentors, and supporters have offered encouragement, assistance, and opportunities when I needed them most. Some believed in me when I did not believe in myself. Others provided support during moments when I was struggling personally and emotionally.

    Those experiences are part of my life story, and they make it impossible to honestly claim that I hate white people.

    At the same time, acknowledging those personal relationships does not mean ignoring the reality of racism. Structural racism and discriminatory narratives continue to shape how people of color, especially Black Americans, are perceived and treated in many areas of society.

    Recognizing that reality is not hatred. It is an observation.

    Just as individuals and communities should be willing to confront sexism, homophobia, ableism, or other forms of discrimination, societies must also be willing to confront racism honestly. Criticism of injustice is not the same as prejudice against a group of people.

    Too often, accusations of “reverse racism” or extreme hostility are used as rhetorical shields to avoid confronting difficult conversations about race and inequality.

    But refusing to acknowledge racism does not make it disappear.

    Advocating for justice, dignity, and equality for Black people does not require hostility toward other groups. It simply requires honesty about history, power, and the realities that many people still experience.

    Being pro-Black is not about hatred. It is about refusing to remain silent in the face of injustice.