A new report attempts to quantify Donald Trump’s government-assisted attacks on Black people and communities in the U.S.
The “Blackout Report,” published this month by nonprofit research firm Onyx Impact, attempts an accounting of the many ways Trump’s policies have harmed Black folks since his return to office. Onyx Impact has compiled such reports in the past, including last year’s report on Black culture and entertainment platforms that funnel conservative misinformation.
“Black history is American history. Black progress is American progress. Both are now at risk,” the “Blackout Report” reads. “The current administration, its allies, and compliant institutions across the country are waging a dangerous campaign that threatens devastating consequences for Black communities and the nation.”
The president and his administration have disproportionately fired Black government officials, have sought to whitewash Black history at national parks and museums, and have overseen a mass exodus of Black women from the workforce that has coincided with the administration’s attacks on diversity policies. They’ve erased a ban on segregation by federal contractors and have pushed states such as Texas and Missouri to enact gerrymander congressional maps in ways that concentrate Republican power in new, largely white districts at the expense of Black and Latino voters.
The report identifies 15,723 “impact points,” defined as instances or actions that erase, distort or suppress Black history and opportunity. On erasure, for example, the report documents 1,362 instances in which institutions pushed policies that would erase Black history and Black excellence from public memory, including historical content that’s been “deleted from federal websites, pulled from bookshelves, [and] pulled from museum halls.”
A section on “distortion” identifies 14,072 instances of institutions seeking to “distort the truth by rewriting, manipulating, or sanitizing information, datasets, and funding,” the consequence of which is “warping the reality of Black experiences.” The report notes, for example, the Trump administration’s rescission of hundreds of millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health grants, which the administration justified over alleged ties to diversity initiatives. The report’s section on alleged suppression identifies at least 289 instances of the administration attempting to “pressure and intimidate” institutions — governments and business alike — “into silence or compliance, using threats, and investigations, and policy changes” as a cudgel. In one of its many examples, the report references corporations and universities that have scaled back or eliminated diversity programs to accede to Trump and his administration’s anti-diversity demands. Reports like these are helpful for the present day and for the future. The “Blackout Report” documents the scale of the devastation Trump has wrought on Black Americans, and while some might be demoralized by seeing it all collected in one place, that revelation can also be galvanizing. In the future, detailed reports like these serve as powerful and abundant record should the victims of this destruction choose to seek accountability or recompense. Check out the report below:
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
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