Read it.

Commenter “Kate” linked to this thread on “X” by John McWhorter, about Karmelo Anthony and his motives for stabbing Austin Metcalf. I had read the thread last night; it’s long, so I’m just giving the link here and discussing some excerpts.

The Foundry.

The Trump administration has struck another blow against DEI, this time issuing a lawsuit against a “first of its kind” racial reparations program in Illinois.

In 2019, the city of Evanston, Illinois, approved a “Local Reparations Restorative Housing Program” that was set to hand out tens of millions of dollars to residents—or the descendants of residents—who had allegedly been discriminated against.

What’s notable, and suable, about the Evanston reparations program is that the awardees of cash payments from the city government didn’t have to prove that harm was caused to them or their ancestors.

Instead, eligible recipients have been limited to black adults who lived in the city between 1919 and 1969, along with their children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren.

The Department of Justice noted that the “city has not identified any specific acts of discrimination that violated the constitution or a statute that these payments are intended to remedy.”

The program went into effect in 2021, the height of the Great Awokening, and has distributed a considerable amount of money.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.

Not the Bee.

The way to stop discrimination by race is to stop discriminating by race.

The Guardian, a Voice of the Left.

Savor the irony of a Woke columnist for the Guardian (of all things) complaining about ‘authoritarians’, as if they wouldn’t run (not walk) to put us all under a communist dictatorship.

The ‘authoritarians’ of which he complains, of course are the people who are (gasp) trying to enforce our immigration laws, the people who are (gasp) trying to prevent Democrats from stealing elections, and Everybody in the Trump Administration because, well, Trump (’nuff said).

Not the Jew-hating Muslims attempting to impose sharia law on Americans, not the Jew-hating college students trying to exclude people of which they disapprove from any place in American life, not the BLM/AntiFa rioters who pillage and burn in their ‘mostly peaceful’ activism, not the DEI stormtroopers who are attempting to make sure that no white male anywhere can get any kind of a job (or get promoted if one happens to slip through their clutches), not Democrat apparatchiks who want everybody to send their kids to government schools where they can be properly indoctrinated to Love Big Brother.

Read it for a laugh.

Read it.

Don’t go away mad … just go away.

I think they’d soon regret leeaving America for the Turd World.

Watch it.

Carl Benjamin (Sargon of Akkad) points out how deranged American African culture is.

I sincerely hope that the Metcalf family sue this kids parents for wrongful death and strip them of every cent they have.

Read it.

Much like the feminist movement (or any leftist movement), black rights activism in America has mutated from its original form into something bizarre and monstrous. Civil rights conflicts tend to be born from legitimate grievances if a society’s intention is to create general “equality” under the law. But this is only the surface view, the lipstick, the young and naive version of what these movements are all about.

They appeal to the western sense of honor, reason and fairness. However, there is such a thing as suicidal empathy. The western world has become so infatuated with the idea of total equality that many people are willing to overlook the undeniable and sometimes dangerous differences between ethnic groups and their subcultures.

Lacking the ability to discern and yes, discriminate to a logical degree, is not something the west can afford to do. What happens when civil rights become a license for cultural elimination? White people, a minority in decline with 11% of the global population, have to stop exercising empathy and start exercising caution.

The Karmelo Anthony case is just one of many examples of expansive minority violence against white Americans being justified in the name of civil rights. To be sure, there are many black conservatives out there who do not agree and they are being targeted by left-wing activists for speaking out. But sadly, a vast majority of blacks in the US are captured by the far-left plantation.

The New Neo.

Some people consider Karmelo Anthony the innocent victim here. My sense is that the people reacting this way to the Anthony verdict are a relatively small group, but they’re very vocal and getting a lot of media attention. The group is composed of extremely angry black people and virtue-signaling white “progressives.” But even one person reacting this way is one too many.

Read it.

“My son was defending himself.”

All the evidence to the contrary. He rammed this blade two inches into Austin Metcalf’s heart after making violent threats to Austin and his friends.

“All-white jury.”

No it wasn’t.

Media reports indicate “Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern individuals” on the jury, including a woman in a hijab. Other reports indicate at least one of the Asian individuals was Indian.

But think about what she is saying. Her worldview seems to be obsessed with skin color. She’s implying that white people are automatically going to be racist simply because their skin is white.

Read it.

You gotta give him credit for originality. Most crooks will just make a run for it. Some of them might call their lawyer. It’s rare that they call the very same people that are arresting them!

Mr. Gonzalez met a rather predictable fate in this exchange.

Read it.

Karmelo Anthony, who is black, was arrested in 2025 after he stabbed and killed Austin Metcalf, who is white, at a track meet at Kuykendall Stadium in Frisco, Texas.  Karmelo has been charged with first-degree murder: the unlawful killing of another, with malice aforethought and specific intent.

In the past several days 600 people were reviewed to generate a potential pool of 250 jurors.  The 250 were further whittled down to 12 with six alternates.  The jury selection is over and the opening statements in the trial will likely begin tomorrow.  The jury will not be sequestered during trial.

The killing is not being disputed by the defense, there were dozens of witnesses to the murder.  However, the defense is claiming ‘stand your ground’ and ‘self-defense’ as justification for the killing.  The defense is also promoting a motive of racism for everything surrounding the event between Metcalf and Anthony and throughout the pre-trial motions and public positioning.

Read it.

Meet John Elijah Matthews, who I’m sure had nothing to do with the attack.

Read it.

The Center Square—A nonprofit, Ohio-based think tank is demanding that Cleveland end what the organization calls its race-based contracting programs, saying they are “unconstitutional and discriminatory.”

“It has now been more than a year since the city of Cleveland publicly recognized that it must abandon its unconstitutional race-based programs,” David C. Tryon, director of litigation at the Buckeye Institute, wrote in a recent letter to Cleveland. “Failure to end these discriminatory programs leaves the city open to legal action, and The Buckeye Institute stands ready to assist any individual or business denied access to any contracting opportunities based on race.”

Cleveland has several programs that include race requirements for contractors who want to do business with the city, according to the Buckeye Institute.

One of those is the Minority Business Enterprise program, the institute said.

The program certifies companies based on the race of the owners, the institute said.

“Cleveland awards race-certified MBEs a 5% race-based bid discount when evaluating contract bids,” the institute said in a news release.

There’s that White Privilege again.

Read it.

Two people died in central Kenya during a protest against a planned U.S. Ebola quarantine facility, a protest organizer and security source told Reuters on Tuesday, as President William Ruto rebuffed criticism it will endanger Kenyans.

Not a problem. Let ’em die, and good riddance.

Read it.

When I see “African” I think ‘freeloader”. I have never seen any evidence that contradicts that.

Read it.

On December 3rd last year, 18-year-old Henry Nowak, a first-year student at the University of Southampton, was stabbed four times by his alleged attacker, Vickrum Digwa. As a Sikh, Digwa was permitted to carry a ceremonial kirpan knife. Perhaps this wasn’t butch enough, however, so he decided to complete his arsenal with an 8-inch blade or shastar (a Punjabi word for ‘weapon’ or ‘knife’), just to be on the safe side. The trial at Southampton Crown Court has heard how Digwa “aggressively pursued” his victim, inflicted the fatal wounds, and stood over him as he bled. In Snapchat footage recorded moments before the attack, Nowak taunted Digwa to say he was a bad man. Digwa replied: “I am a bad man.” He did not call for help.

Here’s the problem for Nowak: he was white; his assailant was not. Which means Digwa was perfectly within his rights to play the race card and did so to maximum effect.

When the police arrived at the scene, they handcuffed the collapsed victim (which must have been a relief to those concerned about where his blood was going). According to bodycam footage played in court, Nowak repeatedly told the officers that he had been stabbed and “couldn’t breathe.” They still handcuffed him. The police eventually decided to render first aid, shortly before Nowak lost consciousness. The ironic parallels with George Floyd are so obvious I feel I need comment no further.

Digwa, meanwhile, claimed he acted in “self-defence,” faced with the unspeakable violence of Nowak’s alleged “racial abuse.” Despite the four fatal stab wounds, the fact that Nowak’s phone was later discovered in Digwa’s pocket, and the revelation that Digwa’s mother was allegedly filmed removing and disposing of the knife, Digwa’s barrister shamefully instructed jurors to decide whether the murderer acted “in the heat of the moment.”

Read it.

This is called a normal holiday weekend in Chicago.

Time to leave.

The New Republic, a Voice of the Woke.

Because black people are too stupid to figure it out so they need to do what white Democrats tell them to do.

Read it.

Olabode Soniregun is a Nigerian man who migrated to Las Vegas and got U.S. citizenship (because in 2026, the rules are made up and the points don’t matter).

He then “fled” to the UK in November 2024, claiming he feared for his life because he is black and identifies as both Mormon and Jewish. No, really, that’s what he says.

You can’t make this shit up.

Read it.

For decades South Africa has operated as the breadbasket for half of the African continent, and the vast majority of that food was grown by white farmers (Boers and Afrikaners). In other words, the very survival of Africans has long been dependent on the hard labor of the white people they are taught to despise.

South Africa has around 142 race-based laws which largely discriminate against white citizens, especially when property, business and government office is involved. The Expropriation Act of 2024 allows the socialist government to confiscate any land of their choosing to “redress past discriminatory laws or practices” (land owned by white citizens). This is part of a project to “fulfill land reform goals” (transfer wealth and farming operations to black citizens).

The problem is, when land is seized or forced into sale to black owners, farming production reportedly collapses. That is to say, once the white farmers are gone, crop yields fail and the black owners often resell the land and leave. In other cases, the new owners allow the land to languish, using the homes for living but never cultivating the surrounding property.

Think of it as evolution in action.

Read it.

The two young alleged gunmen who descended upon a San Diego Islamic facility on Monday — killing three men and themselves — have been identified, along with early indications of their motives. Police sources have told multiple outlets that 17-year-old Cain Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Velasquez — driven by hate — scrawled racist themes on their weapons and carried a gas can emblazoned with a Nazi SS sticker. One of them left a suicide note emphasizing “racial pride.”

…

Police say that, after leaving the Islamic center, the alleged young murderers fired shots at a landscaper two blocks away, with one of the rounds grazing his helmet. He wasn’t wounded. Soon after, the two were found dead inside a white BMW another block away from the Islamic center, having apparently died of self-inflicted gunshots. Inside the vehicle, investigators found some type of anti-Islamic writing. In addition, the BMW contained a gasoline can that had a Nazi SS sticker on it, and police say unspecified “hate speech” was written on their firearms. They haven’t described the weapons yet.

Hmmmm. “Racial pride”—where have we heard that before?

Watch it.

You thought only white Democrats obsess over skin color? Oh, foolish mortal….

Look up “varna” in Wikipedia.

Read it.

I’m starting to think that promoting fatherlessness in black households was a bad idea.

Read it.

One of the saddest thing about the Obama and Biden Administrations is how they renormalized bias. By the end of the George W. Bush Administration discrimination on the basis of race, of bigotry was on life support. No, it wasn’t entirely gone, but it was fading away. For most people the important question was not “what color are you?” It was “can you do the job? It was glorious. When I dealt with a co-worker I did not wonder whether they got their position because of the color of their skin. They got it because they could perform.

For Obama and Biden, that was a bug, not a feature. Both were grifters, race-hustlers. If bias faded away, they lost their grift. They began stoking the fires of discrimination and disparagement; dividing us not by the content of our character, but by the color of our skin. I saw it growing during the first years of the Obama Administration. Unprincipled people – especially at government contractors – began using accusations of bias as a means of clotheslining career rivals.

Were you in competition for a position or promotion with one of them? Anonymous complaints would be made against you on the ethics hotline accusing you of racism. It did not matter if the accusation was baseless or distorted. The accused went through an inquisition. Even if you knew who was doing it, you could not confront the individual. That would be retaliation.

By the middle of the Biden Administration, as far as the government went, race was the marker by which people were assigned jobs. It did not matter how incompetent someone was. What mattered was how they filled the grievance matrix. One only has to look at Biden’s choices for Vice-President and Supreme Court Justices to realize how pervasive – and pernicious – the grievance matrix had become.

Checking multiple boxes on the grievance matrix was also a marvelous shield against consequences. No one dared investigate or accuse those with the right national origin, religion, and skin color of criminality or even incompetence. If you did, the accusations were treated a proof of systemic racism against the accused. Instead, in the new race-based justice system the accuser would be investigated for thought-crime, declared a bigot.

Read it.

The Democrats in the Tennessee House of Representatives, including our least favorite knuckleheads Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson, once again comported themselves with utmost shame during the redistricting vote last week.

In a democracy, elected officials need not consider what is good for the general population,  only what is pleasing to the people who voted for them. If the people who voted for them are idiots, then those elected officials will do idiotic things.

Read it.

Alex from the Bronx is here to relate to black southerners.

AOC traveled to Atlanta this weekend to take the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, former home to MLK Jr. and current home church of Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, in order to whip up racial tensions over redistricting.

Color of their skin? Awesome! Content of their character? Not so much….

Read it.

There’s nothing quite like a good old-fashioned Supreme Court beatdown.

Bear in mind that KBJ graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School cum laude.

Read it.

While police did not provide more details about the party, a flyer circulated on social media after the shooting suggested that an event called Sunday Funday was scheduled at a pavilion near the lake until midnight.

It advertised food, drinks, music and “good vibes, good people.”

Arcadia Lake sits just north of Oklahoma City and is dotted with picnic pavilions, campgrounds, a fishing pier, and swimming beaches.

Arcadia Lake is about 45% black, about the same percentage as it’s white population.

Read it.

As of the latest U.S election in late 2024, there were 120 Congressional districts with a non-white majority out of a total of 435. While only 25 to 45 percent are considered to have been created in reference to the 1965 Voting Rights Act specifically, the existence of all could potentially be in danger now that the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday changed an important provision concerning Section 2 of the law, which deals with, among other things, districting for elections.

The Voting Rights Act Section 2 specifies that district maps that give minorities “less opportunity than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice” are illegal. This provision has been used in the past to create so called majority-minority districts, for example in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, and has helped to elect more non-white candidates to Congress. Previously, plaintiffs had to prove that white and non-white voters in a certain locations do overwhelmingly chose different candidates and that the district they were aiming to create or uphold was not overly gerrymandered. On Thursday, the 6-3 Supreme Court decision penned by Justice Samuel Alito said that in the future, maps invoking Section 2 would have to prove present-day discrimination of the non-white group in question to justify such a district in addition to proving their racial voting patterns were distinct from regular partisan voting – something that opponents of the changes say is almost impossible to do.

Dissenting justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson called the changes a “demolition of the Voting Rights Act”.

Which is a blatantly racist and unconstitutional statute.

A Constitution only protects you if it’s enforced. Case in point: The 1918 Conscription cases.

Read it.

She is, of course, a Female Of Tincture (or FOT, not to be confused with THOT, which is a different gig that pays better).

Read it.

A deranged mother is rushing to the defense of her 14-year-old son after he was filmed slamming a 15-year-old girl to the concrete and stomping on her head in East Harlem — all because she refused to give him her phone number.

The horrifying attack, captured on video and shared widely online, has left the victim hospitalized with a concussion. Yet instead of demanding accountability, the boy’s mother is painting her son as a victim of bullying.

The assault unfolded around 3:30 p.m. Monday at the corner of East 107th Street and Third Avenue, right after classes let out at East Harlem Scholars Academy Charter School, which both teens attend.

“Scholars Academy”. Only in New York.

Read it.

I’m sure she does.

The Telegraph (UK).

A social media influencer has been charged with attempted murder after a rival Instagram creator was hit with a car.

Gabrielle Carrington, 29, known as RIELLEUK on social media, has been charged with attempted murder, causing grievous bodily harm, dangerous driving and drink-driving after the incident outside the London Palladium on Argyll Street, Soho, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

‘RIELLEUK’ sounds like the noise someone would make after a long night drinking.

Klaudia Zakrzewska, known as Klaudiaglam on Instagram and TikTok, was among three people hit by a car after she was believed to have attended Inca, a bar and restaurant near the Palladium.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

The Telegraph (UK).

A singer has been charged with the murder of a 14-year-old girl after her dismembered body was found in his Tesla in Los Angeles.

D4vd, a 21-year-old artist whose real name is David Burke, rose to fame through TikTok.

The body of Celeste Rivas Hernandez was found in a Tesla registered in Mr Burke’s name on Sept 8, 2025. The teenager was originally reported missing by her family in February 2024.

Meet D4vd:

I suspect he qualifies as an ‘aspiring rapper’, in The Other McCain’s phrase.

Read it.

A planned fight among young people escalated into a deadly mass shooting at a North Carolina park Monday morning, leaving two people dead and several others injured, authorities said.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said multiple people were shot and at least two were killed in the incident near Leinbach Park on Sally Kirk Road in Winston-Salem.

According to the Winston-Salem Police Department, officers were dispatched at about 9:52 a.m. in response to a fight, but the situation quickly escalated.

Police said that “the initial investigation suggests it was a planned fight that involved several young people, which escalated to multiple people shooting each other.”

Authorities confirmed that both suspects and victims have been identified and located.

The violence prompted nearby schools, including Jefferson Middle School and Mount Tabor High School, to be placed on secure hold as a precaution.

When you’re a shit, you’re a shit all the way
From your first doobie hit to your last dyin’ day….

The Other McCain.

“Gee, Stacy, is it really fair to post a picture of the deceased performer brandishing illegal firearms?” Perhaps, but good luck finding any pictures of Jalen Carpenter in which he is not brandishing firearms.

The image above is from the video for EbkCap82’s song “Zombieland 2,” in case you’d like to go enjoy that spectacle of substance abuse and threatened violence. Carpenter’s specialty was what is known as “drill” music, which is basically gang warfare with a beat — the rapper and his companions displaying stacks of cash, waving around Glocks with extended magazines, smoking weed, boasting of their felonies and threatening to murder rival gangsters. You know — urban culture.

ABC, a Voice of the Crust.

Say hello and goodbye to Shamar Elkins:

The incident happened around 6 a.m. local time in the Cedar Grove neighborhood of South Shreveport, according to Shreveport Police Cpl. Chris Bordelon, who said the suspect, Shamar Elkins, who was the father of seven of the deceased children, was shot and killed after a police chase.

Read it.

For some reason, most national news companies are avoiding this story!

Olaolukitan Adon-Abel is charged with randomly shooting three people in the Atlanta area, including two women and a homeless man.

Lauren Bullis, a DHS employee who enjoyed running, was shot in the face six times (and stabbed for good measure).

Ah, well, that’s Diversity for you.

The Telegraph (UK).

Law firms are charging thousands of pounds to help migrants pretend to be gay so they can stay in the UK, an investigation has found.

Migrants whose visas have run out are being provided with fake cover stories and guided on how to obtain fabricated evidence such as letters, photographs and medical reports.

They then apply for asylum claiming to be gay, which they say would put them at risk of persecution if they were to return to Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Just in case you wondered where the phrase “fake and gay” came from.

Read it.

This is not satire. This is the new LGBT acronym, apparently.

Sounds to me as if someone can’t be bothered to use a dictionary.

UPDATE: MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+

Read it.

Since his election as mayor of Saint-Denis, the second-largest city in the Île-de-France region, Bally Bagayoko—the La France Insoumise mayor of Malian origin—has been constantly in the news and sees himself as a champion of the anti-racist cause. Yet his approach to politics only serves to highlight his racist vision of the ‘new France’ that is being built before our very eyes, with the media’s blessing.

It takes some people longer to wake up than others.

Read it.

Minneapolis has become a super-gay (and surprisingly, Somali) version of Gotham, so I guess this was bound to happen.

The anonymous crusader, who took up the role because “a law enforcement career didn’t appeal,” appears mostly to just wander around Minneapolis.

The stolen bike recovery and the Internet “nemesis” battle were, alas, both staged. But he’s apparently done some vague sort of community-service crime policing, including having “escorted drunk people home.”

Read it.

Slavery was a universal feature of every society until Christians decided to stop in in the 18oos.

The reparations effort is being led by Ghana, which is, of course, setting itself up as one of the chief beneficiaries of the U.N. resolution.

“We are demanding compensation—and let us be clear, African leaders are not asking for money for themselves,” Ghana’s foreign minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said to the BBC. “We want justice for the victims and causes to be supported, educational and endowment funds, skills training funds.”

Ah, so Africa’s politicians aren’t trying to enrich themselves personally. That would be brazen and crass. No, they are merely attempting to loot other countries to pay off their constituents. How noble. How heroic.

That’s ultimately what this reparations push is about. It’s an attempt by several African countries to use globalist institutions and the façade of international law to essentially receive a permanent stipend from self-loathing Western suckers, I mean nations. It’s also a tool whereby other antagonists of the West can score some historical points against their rivals while ignoring their own modern crimes and tyranny.

Read it.

So-called “teen takeovers” in Chicago are becoming increasingly violent, to the point that even little boys are being savagely brutalized, says the founder of a “violence interruptor” group that intervened during Wednesday’s teen mob outbreak.

“Well, we got about two or three hundred kids just running back and forth, jumping on cars, just fighting, taunting the police,” Chitown Crime Chasers Founder Justin Peters, who was at the scene of the teen takeover at Chicago’s Loop, said in an interview with Fox Chicago 32.

Peters described how his group intervened to help one little boy who was being stomped on by some of the teens in the mob:

“Unfortunately, viral video is circulating showing me rendering aide to a teenage boy who was violently jumped and stomped on unconscious,” Peters reported, sharing Chitown Crime Stoppers video from the teen takeover on X.com.

Judging from the video, they all look to be Teenagers of Color.

Imagine how low the crime rates would be if young black males were prohibited from possessing firearms.

Read it.

A viral video has revealed that CVS is locking up darker makeup shades behind security devices while lighter ones sit open — because stores secure what thieves steal most, and the data backs it up.

Watch it.

Hee hee hee hee hee….

Read it.

In the most recent election cycle, three incumbent black judges in San Antonio lost their primaries, and the other two first time black candidates also lost. In this article in the San Antonio Express-News appears the following quote:

“I think it’s a very bad look for the criminal justice system not to have any African American judges,” said attorney Andrew Birrell, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys. “The bench ought to reflect A, the society, and B, the people who come before the court. That’s how you get the fairest result that people are the most accepting of.”

Now, it really bothers me that someone can make such an absurd statement and no one raises an eyebrow. This is one of those fallacious arguments that has become so widespread that no one seems to notice anymore. Is this stuff impossible to overcome, or are we fated to have to hear it until the end of days?

Have you ever noticed how much trouble black women go to in order that their hair looks like white-woman hair rather than black-woman hair?

Read it.

It was a case that captured the nation’s attention 20 years ago. In March of 2006, a black stripper accused three members of Duke University’s nearly all-white lacrosse team of rape. The only evidence for the crime was her own testimony, which changed repeatedly. It didn’t matter that every other eyewitness disputed the rape claim. An opportunistic district attorney, a vengeful cop, a feminist nurse, and a ravenous media were all ready to believe the Duke lacrosse rape, and that was enough to make it “truth” in the public eye for much of 2006.

The Duke lacrosse hoax offered a preview of America’s coming social conflicts in the age of woke. Imagined racial grievance, feminism, and belief in “white privilege” all fueled this story. The media was all too eager to buy it. Journalists wanted to believe it was true to show that white men are the real menace to society. It was a story too “good” to pass up. It was also a story too “good” to be true.

No lessons were learned from the Duke lacrosse case. We would see similar lies play out with Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Rolling Stone’s infamous “A Rape on Campus” story. While District Attorney Mike Nifong paid a high price for his reckless pursuit of the case, the media and activists who aided him suffered no real consequences. Hate hoaxes would flourish as a result.

Larry Elder.

Former President Barack Obama long ago surpassed the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton as America’s most influential race hustler. The country got a reminder when Obama spoke at Jackson’s funeral, even though Jackson’s son urged the speakers “not to bring their politics” to the service.

Obama said: “Every day you wake up to things you just didn’t think were possible. Each day, we’re told by those in high office to fear each other, and to turn on each other. And that some Americans count more than others.” Same old Obama.

In his 2004 Democratic National Convention speech, he famously declared, “There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of America.” It was the line that launched him and made millions across party lines believe he could bridge divides.

Obama won the presidency with just over 52% of the popular vote, but he entered the Oval Office in January 2009 with a nearly 70% approval rating. Polls in late 2008 and early 2009 showed both Black and white Americans believed race relations would improve under his leadership.

By the time he left office in 2017, polls showed majorities or pluralities of both Blacks and whites thought race relations had gotten worse.