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Black Kos Tuesday: But at what cost? [1]
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Date: 2025-09-16
But at what cost?
Comment by Chitown Kev
Pardon my cynicism at all of today’s MSM headlines that that the tacky shoe salesman has managed to find funding for HBCUs. Take this New York Times headiine for instance:
Trump Redirects Millions to Historically Black Colleges, Charter Schools
Even the sub headline on that story indicates that this particular funding for HBCUs is being culled from other programs that benefit minority students at other universities including PWAs and HBCUs.
To pay for the changes, the administration cut money from other parts of the education budget The details of the changes were described by three people familiar with the department’s plans who insisted on anonymity to speak about private discussions. The biggest cut, announced by the department last week, is a $350 million hit to programs that support minority students in science and engineering programs, schools with significant Hispanic enrollment, and other federal grants at minority-serving institutions. The administration also cut money from gifted and talented programs, which it said use racial targeting in recruitment in some cases, and from magnet schools, which have been used as a tool for combating school segregation. In a statement announcing the new funding for Mr. Trump’s political priorities, the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, said that the department was “redirecting financial support away from ineffective and discriminatory programs toward those which support student success.”
Sure, HBCUs need the funding desperately and I’m grateful for it...I guess... but in the richest country in the world it’s not necessary that those funds come at the expense of other needy students of any race or nationality.
Pardon my cynicism when I see familiar stories like this on the wreck list.
Pardon my cynicism at this apparent largesse when I know that the threats facing HBCUs are what they always have been, especially nowadays.
Daryn Dickens/The Contrarian
Yeah, the extra money is nice, I suppose.
And necessary.
Forgive me for wondering about the hidden costs, though; after all, this is the Trump regime.
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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A popular museum in Atlanta is expanding at a critical moment in the United States — and unlike the Smithsonian Institution, the National Center for Civil and Human Rights is privately funded, putting it beyond the immediate reach of Trump administration efforts to control what Americans learn about their history. The months long renovation, which cost nearly $60 million, adds six new galleries as well as classrooms and interactive experiences, changing a relatively static museum into a dynamic place where people are encouraged to take action supporting civil and human rights, racial justice and the future of democracy, said Jill Savitt, the center’s president and CEO. The center has stayed active ahead of its Nov. 8 reopening through K-12 education programs that include more than 300 online lesson plans; a LGBTQ+ Institute; training in diversity, equity and inclusion; human rights training for law enforcement; and its Truth & Transformation Initiative to spread awareness about forced labor, racial terror and other historic injustices.
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The Education Department has made several moves targeting DEI initiatives and programs helping Black students during Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s tenure. Newsone: Department Of Education Cancels $350M In HBCU Grants
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In this week’s episode of The Department of Education Is High-Key Racist, Education Secretary Linda McMahon canceled $350 million in federal funding for HBCUs and colleges focused on minority students. Why? Because, according to her, they’re inherently racist.
According to the New York Times, McMahon released a statement explaining the decision. “Stereotyping an individual based on immutable characteristics diminishes the full picture of that person’s life and contributions, including their character, resiliency, and merit,” the statement read. McMahon added that the Education Department would “re-envision” the grant programs to continue supporting “underprepared or under-resourced students.” Which, to me, sounds like the grants are going to be refocused on helping poor, white students get the leg up that the Trump administration clearly believes they need.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, released a statement critical of the move. “These are longstanding programs that Congress has authorized and provided funding for on an annual basis that the Trump administration — empowered by the yearlong slush fund spending bill passed in March — is unilaterally deciding to eliminate funding for at the end of the year,” the statement read. Murray added that the Trump administration was “putting politics ahead of students simply looking to get ahead, and is sowing chaos in our nation’s schools.”
“This is another important reminder of why Congress needs to pass funding bills, like the one the Senate marked up this summer, that ensure Congress — not Donald Trump or Linda McMahon — decides how limited taxpayer dollars are spent.”
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Troubling and unusual unemployment numbers for Black Americans are signaling that the U.S. is on its way to a potential recession, economists tell TPM.
The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed an increasingly negative employment situation for Black workers, one that has rapidly deteriorated over the last four months as a result of policy decisions from the Trump administration. But the relative lack of unemployment rate movement for every other racial group — and even a miniscule improvement over the same time period for white workers, means if conditions don’t change — this economic downturn could look different than the 2008 global financial crisis.
This time around, Black middle-class Americans are bearing the brunt of the initial impact “because the federal workforce is specifically being targeted,” Gbenga Ajilore, chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Between May and August, the Black unemployment rate jumped from 6% to 7.5%. That’s the highest it’s been since 2021, and the highest Black unemployment rate outside of the COVID-related economic crisis since January 2018.
At the same time, white unemployment ticked down ever so slightly from 3.8% to 3.7%, while unemployment for Asians stayed flat at 3.6% and rose slightly for Hispanics from 5.1% to 5.3%. Experts clocked the dismal employment situation for Black people even before last week’s BLS data dropped, noting the impacts of federal government job cuts by the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency, and the Trump administration generally, on Black women employment. Combined with Trump’s legitimate threats to and attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion work within the public and private sectors, and the Supreme Court’s decisions weakening affirmative action, experts told TPM it’s not surprising that Black employment has taken such a hit. But it is an unnerving sign of where we are, and what’s to come.
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There is a secret industry that generates billions of dollars a year. Its workers are bright, industrious and completely anonymous. Their job is writing essays to order for students – in the UK and elsewhere – to help them get good degrees.
These are “shadow scholars”, highly educated Kenyans who earn a living by working for essay mills. They are contracted to ghostwrite essays, PhD dissertations and other academic papers for students across the world, who pay a fee then pass off the work as their own.
The role is not unique to Kenya. There are similar writers in India, Pakistan and any other number of countries, including the UK, but Kenya has been identified as a hotspot, with an estimated 40,000 ghostwriters working in Nairobi alone.
They are the subject of a new film that talks for the first time to the young Kenyans who may be writing an essay or dissertation on any topic from mechanical engineering, nursing or quantum physics to Jane Austen, linguistics or Ho Chi Minh.
Smart, ambitious, well-educated and tech-savvy, they worked hard to get to university, graduated with good degrees, but there are no jobs. Instead they spend their days – and nights – logging on to essay-writing platforms, scrolling down the list of assignments and making their bids to win the work.
The cameras follow the sociologist and Oxford professor Patricia Kingori as she travels to Nairobi to interview the writers and explore the power dynamics that enable students in countries such as the UK to secure degrees and begin lucrative careers without doing their own work.
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