Onyx Impact has released its eye-opening BlackOut Report which reveals that the efforts to derail Black progress are not merely historical footnotes but present-day threats. In just the past eight months, there have been 15,723 distinct impact points, each representing a direct attack on Black opportunities, lives, or histories.
Over this period, the report identifies 14,072 instances of distortion. On Make It Plain with Rev. Mark Thompson, Onyx Impact Executive Director Esosa Osa said:
“Distortion is by far the largest component of our database, with over 14,000 examples of swapping out evidence for ideology. This is fundamentally rewriting, grants, rewriting, all types of evidence distorting data sets. You are erasing that data, you’re hiding the proof of discrimination, you’re hiding the proof of inequality and, therefore, you’re preventing any type of remedy.”
The BlackOut Report highlights 1,362 examples of erasure during the eight month period.
“When we talk about erasure, we’re talking about the erasure of Black heroes from government websites. We’re talking about the statues of Black history not just being removed, but being replaced by Confederacy statues [and] the banning of nearly 600 books by Black authors,” said Osa.
The BlackOut Report also exposes 289 efforts to suppress African American influence.
“Suppression is the active silencing of voices that could challenge the narrative. We’ve documented 63 government threats and investigations—strategies specifically designed to ensure institutions and individuals think twice before speaking up, effectively muting calls for accountability and justice,” Osa said.
“We are seeing $3.4 billion, what ended up being $3.4 billion at least in investment slashed to Black communities, right under this guise, this smoke screen, this Trojan horse of DEI,” Osa said.
The BlackOut Report also identifies cuts including:
- $9.4M in sickle cell disease research
- $68.5M for projects that prevent flooding in predominantly African American neighborhoods
- $31M to address high asthma rates for African American children and reduce air pollution in African American communities
- 16 NIH grants totaling $37M for research into disproportionate colon and prostate cancer in African American men
- $23.7M to fix unsafe drinking water and reduce childhood lead exposure in African American communities
- $210M in grant funding to HBCUs, $11M to Howard University, more than $2.9M of funding for a center at Morehouse College focusing on improving the health of Black pregnant women, as was $1.2M of funding to increase Black enrollment in the marine sciences at Hampton University