A new study by Silent Spring Institute, the most comprehensive analysis to date, identified dozens of hazardous chemicals in hair extensions, including products made from human hair, providing the strongest evidence yet of the potential health risks associated with this largely unregulated category of beauty products that disproportionately affect Black women.
On August 11, a powerful storm garnering winds that exceeded 100 miles per hour tore into Lake County, Indiana, causing a blackout that affected nearly 370,000 people.
By now, most of Gary residents have regained electricity, but unfortunately are still devoid of power.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the event occurred almost 21 years to the date of Hurricane Katrina, another devastating weather event that disproportionately impacted Black people. Unfortunately, policymakers have been unable or unwilling to heed the lessons of Katrina.
Gary, Indiana is unique in the racial composition of the city, nearly 80% Black and its historic overreliance on industry, and subsequent deindustrialization, has left the city tragically vulnerable to climate change, capitalism, and racism in a state that once boasted the largest Ku Klux Klan membership in the nation.
Some, such as Mediaite’s Brad Slager has claimed that reporters have rushed to attribute Gary’s recent woes to racism, merely because it was an “easier angle.” Slager noted that much of Gary’s top officials are Black, thus making racism an unlikely culprit for the nearly two week blackout in Gary.
Yet, Gary’s challenges are deeply rooted and go well beyond the actions or perhaps inactions of any current public official.
Gary was founded in 1906, just outside of southern Chicago by the U.S. Steel Company. It is the namesake of the company’s cofounder Elbert Gary.
As early as 1908, the city’s small Black population was forced to send their children to separate, underresourced schools. Even after the population increased due to the Great Migration, basic services, such as the city’s hospitals were closed to Blacks.
By the 1960s, when Gary became predominantly Black, the city’s foundational steel mill closed. This ironically coincided with the election of Richard Hatcher as the city’s first Black mayor. Thus, Black people finally gained a modicum of power in a city that lacked a sufficient tax base, was bereft of resources, and had few friends in the state capital of Indianapolis.
That vulnerability has largely lasted until the present day.
This has largely left the city vulnerable to predatory capitalism. For instance, the utility company that services Gary, the Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), charges the highest rates of any investor-owned electric company in the state. And just last year, the company was approved for an additional rate increase.
However, these higher fees have not resulted in improved service. Nearby Porter County has filed a lawsuit against the company alleging that NIPSCO’s failure to trim trees near power lines left customers especially susceptible to a power outage.
While a regional problem, Gary was particularly impacted by the loss of power. After a week of the blackout, other nearby municipalities such as East Chicago, Dyter, Hobart, and Merrillville regained electricity. By that time, Gary had not even appeared on NIPSCO’s schedule for restoring power, according to the city’s mayor, Eddie Melton.
Perhaps, the most deplorable aspect of Gary, is that we know that it will happen again. Maybe not Gary, but somewhere.
The increasing severity of weather events has not curtailed the nation’s (and much of the world’s) addiction to fossil fuels. Severe natural disasters have devastated underserved communities in the United States such as St. Louis in 2025, and nations of color like Nepal last month. The ongoing migrant crisis in Africa is largely fueled by climate change (along with decades of colonialism and neocolonialism).
Perhaps, the most frightening aspect of such disasters are their unpredictability. No one knows when they will come, where they will strike, nor who they will come for.
We are all potentially in the path of destruction.
The United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly backed a resolution aimed at changing the way Africa and other regions are represented on world maps.
The "Correct the Map" resolution, introduced by the West African country of Togo on behalf of the African Group (the 54 African member states at the U.N.) and supported by the African Union, was adopted on Friday by a vote of 164 to one, with six countries abstaining.
The United States was the only country to vote against it.
Before the vote, Togo's Foreign Minister Robert Dussey said maps are far more than simple representations of geography.
"Maps shape our understanding of the world. They guide education, nourish the imagination, and influence collective perceptions," Dussey said.
"It's time for us in Africa to take responsibility to change what we can change ourselves."
The resolution is not legally binding and does not require countries or institutions to abandon the centuries-old Mercator projection, one of the world's most widely used maps. Instead, it encourages wider use of equal-area projections such as Equal Earth, which more accurately show the true relative size of countries and continents, particularly Africa, although their shapes are somewhat distorted.
Members of the Correct the Map campaign are encouraging governments, international organizations and educational institutions to adopt the Equal Earth projection.
Developed in 2018 by cartographers Tom Patterson, Bernhard Jenny and Bojan Šavrič, the map was designed to provide a more proportionally accurate picture of the world's land masses.
That contrasts with the traditional Mercator projection. Created in 1569 by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator, it preserves the shape of land masses but distorts their size, with regions closer to the poles appearing significantly larger than they actually are.
The Mercator projection was developed primarily for navigation. It allowed sailors to plot courses along straight lines while maintaining a constant compass bearing, making it particularly useful for explorers and navigators.
But in an interview with NPR last year, Patterson, a former senior cartographer at the U.S. National Park Service, said the Mercator projection can create a misleading impression when used as a general-purpose world map.
"If you're using the Mercator map as a world map, say, in the classroom, students would just have a completely warped view of the size of countries in the world," Patterson said.
Critics have long argued that the projection's distortion makes northern regions appear disproportionately large, while Africa and other areas closer to the equator appear smaller than they really are.
Supporters of the Correct the Map campaign say a different projection could help provide a fairer visual representation of the world and challenge longstanding misconceptions about Africa's size and importance.
But the United States strongly opposed the initiative.
In a statement after the vote, Yaryna Ferencevych, deputy U.S. representative to the U.N. Economic and Social Council, accused the United Nations of promoting an ideological agenda and distracting from more pressing issues.
"Resolutions like this and the ideological agenda they promote, are barnacles on our work here, and the reason this institution is losing its credibility," the statement read.
The vote was welcomed by the African Union which has backed the Correct the Map campaign. In a statement on X, the African Union said: "Today's resolution promotes equal-area maps like Equal Earth across classrooms, media, and international institutions, ensuring the world map finally reflects Africa's true scale, weight, and place in the world."
Patterson expressed his surprise upon seeing the news. "Wow. When we [Bojan Šavrič and Bernie Jenny] created the Equal Earth projection in 2018, we never imagined this," he wrote on social media.
Carlos Lopes, a professor at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and a prominent advocate of the campaign, also celebrated the result. Posting on X after the vote, he wrote: "164 votes in favour! This is an emotional day for me."
The Maryland Department of Juvenile Services recently uncovered a burial site within a mile of the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center in Prince George’s County, according to the governor’s office. It is believed to be the final resting place for more than 230 children who died in state custody.
Robin Walker, aka the “Black History Man” wrote the amazing book "When We Ruled, first published in 2006. When We Ruled by is a great addition to proving that African Our story (not his-story) starts thousands of years before our enslavement. Although many have shown and proved to us that ourstory started long before enslavement.
Interestingly enough the author like many people of African descent heard about our enslavement so much and so often that he (along with many of us) came to believe that that’s all there is to us.
The book is one volume covering about 700 to 834 pages of ancient and not-so-ancient African civilizations going up to about the 1800s CE. It has 22 chapters, heavily illustrated photos, some full-colored, watercolors, chronologies, and bibliographies. It has a reference and a teaching text. The first edition came out in 2006, and the second edition in 2011. And our brother Runoko Rashidi does the introduction to the book.
The author makes five claims about the book which reframes everything. Walker makes the point that Black history is not slavery. He rejects the equation of "Black history" starts with the transatlantic slave trade. He uses Maulana Karenga's definition — "history is the record and process of a people engaged in struggle to shape the world in their interests and images" — to argue that the 500 years of slavery are a "minuscule part" of a far longer story of African world-shaping. Professor Anthony Browder states it this way: “if a book of African history was a thousand pages, our enslavement would be just two pages and start on page 996.”
Walker states that evidence of African ourstory is all over the continent. It’s not just in Kemet (which the Greeks call Egypt). You'll find evidence in Nubia, Aksum, the Swahili coast, Great Zimbabwe, Mali, the Mali Empire, the Songhai Empire, the Ghana Empire, the Moors, and many others. He also demonstrates that the proof exists since many palaces, temples, mosques, churches still stands and that manuscripts and art have survived and can be verified, photographed, even Googled.
He has put it all in one place. Although he studied the works of Drs: Cheik Anta Diop, Ivan Van Sertima, Chancellor Williams, John G. Jackson, Yousef ben-Jochannan, John Hendrik Clarke and others. - "...but no one has put all the stuff in one place before." When We Ruled is the attempt to gather the archaeology, documents, and historical linguistics into one accessible, illustrated volume.
Finally, he argues that we could win the argument on any terms. African achievement holds up even judged by Eurocentric standards — e.g., the octagonal swimming pool at the Husuni Kubwa palace at Kilwa (Tanzania, c. 1300); glass windows and internal plumbing in African kingdoms; Mansa Musa of Mali as, by common estimate, among the richest individuals in human history. However, my understanding is that the African rulers (kings, queens, councils, etc.) don't personally own these resources. The resources belong to the people. The leaders(s) is the custodian of the resources on behalf of the society. Thus, Mansa Musa didn’t own the gold. He managed it and the Mali Empire's wealth for the people of the Mali Empire.
Examples of our great civilizations are located in the Nile Valley, North Africa, West Africa, East Africa, and Southern and Central Africa. He also discuses The Moors in Spain, the slave trade, Black women's history, and the Pan-African movement round to it out.
The book has a number of strengths and only a couple of limits (certainly not weaknesses).
It is very broad and has full-color illustrations. It can be used as a reference and teaching tool. It even has a companion study guide. It has something in it for everyone. Last but not least, it's Black/independently published—the second edition being by Black Classic Press.
Its limitations are that it is dense. At 834 pages long it will take some time to read through it. Additionally, the reading can be rough. It was written for students, parents, homeschoolers, the general reader, anyone who wants the evidence in one place, and especially those who want to move beyond "Black history = slavery."
When We Ruled is a great book. There's something in there for all of us, and it can be read by anyone at any level. The title of the book is more about when Black people ruled the planet, as opposed to when Black people were being ruled or were ruled. And to a large extent, the book exists because this one man refused to accept the education handed to him. All of us can do that. He has a standard of proof: know the truth and know the lies better than the liars. Read it, verify it, and reclaim us. This book helps with all of the above.
View the book at Progressive Emporium & Education Center
