Over the past year, new data show the U.S. has undergone a broad rollback of civil-rights and racial-equity protections — not through spectacle, but through deleted datasets, frozen grants, dismantled diversity offices, and the quiet erasure of Black history from public institutions.

A new national poll from the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, paired with a sweeping analysis by Onyx Impact, the Blackout Report, reveals a coordinated dismantling of the civil rights and racial equity infrastructure that generations fought to build. Taken together, they show a country turning away from truth — and toward a version of America that is smaller, narrower, and more dangerous for all of us.

What is the Blackout?

A Coordinated Backlash

According to the Blackout Report, three strategies have been defined for the rollback:

• Erasure: deleting historical content, removing Black figures from federal websites, cutting museum narratives, and sanitizing public archives.

• Distortion: manipulating or disappearing datasets that expose racial disparities — especially in maternal mortality, health outcomes, policing, and environmental harm.

• Suppression: pressuring institutions to abandon equity programs, end DEI offices, and halt grants focused on Black communities, Black entrepreneurship, or Black history.

Click to View Black Out Report

Esosa Osa, who leads Onyx Impact, says the pattern is unmistakable — and historically familiar.

• “This isn’t random. It’s intentional,” Osa said. “And it’s happening at the exact moment the Supreme Court is poised to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — a decision that could shift 19 congressional seats in one stroke. The timing tells you everything.”

She does not mince words.

• “We are watching the infrastructure that built the Black middle class be dismantled in real time,” Osa said. “This is not about DEI. It’s about power.”

Researchers say these actions aren’t random; they’re part of a political project.

The Trump administration and its allies have openly pledged to “eliminate woke influence” from every level of government, higher education, military institutions, and the workplace. Researchers and historians say that rhetoric is being weaponized to justify sweeping policy reversals: banning books, restricting what can be taught about race, gutting civil-rights offices, and reshaping federal hiring.

The White House Responds

When reached for comment, the White House did not dispute the report’s documentation of deleted datasets, frozen grants, or removed historical content. Instead, an administration official said the focus is on “restoring the Gold Standard of Science — not ideological activism” and removing what they called “divisive DEI initiatives” in favor of “merit-based hiring.”

The administration also pointed to earlier actions from Trump’s first term — including permanent HBCU funding, Opportunity Zones, and the First Step Act — as evidence of its record on Black economic progress.

Researchers behind the Blackout Report say those claims don’t address the current scope of cuts, deletions, or reversals.

By the Numbers 

Onyx Impact’s analysis reveals the scale:

• 306,000 Black women lost their jobs between February and August 2025 — the highest numbers since 2021.

• $3.4 billion in grants to HBCUs, health researchers, and Black entrepreneurs were slashed or frozen.

• 6,769 federal datasets were deleted, including those tracking maternal mortality and sickle cell disease.

• 591 books by Black authors were banned from Department of Defense schools and libraries — including works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, and Ibram X. Kendi.

These aren’t small changes, researchers say. They’re structural blows. And they follow a clear pattern.

A Historic Playbook, Repurposed for the 21st Century

Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference, said what many historians have been warning:

• “We’ve seen rollbacks before — after Reconstruction, after the civil-rights movement — always with new language and new fears. This moment fits that same pattern. The terms change. The strategy doesn’t.”

Wiley says the Blackout Report mirrors the findings of a new poll her organization conducted with more than 1,000 Americans. The results show a public increasingly alarmed by rising extremism, worsening race relations, and what many describe as a country on the brink.

• “The Blackout Report reflects the same erosion we’re tracking,” she said. “When datasets or historical materials disappear, it becomes harder to see — and fix — racial disparities.”

The report shows what happens when truth is treated like a liability: Power distorts reality to justify oppression.

Erasing the Past to Control the Future

The rollback extends beyond budgets and datasets. It’s also playing out in federal institutions:

• The administration ordered a content review at the National Museum of African American History & Culture after Trump accused museums of being “out of control.”

• National Park Service pages on Harriet Tubman and Medgar Evers were deleted, then only partially restored after public backlash.

• Arlington National Cemetery quietly removed curated sections highlighting Black service members — sections that, unlike the individual biography pages of Colin Powell, Thurgood Marshall, and Joe Louis, have not been reinstated.

Historians say these revisions matter because history is not neutral — it is power. Who gets remembered determines who gets protected.

A Democracy Question, Not Just a DEI Question

Civil-rights leaders say this moment reaches far beyond Black communities.

Portia Allen-Kyle of Color Of Change describes a deliberate attempt to control the boundaries of acceptable speech and public memory:

• “These attacks aren’t one-offs — there’s strategy behind them. It’s the same instinct that tried to silence Ida B. Wells, only now it’s using algorithms, budgets and bureaucracy instead of mobs.”

National Urban League president Marc Morial put it even more bluntly:

• “The attempt to erase history has made all of us more cognizant of the need to tell it. It will not work — it’s backfiring.”

And Wiley offered the warning this moment demands:

• “These attacks start with us — but they don’t end with us. They’re coming for everyone.”