By Stacy M. Brown
Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
The betrayal is not subtle. It is loud in its quiet, glaring in its silence, and brutal in its indifference. The Black Press—born in chains in 1827 before slavery ended, built in blood, and sustained by courage—is gasping for air while those who could save it look the other way. These are not outsiders. They are our own. The rich and powerful among us have traded solidarity for status, truth for comfort, and liberation for proximity to whiteness.
The Black Press is the backbone of our collective memory. It told our stories when no one else would, when white America painted our faces as criminals and our dreams as crimes. It printed Mamie Till’s anguish so the world could see her son’s mutilated body. It carried the words of Frederick Douglass and the defiance of Ida B. Wells. It stood with Martin Luther King Jr., reporting his sermons and his jailhouse letters when white editors called him a menace. That same Black Press now struggles to survive while the billionaires it helped lift into the light sit in luxury, feeding the illusion that their comfort beside white power is safety.
Magic Johnson lounges on a $138 million yacht, surrounded by a world of white wealth. The same Magic Johnson who once symbolized Black excellence has turned his back on the institution that chronicled his rise. Meanwhile, Mark Cuban, a white billionaire with no stake in the struggle, did what Magic would not. He gave six figures to support the Black Press. Black billionaires, meanwhile, haven’t given six cents. That is what proximity to whiteness does: it kills the memory of where you came from. Dr. Dre helped to write the soundtracks of our lives. His beats gave rhythm to resistance. But his billions went to USC, a white institution that built its prestige while keeping Black students at the margins. Not a single dollar went to a Historically Black College or University. Not one dime to the Black Press. His music screamed revolution; his money whispered obedience.
And yet, we acknowledge the truth, they have every right to do what they want with their money. No one questions that. But when the world is burning, and our people are being pushed back into the fields, we wish they’d remember from whence they came. MacKenzie Scott, a white woman, has given more to Black America in one week than all of our Black billionaires combined have given in a decade. She’s donated hundreds of millions to HBCUs and Black nonprofits. Meanwhile, those who built their fortunes on the backs of Black culture, labor, and genius have built walls instead of bridges. They have mistaken assimilation for advancement.
Spike Lee, once the messenger of “Do the Right Thing,” now sits courtside beside men like Knicks owner James Dolan and Mets owner Steve Cohen—both donors and allies of Trump’s MAGA machine. Jay-Z, who once spoke truth from the corners of Brooklyn, now partners with the whiteness of SL Green and Caesars to build casinos while Black-owned media struggles to pay reporters.
Isiah Thomas, a Hall of Fame legend and one of the finest businessmen among them, knows firsthand what the Black Press can do. When his award-winning wine was shut out of a major retail chain, it wasn’t a white PR firm or a corporate lawyer who came to his defense; it was the Black Press. One call, one email, one tweet, and the company called back immediately. They didn’t want the smoke from the Black Press. That’s the power we still hold, if only our own would stand beside us.
Instead, the billionaires remain silent while the walls close in on our people.
Under Trump’s regime, more than 300,000 Black women have already lost their federal jobs—and the number is rising. Trump’s government is fighting a judge’s order demanding he restore food stamps for millions of hungry Americans, many of them Black. Healthcare for our elders has been gutted. WIC and Medicaid are under attack. Trump’s inner circle—Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Steve Bannon, and their MAGA faithful—openly promise to erase every gain made by Black Americans. They are not even hiding their racism anymore. They fired four-star generals because they were Black. They removed the Librarian of Congress because she was Black. They are dismantling Black leadership from the military to academia. They say the immigrants they are deporting “stole” the jobs that Black Americans should have, as if the only work we deserve is in the fields.
This is not a political shift. It is an unmasking. The same white corporations that once filled their websites with slogans of “equity” and “diversity” after George Floyd’s murder have quietly pulled back. Target, Amazon, Meta, McDonald’s, Citigroup, Disney, AT&T, Goldman Sachs, and others have walked away from the very promises they made to Black America. They pledged billions, then simply decided not to give it. They used our grief for marketing, our pain for profit, and then vanished when accountability came calling. Through it all, the Black Press remains the only institution that tells the truth. It is the keeper of our history, our victories, our wounds. It is not begging—it is bearing witness. But a witness without support cannot survive. And as the Black Press is starved, those who could sustain it—the billionaires who grew from its pages—are silent. They seem to believe their proximity to whiteness will save them. They seem to believe that if they stay quiet, they will remain safe. They are wrong.
Proximity to whiteness is not safety. It is surrender. It is the price of forgetting. The truth is that the struggle never ended—it was rebranded. Trump’s America is the plantation with Wi-Fi and private jets. The new overseers wear designer suits instead of badges. They smile while they strip away everything that made our progress possible. And while they do, our billionaires sip champagne beside them, believing their wealth is protection.
It is not.
Proximity to whiteness didn’t save the enslaved, and it will not save the rich. It will only make them forget who they are—and who they were meant to fight for.
