Freedom On Paper: What More Does America Wish to Extract From Us?

Welcome to Suits and Pajamas, where grace meets grit and ambition learns how to breathe. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Suits in Pajamas, the podcast where we talk about the realities of living in the space between. Between professional expectations and personal truth. I'm your host, TJ Albert, and today I want to talk about something that's really. It's a little. It's a little spicy, folks. I'm not gonna lie. This is gonna be a bit of a spicy episode. So much so that I want to just say I am bringing my whole self to this podcast. And what that means is that I am sometimes gonna say that uncomfortably acceptable truth. But it has nothing to do with any one individual, any one company or anything like that. Now, there are a couple of companies that I will mention, but it's only because it's in. It's based on statistics that are out there. But I don't want to be sidetracked or have people sidetracked by trying to figure out who I'm talking about, what company I may be talking about. If I want you to know the company, I'll tell you. But I also just really don't want anybody to think that my whole life is just about the companies that I've worked at, past and present. This is a real conversation that I just don't want to censor myself. And I just want to make it very clear I am speaking from a depth within my soul based on my own experiences. Yes. And to some extent, but really, it's based on experiences within my family, my friends, my community. Some are colleagues, former colleagues, some are friends today that we just have conversations. And it's just really interesting because a lot of the conversations keep coming back to what we're going to talk about today. So all of that to say, please, please, please, please, please, grab your coffee, tea or wine. I would even probably suggest a snack, because this is. This is. This is going to take a second. But I hope that you leave this episode having a little bit more clarity. If you profess to be an ally, you should walk away from this feeling even more enlightened and hopefully not feeling like you need to be in a position that you won't continue to be passive. I know there are some out there trying, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And so I really hope that this kind of puts the fire under some people to just do more. So here we go. So I'm going to start with a question. What more does America wish to extract from black people that has not already been Paid in full. The answer to that question is not defeat. It is clarity. And clarity is where strategy begins. And so I just really want to start with that question. It's not a rhetorical question. It's a real accounting that I really want to understand. We built this country with our bodies. We fought its wars with our lives. We showed up at the polls in numbers where we were allowed strategically. We did these things knowingly. We did these things because we understood, in particular with this past election, what was coming before it arrived. We have been sounding the alarm and doing the work and paying the price for. For a very long time. Policy experts have a phrase for this. They call black Americans the canary in the coal mine. The first to feel economic stress, the first to feel the effects of policy failure. The first to absorb what everyone else eventually experiences, just earlier and harder and without the same safety nets. That phrase has been used compassionately, but I want to sit with what it actually means. The canary doesn't go into the mine because it wants to. It goes because it is sent. And its suffering is the signal. And historically, the miners noticed the signal and saved themselves. The canary is not always saved. And so, as we prepare to talk about celebrate Juneteenth in 2026, I want to talk about the whole picture, not each cut in isolation, the way the news cycle seems to be comfortable doing. I want to talk about all of it together, because together is the only honest way to see what is actually happening. So in particular, because there are more. Okay, please do not beat me up here, but I'm going to talk about 12 cuts, 12 specific cuts, documented, named. And I want to look at all of them. This is suits and pajamas. And I want you to stay with me. Cut 1. Before the data, I need to address a narrative directly. There is a story being told, sometimes sympathetically, often not. That black Americans are passive in the face of what is happening today. That we're not fighting back, that we're not rallying behind the Hispanic community or people in this, you know, that are losing their health care and farmers and all the people who are fafoing right now. Okay, but I want to reject that completely. We did our part. We voted for you and your rights at the polls. We have been building parallel infrastructure, black owned businesses, black media, black legal organizations, because we have never fully trusted that the institutions alone would protect us. That is not passivity. That is wisdom accumulated over centuries. We are also being strategic about what we lean into and what we preserve our energy for. Because we're tired, not defeated, tired and that tiredness is not a character defect. It is the documented psychological multigenerational consequence of sustained racialized stress that has never ever been fully acknowledged or remedied. We are allowed to name it today. We name it and then we look at what is producing it. I want to talk about the 1912 parallel so that I can set the historical frame here. I'm going to give you one data point before I go through all these 12 cuts and it's going to be the historical anchor. Journalists and researchers covering this moment have found that nothing has moved backward this quickly or this far for Black Americans since 1912. Let that sink in. Since 1912, when President Woodrow Wilson re segregated the federal workforce. That is the scale of what is happening right now. And I want you to just sit with that for a second. So with cut one, the workplace DEI dismantled. Executive Order 14,173 revoked Executive Order 11,246, first issued by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965, which prohibited federal contractors from discriminating in employment. Sixty years of civil rights protections reframed as illegal discrimination. The President's own words. God, it's so hard to call him that. Anyway, his own words. We ended DEI in America. That is not a policy description. That is a boast. Now the data reversal. Black executives in S&P100 companies increased nearly 27% between 2020 and 2022. Now we all know that coincides with George Floyd to some extent. But during that time companies started losing black workers again. Well, let me not say that starting in 2022 they started losing black workers. And this was before the executive orders. Okay, so I'll be fair in saying that the share though of S&P 500 companies disclosing racial diversity of board members fell 31% in 2024 and 2025. Companies with no diversity disclosure whatsoever jumped 1% to 29% in a single year. When companies stop reporting the numbers, it is not because the numbers got better. Because trust me, when the numbers get better, oh, they want to brag and put that out there. But when the numbers go the opposite direction, that public disclosure just kind of silently goes away. Cut number two, the ballot. Voting rights stripped. Executive order. The executive order on voting now requires documentary proof of citizenship to register. One in three black households lacks high speed home Internet. In December of 2025, NPR reported people were incorrectly flagged as non citizens and had their voter registration canceled in error. So what is this ridiculous Supreme Court do in their 6 to 3 ruling, all Republican appointed justices by the Way voted to remove voting rights act protections from majority minority districts. So from the majority of minority districts, they removed the voting rights act protections. The most significant voting rights legislation in American history is being hollowed. Completely hollowed out. I won't say completely. Fine, I'm exaggerating. But significantly hollowed out from the bench. And with respect to mail in ballots, the administration moved to refuse ballots received after election day. Black voters use mail in ballots more frequently. The Lawyers committee for civil rights stated directly, this will disenfranchise millions of eligible voters. They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. So here's yet another cut. Cut three, the federal workplace purge. The middle class pathway closed. And this is one of the most underreported cuts on the list. And I want to spend a little bit of time here. Approximately 271,000 federal jobs were eliminated in less than a year. The federal sector shrank 12% between September 2024 and January 2026. And I'll explain why this hits black Americans hardest. Black Americans made up 19% of the federal workplace, despite being 14 of the population. Federal employment has historically been one of the most reliable pathways to stable middle income employment for black families. A pathway that has more accessible, more protected from discrimination, and more likely to offer retirement security than the private sector. That pathway is being systematically closed, and black women bore the brunt of that. If black people had maintained their 2024 prime age employment rate, approximately 260,000 more Black adults would have been working in 2025. And of that number, roughly 200,000 would have been prime age black women. Black women who were college graduates and public sector workers got hit first and the hardest because that is exactly where the federal workplace purges landed. The federal government. Government was not a perfect employer by any means, but for generations, it was a fairer one. And it is being deliberately dismantled in a way that disproportionately erases the black middle class. And I hope you guys understand where I'm going with this. Okay, so bear with me. Cut four, the unemployment recession. It's already here. Black under underemployment surged 8.3% to 8.3%. Yeah, to 8.3% by November 2025, the highest level since the pandemic. By the first quarter of 2026, it stood at 7.6%. Black youth unemployment peaked at 29.8% in November of 2025. Black young people can't even get a job. And that's not even bringing into the equation AI which is a whole nother discussion. The official declaration. Well, the Joint center of Political and economic studies declared 2025 a regression and recession for black Americans. Their state of the Dream 2026 report states explicitly that what is happening is regressive leadership that is slashing government employment and agencies designed to address predatory economic practices that disproportionately harm black communities. The black unemployment rate has always exceeded other groups. But what's different now is that there's a larger jump and this is more sustained and it's more long running. A 7.6 unemployment rate for black Americans would signal a recession if it were experienced by the national population. It is not being described as a recession because it is only black Americans experiencing it. Go figure. Let's talk about cut five health care. That one big beautiful bill act. From July 2025 more than $900 billion in cuts were made to Medicaid. The Congressional budget office estimates 10 million more uninsured Americans. 10 million by 2034. Look. And that's assuming there's going to even be American America by 2034. But that's just me being frustrated I guess. But that includes 7.5 million that are going to be excluded from Medicaid coverage. And who does this target? Well, Black Americans constitute 14% of the population and more than 20% of Medicaid enrollees. Nearly 60% of all Black children enrolled in Medicaid. And potential cuts will impact more than 6 million black children and teens. The maternal mortality. The NAACP warns that the budget will exacerbate black maternity mortality rates. Black women already die from pregnancy related causes at three times the rate of white women. One of the most recent ones that I it really just broke my heart. Was Tracey Bowie. A Olympian gold medal Olympian track star. Lost her life giving birth. People forget that Medicaid covers prenatal care, childbirth and postpartum care for roughly 6 in 10 black women. Cutting it is not a budget adjustment. It is a predictable health crisis with a documented verified victim. For schools. Medicaid is the fourth largest federal funding source for K12 schools. 37% of black students attend high poverty schools. The cuts to school based Medicaid funding hits those schools first. Cut six Social Security. The destabilization of Social Security. The timeline moved. The Congressional Budget Office moved the Social Security trust fund depletion date to 2032 with an automatic benefit cut of 28%. If Congress does not act. The 2025 reconciliation bill accelerated that timeline. And let's not forget the staffing was gutted. The SSA cut approximately 7,000 jobs. That's 12%. Walk in appointments gone longer wait times with fewer staff. And again, walk in appointments are eliminated. Okay, and that makes no sense. So now what? Phone calls that you can't verify what happened? You get no written documentation of the conversation. It's already difficult enough for people to navigate Social Security. Now it's that much harder. And of course, again, who has hit the hardest? Black Americans have lower average retirement savings than white Americans, making Social Security a proportionately larger share of retirement income for them. A 23 to 28% automatic benefit cut is not an inconvenience for someone with $87,000 in retirement savings, which is the median. It is a financial emergency. The money was paid in. The contract was real. The delivery is being deferred. And for those who want to say black people should have done more to have more savings and to prepare, please keep in mind, I'm only focused on the black community right now. If you really want in a future episode, I can talk about the impact on white Americans because they all seem to think that these programs are just for black people. What I'm specifically talking about is the specific targeting of black Americans right now. So before you come trying to clap at me, just know this is my focus. Juneteenth is coming up and I want to talk about my community in particular. So cut seven food and safety. SNAP cut that same reconciliation bill that gutted Medicaid. Cut food assistance. Black households are disproportionately represented among SNAP recipients. Food insecurity and educational outcomes are directly linked. And I also want to just pause for a second and just add to this particular cut. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been dismantled. It was the primary federal agency that was protecting consumers from predatory lending, which were like those payday loans, discriminatory mortgage practices, fraudulent financial products. Black communities are disproportionately targeted by predatory lenders. Its dismantling leaves black communities disproportionately vulnerable to predatory fees, discriminatory lending and financial fraud, while shifting the burden of protection to states and community institutions that cannot fully replace federal enforcement and they know it. I need you to understand what it means practically. The federal watchdog that caught lenders discriminating against black home buyers that returned billions of dollars in wrongful fees to consumers that was specifically designed to protect the people the market exploits the most is gone. And the people most exposed to what it protects against are black Americans. And can we talk about Cut 8, the segregation language rollback? And almost nobody is reporting on this again? Well, the black community is. But outside of us, not really. So I want to slow down here because this is the cut that kind of just stopped me cold when I found out about it. The federal government. You're hearing a lot of slowed down or eliminated here, but fine. The federal government now no longer explicitly prohibits contractors from having segregated restaurants, waiting rooms, and drinking fountains. You heard me. That language, the explicit prohibition of segregated facilities and federal contractor requirements, it's gone. It's been removed. And I need you to understand why that language existed in the first place. It existed because segregation was real. It was practiced. It was enforced and required explicit legal prohibition to stop. The prohibition was not symbolic. It was functional. And now it's gone. This is not a headline. This is barely being reported. And it is one of the most historically significant rollbacks on this entire. I'm sighing a lot. Sorry. I'm just really frustrated here, people, because. Okay, I'm gonna move on. Cut nine. Black history erased. So the data sets, the museums, the books. This one I know has gotten a bit more press, but I still want to talk about it because I think initially, when it was happening, they wanted it to be invisible. And it was only because basically black Americans and people who really are allies that really care about maintaining these things. Yeah, we're the only ones talking about it and trying to do something about it. But the Smithsonian, President Trump, I think that is the first time I said his name while calling him. Ooh, that guy. Issued an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institute and the National Museum of African American History and Culture calling for the removal of what he deemed divisive race centered ideology. That is too much of a mouthful. And we all know he didn't come up with that. Anyway, foundational exhibits that were documenting black resistance, including the Woolworth lunch counter, are being dismantled. Data sets deleted. Over 6,700 federal data sets have been deleted, including those that were tracking maternal mortality and sickle cell disease, conditions that disproportionately affect black Americans. Why? Oh, and it also removed data on workforce diversity and environmental exposure in historically redlined neighborhoods. If you don't know what redlining is, please do your own research. I don't have time to go into all the details of all these things, but it was real. But, yeah, let that sink in. Over 6,700 data sets have been deleted that include tracking maternal mortality and sickle cell disease that is directly targeting black Americans. If you have a better explanation, please tell me, because that's what I see. That's what I believe. Book banning. 590+ Books by Black authors. Heck, I just wrote a book, it might get banned. It has nothing to do with anything but my own life, but shoot, it might get banned anyway. Yeah. So 590 books have been by black authors, have been banned from the Pentagon run schools and libraries. Among the removed titles, works by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou. I mean, really. Yeah. And this one hurts because I really want to talk about this too. The funding cut. We're still on cut nine, by the way. $3.4 billion. $3.4 billion in grants for HBCUs, public health research and black entrepreneurs have been cut or frozen according to the Onyx Impact Blackout report. I want to be precise about what deleting the maternity mortality data sets means, by the way. I want to circle back to that. Sorry, because I just really had this bullet point down and I should have brought it up a second ago, but I'm not going to re record this. So I'm going out of order. I'm going to go back. So I. And just because I'm a black mom, I gave birth, I have daughters, and I worry about when data sets are being deleted that could potentially impact my loved ones. What this means is that you cannot document the disparity here. So when we're talking about black women are being three times at a higher risk of death than white women, it makes it difficult for us to advocate what we cannot prove. So if you delete the data, what proof is there? You cannot prove what you cannot measure. And they know that. And if the measurement disappears, so does the evidence of the problem. That is not a data management decision, that is their strategy. It's just really heartbreaking and frustrating and it just makes me so angry. And I just don't want my anger to come through on the podcast because then I'll really start yelling. And if anybody's heard me yelling, especially when I was a coach, it's not pretty. This is where we are today, people. Three more cuts to go because I have 12. Cut 10. Complicated manipulation. The HBCU story is a little bit more nuanced and that's why it's got its own cut than, you know, the other defunding narratives. And that nuance makes it more damning, by the way, not less. The give and take. The administration redirected $435 million to HBCUs, funded by cutting grants that specifically aided non majority students at other institutions. That guy's budget bill simultaneously makes a 14.4% cut to Title 3 funding, which directly supports HBCUs. Sorry, are you getting it? So here's the pattern. Give with one hand and take with the other. Claim credit for the gift while concealing the theft. Allow HBCU funding to lapse, then restore it and call it a new contribution and the real impact. Tennessee State University warned that it could run out of cash. Morgan State University had a Navy contract for a STEM program for local K12 students. It was terminated because the program was deemed connected to dei. The students did not get to tour the AI and cybersecurity labs or any of that. Gone. Just gone. HBCUs are being used as a shield proof of support for black institutions while the broader ecosystem that feeds funds those institutions is being systematically dismantled. Make it make sense. Don't fall for the Okie doke, because that's all this is. And this administration is full of them. Cut 11 environmental justice eliminated by Order all federal environmental justice offices were ordered eliminated by March 20, 2020. All the initiatives were rolled back on day one. Who absorbs this? Black communities who are disproportionately located near hazardous waste sites, industrial facilities and environmental contamination. Environmental justice policy existed because the burden of the environmental harm is not equally distributed. Its elimination does not redistribute the harm, it removes the mechanism for addressing it. And it has a compounding effect. Weakening environmental regulations while simultaneously gutting the health care system that treats the resulting illness is not two separate policies. It is one coordinated outcome. Increased exposure, decreased treatment, no documentation because the data sets have been deleted. A lot of sighing and I apologize if this is coming across loud. I just am so frustrated people. Like I said, me and my friends, we've been having these conversations on a regular basis and I thank them for educating me and just sharing space to just say all the things without censoring ourselves. It's been very therapeutic and I think that's why our community, we need to be closer now than ever. Recycle our dollars amongst ourselves. All the things so sorry, I just had a moment. Cut 12 the wealth gap has been accelerated due to the tax policies that one big beautiful Bill act. It entrenched permanent tax cuts for high income households and companies, reduced investment now in poverty, alleviating programs, left support for work, less support I should say for working families. The bill increases racial economic inequity by design because it advantages those already who have accumulated wealth while cutting the programs that allow those without it to build any. And so what is the wealth gap context here? Well, the median white family has approximately eight times the wealth of the Median black family. The tax structure that advantages existing wealth over earned income is not race neutral in its impact. It accelerates a gap that was never closed and is now being widened by policy. So again, these are my 12 cuts that I focused on today. There are more issues people, but now each of those things by themselves, they're, they're talked about in isolated moments in time, not covered equally around across all news outlets. So if you're the average person, you're hearing about these little snippets. And of course, depending on which media you're listening to, there's a spin or a slant, right? And what I'm sharing, and the reason I wanted to talk about this is because it's a death by a thousand cuts. No one thing dismantles the black community. Of course not. But when you add all of these things, there's a pattern here. It's well intentioned to target black people. The workplace, the ballot, the federal workforce, the unemployment numbers, health care, Social Security, food assistance, consumer protections, segregation, language, Black history, HBCUs, environmental justice, tax structure. Each one has a policy rationale, of course. Each one can be explained in isolation. Each one is being reported in its own news cycle, generating its own reaction, producing its own moment of outrage that fades before the next one arrives. But together, together they're irrefutable. This is not a series of disconnected policy adjustments. This is a coordinated, documented name pattern of dismantling the infrastructure of black American life. And it is moving faster than at any point since 1912. The people doing it, they're counting on us to look at each cut separately so that we never see the whole wound. Today, we see the whole wound. And here's what I how I want you to think about the framing of this, okay? The death by a thousand cuts architecture requires that each cut be addressed separately. It requires that the outrage about the voting rights ruling expires before the outrage about the Medicaid cuts arrive. It requires that the grief about the deleted data sets doesn't connect to the anger about the federal workforce purge. It requires that we are always one news cycle behind the next attack, never fully assembled in our response because the volume of simultaneous cuts makes full assembly impossible. That is not accidental. That is the design. And so I want to sit with this question is honest as a, as an honest accounting. It's like a self check even for me, right? So that's why I'm having this conversation, because I literally had to ask myself, like, what more does this company want to extract from us? I think if they had their way, we would be back to black people being slaves. And let the record show that's not happening. Not happening, not happening. But I think that they would be very happy with it if that were to be the case. Free labor to make them even wealthier. I think that's their end game. Our labor was given unpaid for generations in an amount that was never. It's never been fully calculated or reckoned with. The bodies were given in wars for a country that did not return the investment equally. The tax dollars were paid to Social Security funds now being destabilized to Medicaid systems being gutted to a federal workplace being purged. The votes were cast strategically, knowingly, for a system that is now restricting the mechanism of that very vote. The debt, if we are doing the accounting honestly, does not run in the direction of black America. And I don't say this to produce despair, but because the truth of the accounting changes what we are owed. And knowing what you are owed changes how you move through a world that keeps acting like you owe them something more. You don't. We don't. Our account was paid in full at compound interest across generations. Here's what I actually believe after sitting with all 12 cuts, after looking at the whole picture. Ish Juneteenth is a story about delayed freedom. 1863, the Proclamation 1865. The news finally arrives in Texas two and a half years late, without land, without infrastructure, without the protection required to make the freedom real. It was freedom on paper. Delivery Deferred, infrastructure absent. June 2026 is that story in present tense. The rights exist on paper. The infrastructure is being dismantled. The delivery is being deferred by executive order, by judicial ruling, by budget reconciliation, by data set delivery delivery deletion, by the quiet removal of language that prohibited segregation by the corporate Juneteenth graphic posted the same week the DEI program was dissolved. The ancestors who received that news in 1865 did not have the full picture either. They were told they were free without being given the tools to make freedom functional. And they built anyway. Black Wall Street. If you don't know about it, look it up. And even that you took that away, you murdered, killed people. Because we found a way to build anyway. That is the inheritance. That. That's where we are in this country. And so here's what I'm asking from clarity, not despair. And with the understanding that you cannot fight all 12 fronts simultaneously. So I'm asking you choose your front deliberately. Protect your energy and stay in it. Here are some things that you can do Verify your voter registration is active today, not the week before an election. Please do not wait. And if you're in a position to do so, please help everyone in your circle verify theirs. The ballot is being attacked because it works. If you are a federal worker or you know of one, understand your rights. The purge is documented. The disproportionate impact on black workers is documented. Connect with federal employee unions and advocacy organizations. Know your health care rights. If you or your family is on Medicaid, you really have to understand what the cut means for your specific coverage in your specific state. States have some ability to implement protections at the state level. Check your Social Security record. I go check mine once a year. Go to SSA.gov view your earnings that are recorded and your projected benefits since walk in appointments are gone. Do not wait until you need something urgently to find. You're going to find that the system's slower than it was before. So go in there now and start looking at your benefits so that you can plan accordingly. Do not let something become so urgent that you need to speak to someone right away, because you probably won't be able to if your company issued a Juneteenth or if they if they're planning to issue a Juneteenth statement and they dissolved your DEI program, you're allowed to feel the way you feel about that contradiction. I'm not going to tell you how to feel because I don't want nobody saying I said for them to say something and they lost their job. But you are entitled to feel how you feel about it. Protect and tell Black History the erasure of data sets, exhibits and books is a strategy. As I said, the counter strategy is documentation, storytelling and deliberate transmission. Tell the history. Record it. Share it. The attempt to erase it has. Well, it's made all of us more determined to tell it. I know that I am. I don't think I've read or preserved more black knowledge and more books. I have more black books now than I ever have before and I'm not going to stop and I'm going to talk about it on my podcast. Duh. To every black person listening to this. I know you know this, but you are not imagining it. All these cuts are real, the patterns documented. And your tiredness, the specific accumulated multi generational tiredness of fighting for the same ground is a completely rational response to an irrational and sustained demand. You do not have to perform fine. You do not have to demonstrate resilience before you have acknowledged the weight of it. You do not have to make this comfortable for people who are not carrying what you are carrying. What was given to you by the people who came before you was not an obligation to be unbreakable. It was an inheritance of refusal. The refusal to accept the delay as permanent. The refusal to accept that the missing infrastructure was the ceiling. The refusal to accept that freedom on paper was enough when freedom in practice was what was promised. The refusal is yours. It has always been yours. Hold it. Well, I told you guys, this is going to be a heavy episode and I don't have all this figured out, and I know you don't either. And honestly, that's the point. We are navigating real situations with real stakes in real time together. So until next time, whether you showed up today in your suits or your pajamas or somewhere in between, which is where most of us actually live, know this. You are not alone in that tension. You don't have to resolve it to keep moving. Talk to you soon.