We reviewed our articles for one kind of claim: statements about why something happened, such as “designed to divide.” We checked each against primary or reputable sources. Where a source documents what a law or practice did, we say that. Where we could not find a source for the intent, we removed the motive.
What changed
- Intent language. Phrases like “designed to,” “deliberate strategy,” and “deliberately destroyed” came out where we had no named source for the intent. Articles affected: Unity, Internalized Racism, Systemic Inequities, Community Violence, Hyperindividualism, The Village, Schadenfreude, One Love, and When We Eat.
- What stayed. Documented intent stays, with its source named. The Senate’s Church Committee found in 1976 that the FBI worked to disrupt Black organizations under COINTELPRO. We say that, and we cite it.
- Slavery and culture. We now state what the record shows: the 1740 Negro Act banned drums and horns, slave codes barred teaching enslaved people to read, and families were separated by sale. We removed claims we could not verify, including a general ban on African languages and a story about forced ethnic mixing.
- Series name. “The Wound and the Medicine” is now “Turning Inward, Turning Together.” Several pages now say “protection” or “wellness” where they said “medicine.”
- Human nature. Where pages said people were “designed” for community, they now say we evolved for it.
New article
Can Racism Change? What the Evidence Actually Says looks at what research shows about how people sort each other, and about what changes it.
Our companions
Oji Echo and Hope Echo now follow the same rule: state what a law or practice did and when, and name an intent only when a source documents it. They are language models, so they can still slip. If one does, tell us.
Follow-up, October 10, 2026
We could not trace a widely repeated J. Edgar Hoover quotation about the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast Program to a primary record, so we removed it from the Unity article. In its place we cite what the Senate’s Church Committee did document about FBI efforts to disrupt the program, and we corrected how we described the 1975 federal School Breakfast Program legislation.
We also reworded a few phrases that described a system’s purpose without a source, such as “designed to dehumanize” and “never built to serve them,” on our About page and in five articles. And we corrected the Hyperindividualism article to say humans “evolved” for community, which our first post had said but the article had not yet reflected.
Second follow-up, October 10, 2026
We tightened the Unity article so that intent is named only for COINTELPRO, where the FBI’s own files document it, and not for every system the article discusses. We also replaced figurative “medicine” and “wound” language that no source supported with plain description, and changed “barbershop” to “hair shop” where the point applies to salons too. Where an organization or study uses a term (The Confess Project’s barbers, Cure Violence, moral injury), we kept its own words.
Third follow-up, October 10, 2026
We replaced two unsupported figures in the Hyperindividualism article. It no longer calls belonging “a form of armor” or “a social immune system.” It now says what the cited research found: belonging goes along with reduced mental distress.
We also softened one line in the Understanding PTSD article. It no longer says community ties “reduce the severity and persistence” of trauma symptoms. It now says research associates them with less severe symptoms.
We would rather correct the record in public than leave a claim standing because it sounded right.