While every racial group has the capacity to express themselves, Black writers are more likely to have their stories suppressed. Dozens of states passed laws that prohibit “divisive” topics, including those that center on racial identity in the classroom. Likewise, museum curators have faced pressure to remove or alter black history exhibits, and some libraries have been advised to remove books deemed too controversial. Naaz Modan, a senior reporter for K-12 Dive, estimated that 3,700 book titles were banned during the 2024–35 school year, adding that 44% of banned titles featured characters representing people of color, “the largest percentage ever in this category.” Titles like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The New Kid by Jerry Craft, and Caste by Isabel Wilkerson are noteworthy texts that have been targeted for removal in recent years.

Beyond the classroom, where students are rarely introduced to many books written by Black authors, the topic of racism is suppressed by online platforms. For instance, in March of 2025, the National Park Service removed a description on a government website of Harriet Tubman’s work as an abolitionist. This is a woman who escaped her enslavers and guided at least 70 family members and friends along the Underground Railroad and hundreds more during the Harper’s Ferry raid. The historical narrative about Tubman was later restored, but this removal triggered concerns about the rise of censorship. One study revealed that users who “share personal experiences of racism are disproportionately flagged by both algorithms and humans,” which limits the potential of social media platforms to give voice to marginalized communities and “exacerbate feelings of isolation, both online and offline” (Lee et al., 2024).

Why are stories Black people write about racism often suppressed? The most obvious answer is that the collective preference of White Americans, a socially dominant group, is prioritized above and beyond racially marginalized groups. In simpler terms, many don’t want to talk about race, even if it’s to call out racism. During chattel slavery, many states passed laws that prohibited Black people from reading and writing to limit their efforts to communicate and organize their resistance. Throughout the Jim Crow era, Black writers and editors continued to face suppression despite their talent. For example, Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, who is now widely known, faced rejection from white publishers, which contributed to her dying in poverty, buried in an unmarked grave, as her friends couldn’t raise enough money for a headstone.

In the modern era, efforts to limit public access to Black people’s stories are carried out with laser precision. By using keywords such as racism, race, white supremacy, and white privilege, a program can easily suppress stories about these topics. Lee et al. (2024) found that AI language models tend to misclassify personal narratives from those who’ve endured racism as “toxic” to an online environment, thereby reducing their visibility. While most online platforms claim they care about preserving free speech, as long as it’s not hate speech, Black creators are often unfairly shadow-banned because their attempts to address racism are mistaken for reverse racism. When this happens, readers are less likely to see these stories on their “For You” or “Explore” pages.

When writing online, one of the worst sins you can commit is publishing “clickbait,” stories that lure readers in by triggering an emotional response without satisfying the curiosity gap between what they don’t know and would like to learn. While this type of writing is often considered detrimental to the overall user experience on online platforms, this standard unfairly silences Black people who are simply sharing their experiences with racism. The assumption that any discomfort should be avoided overlooks the work of advocates. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a major figure within the civil rights movement, explained that “true peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” Yet newer algorithms seem to conflate these concepts, making no distinction between stories that endorse racism against certain groups and those fighting against it.

As someone who regularly writes about Black people killed by police officers, citing victims such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and about hate crimes committed by civilians, such as the killing of Ahmaud Arbery or the four victims of the 1963 Ku Klux Klan bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, — -Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley, I’m well aware that controversy can blossom from people reading essays that center anti-Black racism. Often, the comment section on social media reveals conflicting feelings, from disgust regarding the mistreatment of Black people to efforts to defend prejudicial attitudes. But I would argue that these conversations are a necessary prerequisite to social change. When an algorithm excludes stories about racism before anyone sets eyes on them, the automated program takes the choice away from people.

Learning about individuals like Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old girl who faced racial harassment after becoming the first Black student to desegregate an all-white elementary school, exposes readers to the idea that we live in a country where Black people have endured exclusion due to their race. The public should remember that in 1960, federal marshals escorted Ruby to protect her from racial harassment. In this way, they can consider the value of addressing the prejudice students continue to endure. On the other side of Brown v. Board of Education, there are no white parents holding signs to protest Black students attending whites-only schools. Yet it would serve Americans well to remember that some were more committed to ending controversy than they are to addressing the harm of racism.

Ida B. Wells, one of the most well-known African American journalists, once noted, “the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” In 1892, she wrote “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” disproving the racist myth that Black men were more likely to commit acts of sexual violence against women, a talking point used to justify lynchings. In the Memphis Daily Commercial, a white-owned newspaper, editors who initially assumed she was a man suggested: “the black wretch who published that foul article should be tied to a stake at the corner of Main and Madison Streets, a pair of tailor’s shears used on his ears, and the most part of his person branded with a hot iron.” New York Times editors accused Wells of being a “nasty-minded mulatto who is looking for notoriety.”

While her writing was considered controversial, Ida B. Wells exposed the violence inflicted upon Black people as a common injustice, her work represented a deliberate effort to save Black lives. She suffered the tragic loss of three of her friends: Thomas Moss, the owner of the People’s Grocery in Memphis, Tennessee, along with Calvin McDowell and Will Steward, store clerks, as they were killed by white vigilante mob violence. In the aftermath, she wrote that lynching was nothing more than “an excuse to get rid of Negroes who were acquiring wealth and property.” This work placed her in the line of fire, even leading to death threats by White people who did not appreciate her work.

Over a hundred and thirty years after Ida B. Wells exposed southern horrors, writing about racism remains controversial. Under these conditions, publishing often feels like kicking a hornet’s nest, as an angry mob swarms the comment sections, attempting to discredit the individual who shared the story or harass them into self-censorship. No matter how well-researched or well-intentioned a Black person’s writing is, this suppression has continued. As a writer who’s been discouraged from writing about race and routinely called slurs on social media that denigrate me for being a Black person and a woman, it’s clear that in some ways, society hasn’t strayed far from that past. Censorship of Black writers looks different in the modern era because burning books can’t stop readers from obtaining digital copies. Still, the problem persists.

Stories about racism have the potential to directly challenge racist attitudes and beliefs, potentially sparking change within systems and institutions that have produced inequalities. While not every White person would agree with efforts to censor Black writers, and certainly there are many historians who value the preservation of history, whether it triggers discomfort or not, prejudice impacts the visibility of these stories online. This bias against Black writers is often integrated so seamlessly into online platforms that few question why they haven’t seen as many stories about racism in recent years. The social problem hasn’t gone away, but the behind-the-scenes method for selecting which stories reach a broader audience may contribute to the false perception that we’re living in a post-racial society. To combat algorithms that tend to limit access to stories written by Black people, it’s important to intentionally seek out their work and to support their efforts. In this way, readers can discover perspectives that too often remain hidden.