racism

Country music's longstanding race problem suddenly became a hot topic in early February after the white, twenty-something, good ol' party boy and newly minted country chart-topper Morgan Wallen was caught on tape drunkenly shouting a racist slur.

Quaker Oats cooked up a new image for an old, offensive brand Tuesday. PepsiCo Inc. the parent company for Quaker Oats, announced it's rebranding Aunt Jemima, the popular pancake and syrup brand, retiring the racist stereotype used for the product's image.

During his first full week in office, President Biden made clear that addressing inequity would be not only a fixture of his presidency, but also the responsibility of the entire federal government.

As he signed a series of executive actions, he declared that "advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our government."

Updated at 4:10 p.m. ET

Rising country star Morgan Wallen has been suspended by his record label, Big Loud. The label posted the news on its social media platforms Wednesday afternoon, saying, "In the wake of recent events, Big Loud Records has made the decision to suspend Morgan Wallen's recording contract indefinitely."

This decision comes after TMZ posted a video Tuesday night of Wallen using the N-word with a group of his friends.

Filmmaker Ken Burns has spent his career documenting American history, and he always considered three major crises in the nation's past: the Civil War, the Depression and World War II.

Then came the unprecedented "perfect storm" of 2020 — and Burns thinks we may be living through America's fourth great crisis, and perhaps the worst one yet.

The year of large racial justice protests led to an unprecedented number of Confederate symbols being removed around the country.

More than 100 Confederate symbols have been removed from public spaces or renamed since George Floyd was killed, according to a count by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

One of the most prestigious newspapers in the midwestern United States issued an apology for what it called "both action and inaction in shaping and misshaping" the history of Missouri's most populous city and its surrounding region.

Cleveland's Major League Baseball team is the latest professional sports franchise to announce it will abandon its longtime name, which is widely seen as racist or culturally offensive.

The baseball club, known since 1915 as the Cleveland Indians, announced in a statement Monday that it will "begin the process of changing the name," according to a letter to fans from owner Paul Dolan.

Updated at 5:53 p.m. ET

Editor's note: This is a story about the pervasive nature of racial insensitivity in America and how it persists to this day, and contains terms some might find offensive.