SLAVEHOLDERS-1

The Bloodlines of Power: How America’s Modern Elites Trace Wealth and Office to Slaveholding Ancestors

From InnerKwest’s Bloodlines & Power Series | August 9, 2025 A 2023 Reuters investigation found at least 119 of America’s most influential leaders—presidents, governors, members of Congress, and Supreme Court justices—descend from people who enslaved Black Americans. What that means for power, policy, and repair today. Introduction American power didn’t just survive slavery—it inherited it. In 2023, Reuters published a …

SA-DIVIDE

Johannesburg in Contrasts: From White Wealth to the Black Wealth Divide

By InnerKwest | Johannesburg SA CorrespondentPublished: July 2025 In Johannesburg, Africa’s richest city and South Africa’s commercial nerve center, glass skyscrapers in Sandton gleam just a few miles from the informal settlements of Alexandra. These spatial juxtapositions symbolize a more profound economic truth: while democracy may have transformed political rule since the end of apartheid, economic apartheid lingers in concrete …