American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress

Pulitzer winner Lowery (They Can’t Kill Us All) takes a harrowing look at white backlash against racial progress since the 2008 election of Barack Obama. According to the author, this “whitelash” was spearheaded by Donald Trump, who began his political career with racist causes like his “investigation” of Obama’s birth certificate and his opposition to the construction of a mosque near the site of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. Among other ideological hotbeds of whitelash, Lowrey spotlights Fox News, where commentators like Glenn Beck portrayed Obama as an interloper and an outsider (Beck claimed Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people and white culture”), and online forums rife with such racist propaganda as “replacement theory,” the idea that white people are being replaced by people of color. This messaging—that white people are under siege—heightened racist fervor and activity after Obama’s election by engendering a sense of “solidarity” among white supremacists and drawing in new recruits eager to blame an outside force for their own suffering. Interspersing his narrative with profiles of individuals harmed by white supremacist violence, including Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant murdered in 2008 by white teens on Long Island, Lowery vividly portrays America as a fractured society. This disturbing exposé lays bare one of the gravest threats to the nation. (June)