“American Whitelash is indispensable. Really. It is.”
— Ibram X. Kendi, author of How
to Be an Antiracist
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Wesley Lowery confronts the
sickness at the heart of American society: the cyclical pattern of
violence that has marred every moment of racial progress in this
country, and whose bloodshed began anew following Obama’s 2008
election.
In 2008, Barack Obama’s historic victory was heralded as a turning
point for the country. And so it would be—just not in the way that
most Americans hoped. The election of the nation’s first Black
president fanned long-burning embers of white supremacy, igniting a
new and frightening phase in a historical American cycle of racial
progress and white backlash.
In American Whitelash, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and
best-selling author Wesley Lowery charts the return of this
blood-stained trend, showing how the forces of white power retaliated
against Obama’s victory—and both profited from, and helped to
propel, the rise of Donald Trump. Interweaving deep historical
analysis with gripping firsthand reporting on both victims and
perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is
carrying us into ever more perilous territory, how the federal
government has failed to intervene, and how we still might find a
route of escape.
