American Whitelash

June 5, 2023
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.

Starred review from June 1, 2023
The author of They Can't Kill Us All returns with a timely investigation into the historic roots of violent White resistance to non-White Americans. "OBAMA: RACIAL BARRIER FALLS IN DECISIVE VICTORY." That was the headline in the New York Times the morning after the 2008 presidential election. Within a matter of weeks, news outlets across the country would be offering headlines like this: "Obama Election Spurs Race Crimes Around Country" (AP); "Obama Win Sparks Rise in Hate Crimes, Violence" (NPR); "Hatemongers Poised to Exploit Obama Election, Tough Economic Times" (Southern Poverty Law Center). It seems easy to find a throughline from the election of the first Black president of the U.S. to the xenophobia and racial animus that were hallmarks of the Trump years. To help us understand how we got here, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Lowery provides a potent consideration of the past 15 years within the context of American history. He shows how White supremacists have evolved from positioning themselves as defenders of the status quo to radicalism. "Today's white supremacist movement is revolutionary--its explicit aim being to overthrow our maturing multiracial democracy," he writes. As he tracks the historical threads of this movement, he offers compassionate and often heartbreaking profiles of the lives of contemporary individuals who have been irreparably harmed by the latest rise in White supremacist violence. Lowery has written extensively about the aftermath of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri--he was even arrested while covering the protests--and some of the stories he covers will be familiar to readers. The murder of Charlottesville protestor Heather Heyer and the mass shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Illinois, commanded significant media coverage. But Lowery provides urgent, necessary perspective on these events while also shining a light on deaths that fail to capture national attention because such deaths, sadly, feel quotidian. A masterful blend of narrative history and empathetic reporting.

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