Whitelash

Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer Prize winner, examines a pattern that has run through American history: each step toward racial equality has been met with a violent backlash. That pattern returned with fresh force after 2008, when Barack Obama became the country's first Black president. Rather than marking a clean break from the past, his election stoked old white supremacist resentment and opened a new and alarming chapter in the long contest between racial progress and reactionary retaliation.

The book traces how those forces responded to Obama's victory and how they profited from the political climate it created, helping to lift Donald Trump to power. Lowery blends deep historical analysis with on-the-ground reporting drawn from both the victims and the perpetrators of this violence.

He also considers where the cycle is leading the country, how the federal government has failed to step in, and whether there is still a way out.