American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, by Wesley Lowery
Review by Dave Gamrath
One-liner: In his book American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, author Wesley Lowery examines the impact of President Barack Obama’s election on America’s white supremacist movement.
Book Review:
With the 2008 election of Barack Obama as President, many rejoiced that America’s racial barrier had finally fallen. In his book American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress, author Wesley Lowery asks “so, what the hell happened?” and states that “the election of a black president did not usher us from the shadows of our racist past; rather it led us down a perilous path and into a decade and a half (and counting) of explicit racial thrashing.”
Obama’s election resulted in an increase of the number of white Americans believing they were being racially discriminated against and targets of anti-white bigotry. In fact, this number increased from 10% in the 1980s to 55% by the end of Obama’s presidency. Many whites believed that they and the benefits they have historically enjoyed were endangered, and began to angrily fight back. “The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement,” and for many white Americans, Obama’s election was impermissible, and sparked a tremendous growth in America’s white supremacist movement.
Lowery explains how today’s white supremacist movement is working to overthrow our maturing multiracial democracy. Lowery calls this Whitelash. Lowery states the purpose of his book “is an attempt to put human faces on the relentless cycle of violence that has defined American history – to put flesh and bone on our discussion of white supremacist terror.” Lowery does that by providing personal details and the backstories of many victims of white supremacist violence. Lowery also works “to examine and explain the proud, avowed white supremacists we see in our streets – defined as those who believe in the genetic and societal superiority of the white race.”
In telling this story, Lowery provides a history of anti-immigration efforts in America, and historic American violence towards immigrants. Lowery explains how these anti-immigration efforts are white supremacy at work, and “carried out in defense of the established racial order in which those deemed white were the only true citizens, entitled to America’s bounty and liberty and without any obligation to share.” Lowery provides many examples from centuries past, as well as from recent times. All have a common theme: innocent people brutally attacked for not being white. This violence is often “encouraged by powerful, white-run institutions: elected officials, neighborhood and business councils, and the press.” Xenophobia is a fear, skepticism, or hatred of foreigners. Lowery writes that xenophobia has become an American tradition. Since Obama’s election, conservative media has worked wonders to fan the flames against immigrants, convincing their viewers that immigrants threaten their way of life, and inspiring viewers to lash out violently. Restated, they are encouraging American Whitelash.
Today’s white supremacist movement uses tactics to convince “its followers that their failures and flaws are not the result of their choices, or an unlucky spin of the roulette of circumstance, but rather due to a global racial conspiracy far beyond their control.” In addition to right-wing media, white supremacist recruitment tools include the white power music scene, social media, and internet message boards. The movement valorizes violence. While most members are not physically violent, violence arises from milder states of mind. Sure, most barking doesn’t lead to biting, but Lowery reminds us that “there is never a bite without previous barking.” Perpetrators of hate crimes generally fall into three groups: thrill seekers, reactive attackers and avowed ideologues, which are the most dangerous. Today’s white supremacist movement promotes the use of leaderless resistance, which dictates that members should act out on their own, making it difficult for the government to implement preventative actions. But it’s not just violence that matters. Lowery reminds us that “there are likely hundreds of thousands if not millions of avowed racists in our country. Yet…just a sliver of them carry out acts of violence each year.” Thus, “white rage doesn’t have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets…It can look like white flight and private schools and city ordinances and neighborhood watches.”
Lowery explains how Donald Trump unapologetically amplified white fear. Trump leveraged this fear into the presidency, capitalizing on the whitelash movement, and adding fuel to the fire. Experts on extremism and hate speech repeatedly have stressed that “degrading and demonizing language toward specific ethnic and racial groups by powerful political leaders can bring about predictable outcomes,” I.E., racial violence, which has occurred repeatedly since Trump’s 2016 election. Data shows that Jan 6th insurgency participants tended to hail from locations where nonwhite populations are fastest growing. Trump has succeeded in instilling false white replacement fear into his MAGA followers. Trump’s election legitimized America’s white supremacist movement. But many Americans have fought back. Lowery describes how police violence against Blacks spawned the Black Lives Matter movement, which of course led to even more Whitelash. The movement to remove Confederate statues in the South led to the 2017 white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which also received support from Trump.
When elected in 2008, Barack Obama declared “his ascent as proof that the dreams of the founders remained alive in our time.” Lowery writes that “a decade and a half later, that dream has become a nightmare,” and that “it’s hard to look at the horizon and not see more horrors to come. The coarseness and demagoguing of the Trump era has not softened – and has, in fact, in many ways, intensified” since he left office. Republicans have worked to establish the most extensive set of voting restrictions the nation had seen since the Jim Crow era. The current “culture wars over how American history and anti-racism are taught, moral panics about gender and sexuality, a fresh round of demagoguery about immigrants, Muslims, and migrants; and a troubling wave of antisemitism in mainstream public discourse” has engulfed America. Yet, in 2021, Biden signed new hate crime legislation into law. This battle continues, with no peaceful end in sight. As minorities, immigrants and refugees “continue to shape our culture, society and democracy…the country’s white majority grows increasingly agitated and aggrieved, convinced that it’s all gone too far.” As Lowery explains, “those white fears may be the defining force of our time.”
Reviewer Opinion: Worth the read. Especially good if one has not read other books on this topic.
Reviewer Rating of Book: Thumb up.