American Whitelash: A Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress
by Wesley Lowery
Buy on AmazonPulitzer 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.…
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"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are the tool used to convince people to pick up the sticks and stones. That’s the argument – girded by reporting and historical research – that Wesley Lowery makes in this book. He looks at the rhetoric that politicians and the media use to describe different groups, including immigrants, people of color, Jews and Muslims. Then, he draws direct connections between that language and some of the deadly violence that has been visited on those communities, with anecdotes from various points throughout U.S. history."
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