'American whitelash' far from over: Politico

Xinhua, July 4, 2023

The white racial violence that has been embedded in the United States' culture not just in the last few election cycles, but since the nation's founding, reported Politico on Sunday, citing a new book by Wesley Lowery, a Pulitzer-winning Washington Post reporter.

Weaving together history, interviews and close examinations of key incidents of violence, Lowery showed the Americans that white fear and resentment of the "other" has always been present, said the report. "What we call backlash at certain moments is really a long-running 'whitelash' that's intricately woven into American history and currently targets not just Black people, but any group that threatens a shifting consensus of who is American and who is not."

"Three years after the eruption of protests following the death of George Floyd, Lowery isn't convinced that America is any better prepared to deal with whitelash as a political force, let alone a cultural one -- particularly as we head into a sharply contentious presidential election," the report noted.

"People have talked for years about civil war," Lowery was quoted as saying. "We don't have something as embedded as slavery anymore, but we're going in diametrically opposed positions; we're ripping ourselves apart from each other."

"I certainly think that's true. It's a soft civil war. One of our historical blind spots is thinking multiracial democracy -- what America should be -- is a settled question. Many people are not sure of that," added the reporter.