This is a word, a podcast from Slate, I'm a Yana Angel sitting in for Jason Johnson.

Barack Obama's election as president brought on a racist backlash in America that culminated

in the election of Donald Trump.

But prize-winning journalist Wesley Laurie wants more focus on how and why racist rhetoric

reaches beyond politics and sparks real-life violence against people of color.

At the end of Barack Obama's time in office, 55% of white Americans believed they faced

racial discrimination.

American White Lash, a changing nation in the cost of progress coming up on a word,

stay with us.

Welcome to a word, a podcast about race in politics and everything else.

I'm a Yana Angel sitting in for Jason Johnson.

It's hard to imagine now, but a few serious people once believed the election of America's

first black president?

Menth the country was post-racial.

That Barack Obama symbolized the end of inequality and open racism.

Of course, almost everyone understands now that the idea was garbage.

And that if anything, Obama's election reinvigorated a particularly poisonous kind of racism that

has degraded our politics and made racist violence more common.

Some have called it a backlash, but our guest today calls it something else.

Wesley Laurie has been on the front lines of documenting this political moment, winning

a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of race and policing.

His new book is American White Lash, a changing nation and the cost of progress.

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