This is a Word, a podcast from Slate. I'm Ayanna 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 Lorry wants more focus on how and why racist rhetoric reaches beyond politics and sparks real-life

violence against people of color.

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

racial discrimination.

American whitelash, a changing nation and 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 Ayanna Angel sitting in for Jason Johnson.

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

first black president meant 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 Lowry 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 Whitelash, a changing nation and the cost of progress.

Laurie is also the incoming executive editor of the investigative reporting workshop at American University, as well as an associate professor of investigative journalism there.

Wesley Lowry, welcome to a word.

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