America Had a Black President. Then Came the Whitelash.

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The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 October 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

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Summary

More To The Story: America in these last 10 years has experienced generational political upheaval, clashes over race and identity, and a battle over the very direction of the country itself. Few writers have charted these wild swings better than staff writer for The New Yorker and Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb. And for Cobb, it all started when he was asked to write about an incident that was just beginning to make national news: the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black 17-year-old in Florida.

Cobb recently released Three or More Is a Riot: Notes on How We Got Here: 2012–2025, a collection of essays from more than a decade at The New Yorker, that all begin with that moment of national reckoning over Martin’s death. On this week’s More To The Story, Cobb looks back at how the Trayvon Martin incident shaped the coming decade, reexamines the Black Lives Matter movement and President Obama’s legacy in the age of Donald Trump, and shares what he tells his journalism students at a time when the media is under attack.

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Read: Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government (Mother Jones)

Listen: Being Black in America Almost Killed Me Part 1 (More To The Story)

Watch: Where’s Black MAGA While Trump Wipes Black History? (Mother Jones)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	I haven't given up on the idea of there being victory, or there being a better tomorrow,
0:08.4	but I also think that it will exact a hell of a cost for us to get to that place.
0:14.7	On this week's more to the story, New Yorker staff writer and Columbia Journalism School
0:19.2	Dean Jelani Cobb. We talk about the whiplash between the
0:22.9	Trump presidency and the Obama years, the fragile state of both higher education and journalism,
0:29.1	and so much more. You don't want to miss this, so stay tuned.
0:43.3	It's one of Britain's most notorious crimes,
0:46.9	the killing of a wealthy family at White House Farm.
0:52.6	But I got a tip that the story of this famous case might be all wrong.
0:56.4	I know there's going to be a twist, won't they, a massive twist.
1:00.2	At every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover-up in this case.
1:01.6	I'm Heidi Blake.
1:05.6	Blood Relatives is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker.
1:08.7	Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.
1:19.4	This is more to the story.
1:20.4	I'm Al Ledson.
1:27.0	And if you listen to this podcast at all, you know, I often think of America as a pendulum. It always seems that just as political power
1:30.3	swings in one direction, gravity finds a way to pull it back. Just look at the last 10 years or so
1:36.8	in America. The country saw its first black president and the rise of the Black Lives Matter
1:42.6	movement, followed by President Trump's election,
1:45.5	an erasure of black history, and a resurgence of white nationalism.
1:49.7	Few writers have charted these wild swings better than Jolani Cobb.
	...

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