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The news of the racist grocery store shooting in Buffalo reached journalist Wesley Lowry at a

strange moment. For years, he's reported about race in this country. He won a Pulitzer for his

reporting on police violence while he was over at the Washington Post. And he'd just finished up

a new manuscript. I've been working now for a year or two on a book about the rise and increase

in white supremacist violence in the decades since Barack Obama was elected and looking at various

attacks that are driven by racist ideologies and also trying to sit with and think about this idea

of how much of our mainstream political rhetoric accelerates and empowers these ideologies.

I'm kind of stuck on the irony of the fact that you were putting to bed this book that was

about the increase in racist violence and then this shooting happens. The timing is kind of eerie.

Yeah, it's so, and I'll be honest, I've had a real hard time finishing this book again. My

editor somewhere is like, why are you on podcast right now and finishing chapters? In part because

the topic is difficult and the work is difficult. You got to go to all these dark places in your head

and think about how to do it and how to do it responsibly and do it well. I think that too often

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