White Backlash to Pandemic Is Rooted in American History

Since the pandemic began, the country has been afflicted with political and cultural strife. This fallout is nothing new and is just the latest in a legacy of white backlash.

A new piece in The Atlantic, “How White Backlash Controls American Progress,” discusses how backlashes originated in the Civil Rights era and came to define the American political system.

Listen: How America’s history of white backlash stifles progress. 

Guest

Lawrence Glickman, Professor of history at Cornell University, says that through his extensive research he found that white emotional fragility and fear has been foregrounded throughout America’s history.

He adds that the term ‘white backlash’ first became widely known and used in 1963 after President John F. Kennedy’s push for Civil Rights. He says that white Americans felt the country went too far too fast with civil rights progress, something that would be recapitulated again and again throughout the nation’s history.

Glickman argues that white backlash constrains progress in a multitude of ways.

“It often constrains people of good faith but who live in fear of setting off backlashes,” says Glickman.

This fear of instigating backlash is something that impacts national policy and is unique to the Democratic party, according to Glickman. He adds that this fear of setting off backlash or stepping outside of a designated in-group represents the crystallization of whiteness.