And im looking forward to talking about the book. You know, tng that i think is usually a good starting place is that in my experience its a book doesnt come together or the idea for a book doesnt come all at usually its like maybe experiences or disparate bits of information that, you know, gradually the themes become more visible you and you realize that you know theres a subject to be written. So i wondered if you could give before we get into the substance of how you did the book and so on, i wondered if you could give a kind of overview of the idea for the book to you. Of course, i really appreciate it. Dean cobb or as i know the you know, i, i think that when i think about this book in, this project, you know, i go back to 2016 when we saw the end of the first black presidencynd the of a candidate who had run an opened nativist Campaign Campaigning on a kind of racialized hostility and a play toward a white racialized grievance. And as a reporter, as a journalist who was covering issues of, race and justice at time, it was this question think all of us were grappling with this question of what is our role, what is our job amidst the Trump Administration and how does it change what our jobs were . And how does that change . How is it different from the obama not not in terms of the actual function, but just literally what are the good story ideas . How should i write about this in this as opposed to the last one . And as that as that timing is playing out . You know, the the thing about journalism is that as as events progress, the story starts to play itself out. So we were seeing incident after incident of cases where there had been these acts of clearly emboldened White Supremacists. By that i mean avowed racist not in a colloquial sense, but actual race warriors who were committing against all sorts of different types of people and and who were empowered and who were recruiting and people who were recruited because of the coarseness and the open bigotry of our mainstream politics and of our president ial administration. And so for me, initially i just thought about, okay, as a journalist, how do i want to spend my time . What artifact do i want to leave from the trump years . And it felt like, okay, part of this can be telling the stories of people who have been victimized that way but then how do i contextual lies that and so its impossible to look at the trump years without also looking at the obama years as well and so suddenly now i was looking this kind of era of black advancement or, the perception of black advancement and then the the backlash to that or the pushback to that. And then the need to place that in type of a bigger context as well. Because of course this is not the first or only time that weve seen this tug of war play out in our history. So i wonder if you could talk about this i mean, we can get into the bigger historical currents in a minute but even just a more microcosmic sense of the, you know, backlash and kind of boomerang cycle that weve seen in our politics in the past decade. And i wonder if you could talk about about that as. It relates to the book. Sure. You know, and i think its remarkable. As i start the book, i thinking in meditating a little bit on Election Night in 2008 and this desire year from a lot of our institutions to in recognizing the historic moment to project a kind of postwar reality. Right there was this desire for us to have closed the door we have finally solved racism in america by electing a black guy. Whats actually interesting is there have been studies that show i know theyve been done on gender. Im not positive that theyve been done on race that they look at countries for example that elect the first female prime minister. Sure and what it shows is that in fact the expression the naked of misogyny increased following the election of a woman because and now their politics are gender in this way the way you critique the leader is via the ways that you would comment gender, but secondarily that you have people who now say, well, but i cant be sexist because i voted for right. And it provides a permission structure to in fact, express prejudice. And so what we see is the election of a black president , the desire of people to suggest that were now in some type of postracial utopia, which gives them a permission structure to express a bunch of racial prejudices. You know, i think one of the most revealing statistics or data points is by the end of the obama administration, polling shows that 55 of White Americans believe they are racially oppressed, believe they face racialized discrimination. Right. Right. And thats a marked difference as a change. Right. And so what we see is the, is this playing out of a subsection of the major of our country, who that in the face of a what is perceived as a clear towards racial equality or racial equity, they see that a net loss as a deficit and it makes them begin acting as a more anxiety ridden racially aggrieved set of people and so that its unsurprising to see the rise of this kind of explicit nativism in our politics. Yeah you know the interesting thing about that back to the 2008 moment which was that the uncomfortable reality, the thing that people didnt really want to talk about was fact that for you these barrier breaking leaders they often face, you know, severe headwinds. You know, the type that you you mentioned in the United States you know you could have all sorts of comparisons that you could think of. But the fact that, you know, the president the night the country was led through the Second World War and through Great Depression by a president who used a wheelchair and yet a 45 years after his death, it was still to pass the americans with disabilities act because the community that had been so incredibly well represented, even as Franklin Roosevelt himself great pains to obscure that from the public but the community that had this stuff living example of their ability to do to lead, you know, to provide service to the nation in its most dire moments. Still all was not fully included and the society. And so those two things can can coexist in those ways. And you know, for the nations have had plenty of instances, nations that have had female leaders that still have to grapple with entrenched sexism, you know, directed at the population. So it seemed there was always maybe a naive starting place for that that era, of course, will end. And beyond that or or to build on that, you know, i think a lot about what would be required to elected as the first black president in the united of america. What would it be require geared to get a majority white country to vote for you to become the president and how that might preclude do some of the things whether be dispositional ideologically but in terms of boldness that would be required of providing the most full throated and Political Representation to black america right the that there are some of the things required of barack obama to get would preclude him doing some of the things that many of his supporters would want him to do. Beyond that, as you know, the headwinds faced by such a president , i mean close to former president obama note all the time how his relatively mild and frank of the skip gates incident in cambridge was the moment that they lost the support of White America indefinitely. You can see it in the polling, the distrust numbers that he never wins back for a mild and selfevident that the officer arresting a nationally renowned scholar on his own porch was kind stupid. Right, right. And yet this becomes the moment that that white a significant chunk of White America decides dont trust this guy. Despite the that again in terms of his racial or his voiced racial politics, barack obama was remarkably figure who went of his way to say, im not a leader for black america, a leader for all america who was remarkably moderate on on issues like affirmative action or others. Right. Terms of what his stated positions were and i just think that its very interesting to. Look at it and look at it through that lens that that there was this fear. There had this fear that of of losing the country in some ways. Right. This is obviously you cant look at the election, obama without contextualizing it in what that point had already been a decades long grapple and fight over immigration and the changing demographics of the country that had for so many White Americans this that this country has changed in fundamental ways that that are going to leave us to be the losers. And now you start to see the kind of vitriolic both in a policy but also in interpersonal response to that. Yeah. Yeah. So just one last contextual and certainly to your point about obama, that, you know, moderates have a way of looking like radicals in the midst of reactionary times so i think no matter how he was, the reaction to his existence, you know, was so severe. What you talk about the book, you know, the idea that the main priority the Republican Party was to ensure that hed be a one term president , you know, which its before hes enacted any policies before hes actually done anything, you know. But the last prefaced question that i want to ask is you and i met in ferguson amidst the. You know, uproar and the the conflict and everything that was happening in the aftermath of Michael Browns death, you know, in ferguson really became a shorthand for all the social that was going on at time. Can you talk a little about, you know, in a book that you wrote that comes out of that, you know, they cant kill all . Can you talk a little bit about how this book relates to your prior one . Certainly and i actually do see these books in conversation with each other in some ways. And i imagine that i imagine that, you know, where i work on another book it might it would feel very different these two feel like theyre that that they have something to say to each other and and what i mean by that is, you know, they they cant kill us all in ferguson the rise of you know whats commonly known as black lives matter as a protest movement in a new era of our long Civil Movement in. Many ways grows out of it as a reaction, as a response to. The Obama Presidency. Right. That this is a movement of young people. Many whom are mobilized into politics through. The obama candidacy, who theyre entering public life at, a time when the first black president is being is campaigning and then being elected, and then and they respond to their perceived and their correctly perceived limitations to that representation. Right. I think all the time of poe, the activists in saint louis, saying, well, i voted for barack twice and Michael Brown still dead. Right. This idea that with a black president , there was still this limitation in on on the ability to actually claim the promise of an equal or an equitable society. And what that gives rise to is to a grassroots protest movement demanding gains achievements beyond what just idea of having as Rashad Robinson says, a black face in a high place could provide. Right. And so what i think about in this context, though, right. And thats the old, you know, equal and opposite reaction. Right. That as the obama years of the Obama Presidency are ceding and getting breathing new life into a new era of our our Civil Rights Movement, into our Antiracist Movement, there is always been a white supremacist in this country. Right. The Antiracist Movement is a foil, not just to a status quo, but also to a movement of people who want things to remain way. And think that. So what we see and what i think about in this book is this idea of the response and the reaction, the rise of of people, of movements who would play to these insecurities, these anxieties, and how that playing to it has a certain set of outcomes. Right what we know, and i think its important to draw a distinction right there when we talk about supremacism, were not talking about the 55 of White Americans. Right. Were talking the were talking the movement of people who are avowed or avowedly racist, who are eager to exploit those who are slaying in a wait and hoping to proselytize, are excited and happy about the idea of many White Americans googling phil black on white crime . Or are immigrants bad or, you know, because they have set up their their information ecosystem to suck in such people and to indoctrinate them in these these evil ideologies. And so so i think about this book and i think about this work in some ways it feels the very natural next step, a chapter where to cover and cover the rise of a protest movement or a demonstration movement is one thing, but now it makes sense. Have to contextualize and understand movement in the context in relationship to its foe and its foil. Mm hmm. So when you say white lives, you know, in the title american lies. What do you mean by that. So i think its important first to start by defining and talking about the idea that and i think that very often we have these conversations and it goes on said but i think theres probably some value in stating it that that race is not a biological reality. Right. Were talking a social construction racist lived is experienced, but its not actually true. We are different races of human. Right. And so when we talk about white people, white lash supremacy, were talking about people who are societally coded in that way. Because what we also know is that those are malleable over time. And so changed a lot in the course. The 20th century, correct . Right. And will continue to change, frankly, through this demographic change as. We have more people who are showing up from central and south, many of whom would selfidentify as white, you know, and so but i say that to say that if country was founded on an explicitly white supremacist system in that people who were coded under law as white had claim to the full promise of american freedom, while people who were coded as black did not have claim to that promise, which is just the of how we were founded, is what it looked like. The that that system as a white supremacist system is a system that prioritizes and places others people who are coded as white. Weve seen steps over our history to undo that and to create a multiracial when those steps date back to the revolts of enslaved date to the abolitionist the civil war. I and reconstruction. The date to the Civil Rights Movement in the fifties sixties. And they date the steps towards the election. A black president in each of those incidents. What we see is that as people fight to upend the white supremacist status quo, those who are the beneficiaries of that status quo lash out violently in in defense of a system for which are the beneficiaries. And so what we see is that follow showing the revolts of enslaved people. We see massive acts of violence, both interpersonal and in terms of policy cutting down on the ability of enslaved people to have access to reading or to education, their freedom of movement, in some cases, quotas on how many nuances saved could be brought to a given colony to make sure that they would not lose an upper hand in terms of maintaining the populations we see, the violence and the backlash to the radical republicans in the and the overthrow of multiracial as it was established in reconstruction. We see the the violent crackdowns, civil rights and Civil Liberties of black americans following the Civil Rights Era in the Civil Rights Movement. And we see the rise of these white supremacist groups, whether it be the skinheads, whether it be the Militia Groups, whether it be what we called alt right for a while. Right. This idea that when white supremacist when White Supremacy is threatened, people lash out in its defense and in those moments, i think those moments are best understood as. A white lash. Mm hmm. So i wonder, because this kind of grim prognosis. Yes. I wonder. What you got from your time reporting about mechanics, be they societal or, the mechanics of individual psychology about how that process works and what really seems to be the driving force in this recurrent theme of of violence particularly violence in reaction to perceived black progress. I think that there is a very i think the driving force in many ways is very base human prejudice. And what i mean, that is all of us think and worry about a scarcity of resources is there enough to go around . Are safe . Are we healthy . Am i to have a job or my as my family my children, my offspring, are they going to have access the resources they need to get ahead to survive, to thrive . And that what we see in these moments are the fears of people who are different than us and the idea that perhaps there is a rebalance of the scale in a way. And in that rebalancing will i and my people and my tribe, will we end up the losers of history in some way and then what we see is the people who would preach race as a by a logical reality playing to those anxieties and ramping them up. We see we see rhetoric whether it be through the institution of media whether it be wielded by politicians that seek to demonize and dehumanize those those folks who are coming who are different. And the result is a lashing out. You know i one of the things that when i was researching this book was really struck by i was the sociologist Gordon Alpern study the nature prejudice and and tracking how how does a intersperse final prejudice which we all possess. We walk down the street and we decide, okay, do we think that person is attractive or not attractive . They look friendly. Do they look mean . All these things are prejudicial in that we havent done any objective analysis this person to figure out what we think of them right that its its our feeling but what takes an internalized prejudice and what metastasizes it into an actual act of violence and he charts the course and how public rhetoric and public discussion can can accelerate that process that okay i might i might live in a neighborhood where a new set immigrants has shown up a new set refugees has shown up. People who look