White backlash, also known aswhite rage[1][2] orwhitelash, is related to the politics ofwhite grievance, and is the negative response of somewhite people to the racial progress of otherethnic groups in rights and economic opportunities, as well as their growing cultural parity, politicalself-determination, or dominance.[citation needed]
As explored byGeorge Yancy,[3] it can also refer to some white Americans' particularly visceral negative reaction to the examination of their ownwhite privilege.[4][5] Typically involving deliberate racism and threats of violence, this type of backlash is considered more extreme thanRobin DiAngelo's concept ofwhite fragility, defensiveness or denial.[3]
It is typically discussed in theUnited States with regard to the advancement ofAfrican Americans in American society,[6] but it has also been discussed in the context of other countries, including theUnited Kingdom and, in regard toapartheid,South Africa.[7]
White anxiety regardingimmigration and demographic change are commonly reported as major causes of white backlash.[8][9] The political scientistAshley Jardina has explored those societal changes as a cause for white backlash and suggested that "many whites in the United States are starting to feel like their place at the top of the pyramid is no longer guaranteed and that the United States no longer looks like a 'white nation' which is dominated bywhite Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture."[10]
In 2018, research at theUniversity of California, Riverside, showed a perception of the "growth of the Latino population" madewhite Americans "feel the extant racial hierarchy is under attack, which in turn unleashed a white backlash."[11] Similarly, a study from theEuropean Journal of Social Psychology showed that informing "white British participants"[12] that immigrant populations were rapidly rising "increases the likelihood they will supportanti-immigrant political candidates."
Kevin Drum stated that with "the nonwhite share of the population" in the United States increasing from 25% in 1990 to 40% in 2019, the demographic shift may have produced a "short-term white backlash in recent years."[13]
Lawrence Glickman, writing inThe Atlantic in 2020, argues that in the context of American politics, "backlashes" gained popularity in the 1960s but were part of a larger "reactionary tradition" in American history going back to theReconstruction era, while claiming that the reactionary politics in American society are "nearly always preemptive", with anti-Civil Rights movement believers using a "posture of victimization" which influenced later backlash movements.[14]
One early example of a white backlash occurred whenHiram R. Revels became the first African-American to be elected to theUS Senate in 1870. The resulting backlash helped to derailReconstruction, which had attempted to build an interracial democracy.[15] Similarly, the 1898White Declaration of Independence and the associatedinsurrection were reactions to the electoral successes of black politicians inWilmington, North Carolina.[citation needed]
Among the highest-profile examples of a white backlash in the United States was after the passage of theCivil Rights Act of 1964. Many Democrats in Congress, as well as PresidentLyndon B. Johnson himself, feared that such a backlash could develop in response to the legislation, andMartin Luther King Jr. popularized the "white backlash" phrase and concept to warn of that possibility.[16] The backlash that they had warned about occurred and was based on the argument that whites of immigrant descent did not receive the benefits that were given to African Americans in the Civil Rights Act.[17] After signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson grew concerned that the white backlash would cost him the1964 general election later that year. Specifically, Johnson feared that his opponent,Barry Goldwater, would harness the backlash by highlighting the black riots that were engulfing the country.[18]
A significant white backlash also resulted from theelection of Barack Obama as the first blackpresident of the United States in 2008.[19] As a result, the term is often used to refer specifically to the backlash triggered by Obama's election,[16] with many seeing the election ofDonald Trump as president in 2016 as an example of "whitelash".[16][20] The term is aportmanteau of "white" and "backlash" and was coined by theCNN contributorVan Jones to describe one of the reasons he thought Trump won the election.[21]
TheStop the Steal movement and the2021 storming of the United States Capitol, occurring in the wake of the2020 US presidential election, have been interpreted as a reemergence of theLost Cause myth and a manifestation of white backlash. The historianJoseph Ellis has suggested that many who ignore the role that race played in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential victory (and later his 2024 re-election) are following an example set by Lost Cause propagandists, who attributed the American Civil War to a clash over constitutional issues while downplaying the role of slavery.[22][23][24]
In 1975, it was reported that the government was being slow to approve desegregating communities out of fears of anAfrikaner backlash.[25] In 1981,The New York Times reported thatP. W. Botha's cabinet colleagues, "sensitive to the danger of a white backlash," was publicly listing statistics that proved it was spending far more money per capita on education for white children than for black children.[26]
During the 1980s the National government saw its White/Afrikaner vote during elections decrease while theConservative Party opposition saw its support grow.[citation needed]
In 1990, asapartheid was being phased out,Jeane Kirkpatrick wrote that PresidentF. W. de Klerk "knows full well that several opinion polls show a strong white backlash against his policies."[27] By the late 1990s, there were fears of a white Afrikaner backlash unlessNelson Mandela'sANC government permittedOrania to become an independentVolkstaat.[28] By then, formerState President P. W. Botha warned of an Afrikaner backlash to threats against theAfrikaans language.[29]
In 2017,John Campbell proposed that "perhaps inevitably, there is a white, especially Afrikaner, backlash" at the removal of Afrikaner or Dutch placenames or colonial statues and the Afrikaans language with English at "historically white universities".[30]
Notes
White rage got us here ... Barack Obama's election — and its powerful symbolism of black advancement — was the major trigger for the policybacklash that led to Donald Trump
Carol Anderson's "White Rage" takes what many of us have known, perhaps existentially or intuitively, and puts it in a new framework, adding a synthesis of thoroughly researched archival evidence that documents the deeply entrenched and ubiquitous nature of white rage — white backlash, across time and space — as response to black advancement.
The responses that I received, however, speak to something more extreme than just reactionary or unreceptive responses. Rather than "white fragility", these responses are ones that speak to deep forms of white world-making
Given this history, it would be astonishing if the unintended, rapid diversification of the United States over the past 50 years didn't produce a backlash rooted in white anxiety about racial demographics
What is particularly noteworthy is that the white backlash in this case was in place before the passage of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964. The pattern is this: American reactionary politics is nearly always preemptive, predicting catastrophe and highlighting potential slippery slopes. "White backlash," after all, got its name in 1963, just months after African Americans in Birmingham risked attacks from police dogs and high-pressure fire hoses in order to demand justice, and immediately after Kennedy mooted the idea of substantive legislation—both events taking place well before the Civil Rights Act became law. What one reporter called "white panic" was driven by fears of "favoritism" and "special privileges" for African Americans—that white "workers would be forced out of their jobs to make way for Negroes," as one article put it that year, when Jim Crow still prevailed. "Many of my people think the Negroes want to take over the country," a midwestern Republican politician said in a Wall Street Journal article published on April 10 of the following year, still months before the Act's passage. "They think there are things in the bill that just aren't there, like forced sales of housing to Negroes and stuff like that." White backlashers imagined coercion where it did not exist. They embraced a lexicon and posture of victimization that hearkened back to the era of Reconstruction and anticipated the deceiving, self-pitying MAGA discourse that drives reactionary politics in Donald Trump's America.
Perhaps because of the symbolism, or concern over right‐wing Afrikaner backlash, the Government has been slow to approve desegregation
Sensitive to the danger of a white back- lash, Mr. Botha's Cabinet colleagues have spent much of this raucous political season advertising statistics they normally gloss over.
Further reading