The post-Obama white majority chose the lie of racial threat over reform.

Evidence

All that labor, the risk and death, seemed to have come to nothing, as activists and Americans in general hit Trump’s wall face-first. The nation had turned its back on whatever vision of the country Black Lives Matter put forward. Police were still an ominous presence in many black communities as consent decrees, under the leadership of then attorney general Jeff Sessions, fell to the side like fallen dominoes stacked in a figure-eight pattern. Barack Obama was off vacationing on some island. He grew a nice beard, and Michelle Obama wrote her autobiography. Their symbolic significance quickly became the stuff of nostalgia. The Republican Party morphed into some monstrosity and became the Party of Trump, as if a recessive gene had been activated. All the while, 40 percent of America delighted in Trump’s presidency. They had told themselves the lie that black and brown people threatened their way of life, and now they were poised to make America white again. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Begin Again, 119

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete payoff of the ‘after times’ framework the reader set up from the introduction.