So much talk about a racial reckoning in America after the murder of George Floyd, especially

in 2020.

People poured into the streets, books about anti-racism shot to the top of the best-seller

lists, all sorts of organizations and businesses made fresh pledges to tackle white supremacy.

Before long, that urgent energy seemed to dissipate, overtaken by a white lash that seemed

just as powerful, if not more so.

The right doubled down on radicalized anti-anti-racism, manufacturing a panic over critical race

theory, yelling about the great replacement.

White centrist writers kept cranking out those essays about wokeness gone too far.

One interpretation of this last couple years is, well, so much for that, the reckoning

was never real.

Then again, what were the odds this country was ever going to turn on a dime and have

a sudden transformational awakening?

White folks built white supremacy over centuries and embedded it in US culture and institutions.

So what if we put the 2020 reckoning and its backlash into a larger context, a bigger

story a couple of centuries old?

That story includes a series of steps forward for racial justice, each met with a powerful

backlash.

Two steps forward, one back, sometimes two back.

This is Sinon Radio, I'm John B. Wynn.

Notice in the urgent struggle for political power in the US today, the left and the right

are often fighting over yesterday.

...