We often reach for the language of “backlash” to describe these moments when the prospect of genuine change around racial matters hits a wall of resistance. It’s a word we hear often today, one that registers that, for some people, the pace and substance of change have gone too far and, in doing so, threaten the very way of life that makes the reform possible in the first place. It is a genteel way of saying white people have had enough. Or it is another way of asking the old question, “What else does the Negro want?”
