on election night, as commentators tried to make sense of donald trump <u+2019>s surprise victory, cnn<u+2019>s van jones spoke passionately about what he saw as a disturbingly racist component of the election results. <u+201c>this was a whitelash,<u+201d> mr. jones said. <u+201c>this was a whitelash against a changing country. it was a whitelash against a black president, in part.<u+201d> a clip of his comments went viral, swiftly inspiring the #whitelash hashtag on twitter among those upset by the trump win. meanwhile, conservative critics objected vociferously, with the republican strategist mary matalin confronting mr. jones on abc<u+2019>s <u+201c>this week,<u+201d> calling on him to retract the <u+201c>whitelash<u+201d> remark. mr. jones stood his ground. he told me that while he didn<u+2019>t regret using the word <u+201c>whitelash,<u+201d> he wanted to make clear that he was talking about one component of the overall trump movement, what he termed <u+201c>alt-right white nationalist groups that are a poison in this whole phenomenon.<u+201d> <u+201c>whitelash<u+201d> is a telescoping of <u+201c>white backlash,<u+201d> and <u+201c>backlash<u+201d> itself dates back to 1815, originally used for a jarring movement caused by a machine<u+2019>s parts being put into action. <u+201c>whitelash<u+201d> has entered american political debates before. it was used as early as the 1964 presidential campaign, when president lyndon johnson and arizona sen. barry goldwater squared off over the civil rights act. louisiana sen. allen j. ellender, a democrat, was interviewed for a june 19, 1964, associated press article after goldwater voted against the legislation. <u+201c>ellender said he believes that enactment and enforcement of the bill will bring a <u+2018>whitelash<u+2019> of voters against the demonstrations he said are likely to continue,<u+201d> the article stated. a few months later, goldwater<u+2019>s running mate, william e. miller, said in a labor day address, <u+201c>let me say to the everlasting credit of sen. goldwater, he has never used, like president johnson has, the cynical terms of backlash or whitelash or any other lash.<u+201d> the term came up again in 1968, when george wallace, former governor of alabama, ran for president as an independent candidate and won five southern states. a postmortem of the campaign written by the sociologists seymour martin lipset and earl raab was titled <u+201c>the wallace whitelash.<u+201d> some references to <u+201c>whitelash<u+201d> reappeared after republicans gained control of congress in the 1994 midterm elections. <u+201c>the <u+2018>whitelash<u+2019> is gaining strength each day,<u+201d> wrote jonathan freedland in the british newspaper the guardian. <u+201c>many of the republican young turks now in congress owe their seats to angry white male voters.<u+201d> mr. jones said that, despite reading extensively about civil rights history, he wasn<u+2019>t aware of these earlier scattered uses of <u+201c>whitelash.<u+201d> he said the word came to him a few weeks ago in a conversation with his wife about political backlash in europe. regardless of its source, the word has generated its own backlash. as kevin drum pointed out on mother jones, it may be misleading to talk about a <u+201c>whitelash<u+201d> at all, since fewer whites voted for mr. trump than for mitt romney four years ago.
talk of a <u+2018>whitelash<u+2019> revives a 1960s term - wsj
ben zimmer