The purpose of Volume 2 is to explain how nationalism, racism and white resentment plants the seeds to its own demise. This volume starts with the Jim Crow Era when racial animus towards blacks was blatant and horrific. They were segregated and impoverished by law, custom, tradition and normative practices. Extralegal violence (beatings and lynching's) were commonplace to preserve the racial caste system. Legal challenges were eventually launched. Veterans of both world wars who gained the respect of white soldiers, like Harry S. Truman, the future president, in segregated US units and among allies returned to lead the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement along with black ministers and grass root activists.
The book highlights leaders that facilitated the triumph of the Civil Rights Movement: legislation and court decisions to end segregation. It then turns to the mounting backlash starting with Nixon and Atwater's "Southern Strategy." From Nixon the backlash gained momentum under President Reagan. He clandestinely unleashed drugs upon the black community to pay for the war against the communist in Nicaragua. Then Reagan pushed for "law and order" laws that disproportionately incarcerated blacks and browns for drug use and distribution. In the resulting New Jim Crow Era, the incarceration rate exceeded that of Apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union.
The systemic assault surged again during the tenure of the nation's first black president, Barack Obama. Extrajudicial killings by police officers were captured in cell phone videos to spur the Black Lives Matter movement and quest for accountability. Numerically, the rising nonwhite population grew as a threat to a shrinking white majority. The political threat of these changing demographics and diversity precipitated the growth of racial and ethnic hate groups. Nationalism driven by bigotry has its consequences that are thoroughly examined. Domestic terrorism is contrasted against the surging jihadist terror in undermining the nation's core values, consensus and future.