Dog whistles (& dog whistle politics): what people mean

I know too many people who keep quiet about politics and social justice because they’re afraid they’ll say the wrong thing and offend somebody. I bet you know people like that too.

And I’m not an expert on this stuff. I don’t always have the right language to dive into the tough topics that dominate my news feed. But I do have Google, and the determination to find reliable and diverse voices who are already writing about issues that the rest of us need to understand so badly.

In his book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class, Ian Haney-López explains that dog whistling “simply means speaking in code to a target audience.”

According to Safire’s Political Dictionary, the Washington Post may have first used the term “dog whistle” in an article about political polling in 1988. It explained that “subtle changes” in poll wordings led to respondents understanding the questions differently than the researchers did.

Racial dog whistles are often sneakily used when politicians want to speak about race specifically to their target audience. The coded messages are used to reinforce racist ideas that the country’s societal and economic problems are because of undeserving, lazy, and violent people of color.

There are three aspects involved when politicians use racial dog whistles, according to Haney-López.

First, politicians force race into the conversation through “thinly veiled” racist remarks against people of color. Second, they make sure to not directly reference any one racial or ethnic group, so they can’t be accused of direct racism. And third, they shame any critics who try to call them out on the racist comments.

Go read it all: 4 Racial Dog Whistles That Politicians Use (While Pretending They’re Not Racist) by Jennifer Loubriel

The notion of “Dog Whistle Politics” is that a lot of our political speech is being conducted in code. A dog whistle is something that, when you blow it, humans can’t hear it but dogs can. The metaphor is one in which, in political speech, on one level, some of these coded phrases are silent; and on the other, they’re producing strong racial reactions. So you think about terms like “illegal alien” or “inner city” or “welfare queen.” You can’t find race on the surface, but just below the surface, producing strong reactions.

Now, that’s not a novel claim and, indeed, dog whistle politics is not my phrase. It’s a kind of “inside the beltway” phrase. Most people who recognize that this sort of coded racial appeal is an essential part of our politics, fail to recognize two things that I think are crucial, and that’s the real contribution of my book. First, these coded racial appeals are not simply marginal or not the work of desperate politicians. So we can think about Newt Gingrich talking about [Barack] Obama as a food-stamp president. He was censured for this sort of race baiting but also presented as marginal and desperate. This is not just the actions of some folks who are marginal and desperate. This has been a concerted GOP strategy since 1963. And we see it no more effectively than in 2014, when the major themes of the Republican candidates were ISIS and Ebola, crossing the southern border, plus Obama’s incompetence. These are all racially charged allegations.

Go read it all: ‘Dog whistle’ is GOP’s longtime political weapon of choice by Susan Smith Richardson & Lorraine Forte

To understand how outright racist language has gone underground but is working as hard as ever to drum up support for conservative policies, the author says, you just have to look at this list of sneaky code words and phrases that politicians throughout history have loved, and what they really mean:

1. ‘Inner City’…
2. ‘States’ Rights’…
3. ‘Forced Busing’…
4. ‘Cut Taxes’…
5. ‘Law and Order’…
6. ‘Welfare’ and ‘Food Stamps’…
7. ‘Shariah Law’…
8. ‘Illegal Alien’…

Go read it all: 8 Sneaky Racial Code Words and Why Politicians Love Them from TheRoot

Donald Trump chooses language that gets his supporters scared about crime.

Hillary Clinton wants the political left to know she “gets it.”

To get these message across, the candidates use a linguistic strategy sometimes called a “dog whistle.”

Consider the examples below as subtle but effective ways Trump and Clinton have tried to rally, wink, or tug at the emotions of their supporters when they talk about race and ethnicity.

Go read it all: Decoding the ‘dog whistle’ politics of Trump and Clinton by Tanzina Vega

Dog whistling is widely — and correctly — understood as expressing racially loaded ideas in coded terms. For instance, it uses “inner city” or “illegal alien” to stand in for communities of color, and “silent majority” to invoke white people. The birther nonsense — the repeated claim that the first African-American president might not be American-born after all — provides another good example. There’s nothing expressly racial about asking for a birth certificate, yet just beneath the surface roils the strong intimation of racial foreignness.

All too often, though — and here’s where the crucial error comes in — critics misconstrue dog whistling as a form of personal bigotry. Under this interpretation, terms like “welfare queen” and “thug” offer prejudiced individuals more acceptable ways for to say the n-word without actually saying it.
…
More profoundly, equating dog whistling with personal bigotry minimizes the phenomenon. It’s not an expression of prejudice so much as a coldly calculated decision to seek advantage by manipulating the prejudice in others. Dog whistling is a strategy: it intentionally uses veiled terms to stimulate racial animosity, whipping up popular fears and stoking dangerous and misdirected resentments.

Dog whistling far more than the personal prejudices of one individual — even a president — threatens the nation. It’s socially destructive, intentionally firing the ugliest passions and pitting people against each other. It undermines democracy, manipulating voters through appeals to their worst instincts while distorting the real issues of the day. It’s an economic catastrophe, convincing working people to fear other vulnerable populations and instead to cast their lot with the plutocrats. It shatters the “we,” destroying our commitment to the community and public and instead fostering frightened isolation and anomie.

Go read it all: Campaign 2016 Vocabulary Lesson: ‘Strategic Racism’ by Ian Haney López

So go read all of these! And let me know what has helped you understand dog whistles (links and powerful quotes also appreciated).

For more roundups, check out my main list of stories. And if you found this helpful, I’d appreciate a clap!