Dog Whistle
Deep down, men want to be men, not dogs.
By Peter Putnam
When men hear a dog whistle from a wanna-be-King, what do they hear? What are they responding to?
Yes, for sure, the racism. Hundreds of years of it, baked into all of us in this country.
But I think it’s deeper than that.
They are responding to what they no longer are, or never were.
They are responding to the shame of not being strong, not being enough, barely being.
Their anger, their vicious anger — at times, their racist rage — is a camouflage for their shame.
Deep down, they want to be men, not dogs.
But who can help them see that, recover that — their power, their humanity?
For some, maybe no one. So overpowered by their own anger and shame and pain, they are blind and deaf to the pain of others.
For others? Men, powerful, loving men, can sometimes bring another man out of the kennel of himself. Men who may have once responded to the dog whistle themselves. Men who have learned to hear the pain beneath that whistle — the shame — and are not afraid of it. Can stand strong in the face of it. Can hold a man long enough, tight enough, to melt it. Can whisper something into that man’s…
