Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Author: Ian Haney Lopez | Language: English | ISBN:
B00GHJNSMU | Format: EPUB
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Description
Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving "welfare queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.
In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney Lopez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.
Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney Lopez links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class -- white and nonwhite members alike.
- File Size: 5996 KB
- Print Length: 303 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (November 20, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00GHJNSMU
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
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- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,864 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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I have long argued that what underlies the opposition to taxes and government in general is the sense on the part of whites that government is for Them, meaning originally blacks but now also immigrants as well, especially Hispanic immigrants. So I was pleased to find this erudite scholar making the same point. His arguments are a bit abstruse, especially when he discusses the import of color-blindness and post-racialism. Color-blindness is the pretense on the part of whites, mainly conservatives but also progressives, that race doesn't even occur to them. Lopez shows how this seemingly noble point of view is actually very destructive and allows racism to continue, unacknowledged and unchallenged.
I had a little more difficulty understanding his point about post-racialism, which is Obama's position. I would be hard-pressed to try to paraphrase what post-racialism means and how it is different from (false) color-blindness. As a disappointed Obama supporter, I did appreciate his clear explanation of how Obama went wrong right at the start of his presidency, by failing to openly avow liberalism and instead using the power of government to help in a crisis in such a subtle way as to strengthen the narrative that taxes are the enemy of the good life and government had best get out of the way. I agree with him in wondering just how progressive Obama really is, and to what extent his embrace of conservative ideas (such as school choice) is from the heart and how much is to avoid being seen as "the black president."
The final chapter, in which Lopez supposedly offers ideas on where to go from here was likewise not as clear and powerful as I could have wished. His main point is to continue to speak up on race and how it is always there.
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