But on the other hand, it didn’t all go away. And that’s one of the great triumphs of the civil rights movement. That common sense of race used to be openly expressed through the 1950s, let’s say. This operates not just in terms of class relations and group relations, this operates in terms of a common sense understanding of who’s trustworthy, who is decent, who is law-abiding, and in contrast, who’s loathsome, who’s diseased, who’s dangerous. We need to understand that race has been one of the ways in which we’ve explained why certain groups get certain privileges and advantages and why other groups don’t get privileges or are exploited or are excluded from the country. They're racist because of the society in which they operate. Most people are not racist out of some sort of a sickness of the soul. But because of the idea systems in which they're reared, they're also capable of dehumanizing others and occasionally of brutal violence. They're fully capable of generosity, of empathy, of real kindness. They are complicated people reared in complicated societies. They're not ruled by anger or raw emotion or hatred. And it's important for us to recognize that they believe it and that it's genuine. You know, we're colorblind, is often what you hear. When I talk to people, I'm doing a group discussion somewhere, if I ask white people in the audience, if race is still relevant in your lives, they say absolutely not. And on another, there's a subtext, an underground message which can be piercingly loud, and that is: minorities are threatening us.Īnd so when people dog whistle about criminals, welfare cheats, terrorists, Islam, Sharia law, ostensibly they’re talking about culture, behavior, religion, but underneath are these old stereotypes of degraded minorities, but also, and this is important, implicitly of whites who are trustworthy, hard-working, decent. This isn't really about race, it's just about welfare. On one level, it allows plausible deniability.
The way in which racism, the way in which racial divisions are stoked in public discourse has changed. Or, in particular, public racism has evolved. And what the blast is is a warning about race and a warning, in particular about threatening minorities.Īnd the idea that I'm trying to get across here is, racism has evolved. But on another, it also has a shrill blast, like a dog whistle, that can be heard by certain folks. Well, think about a term like “welfare queen” or “food stamp president.” On one level, like a dog whistle, it's silent.
So why did you use this for the title of your book Dog Whistle Politics? Ian Haney López is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, after teaching at Yale, New York University and Harvard. The dog whistle of racism, says Ian Haney López, is the “dark magic” by which middle-class voters have been seduced to vote against their own economic interests.
#Dog whistle politics definition code#
He’s broken the code on the racist politics of the last 50 years, as politicians mastered the use of dog whistles to turn Americans against each other while turning America over to plutocrats. Which makes it an apt metaphor for this new book, Dog Whistle Politics, by my guest Ian Haney López. This whistle sends its signal at a frequency only dogs can hear. A dog whistle doesn’t sound like much to your ears or mine, but it will make the neighborhood canines come running faster than you can shout Lassie or Rin Tin Tin. It's cold, it's calculating, it's considered, it's the decision to achieve one's own ends, here winning votes, by stirring racial animosity. Historian Ian Haney López breaks the code.ĭog whistle politics doesn't come out of some desire to hurt minorities.
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This week on Moyers & Company how dog whistle politics use race to influence your vote.
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