dog whistle racism

a dog whistle can be like a secret handshake,right. and so in that sense, a dog whistle is a politicianspeaking in code that he knows the intended audience will understand, but that he hopeswill be unintelligible to most of the general audience. and so this is george bush, for example, whenhe talks about the 'wonder-working power.' now, for most people it's an interesting alliterationbut it doesn't mean much, but for fundamentalist christians, it was a way for him to signal,'i'm with you, i understand your worldview, i represent it, i aim to enact it in government.' that's dog whistle as a secret handshake.

racial dog whistles are different than that. the point of a racial dog whistle is to hidefrom the intended audience the fact that they're being manipulated in terms of their racialfears. so a racial dog whistle is more like a pavlov'sbell. you ring the bell, and it leads to an associationwith food, and the dog starts salivating—i hate the imagery at a certain point becausewe're saying people are dogs, and it is a really unfortunate aspect of this metaphor,but it's important to understand, and in fact, it's so important to understand this is anintentional effort to manipulate the republican base or democrats, bill clinton would do thistoo, this is an intentional effort to manipulate

the base. here's what i want to stress: so often whenpeople talk about race in american politics, they respond by saying we cannot believe thatthe vast majority of americans, or that 60% of whites who vote for, for example, donaldtrump, are bigots, and therefore we reject the idea that race has any role. i want to be crystal clear: i'm not sayingthey're bigots, and i'm not saying that they understand that they're being appealed toin racial terms, in fact, i'm saying the reverse. i'm saying these are good, decent, hardworkingfolks who are struggling to make ends meet, feel tremendous anxiety about what's goingon in society, both economically and demographically,

and who though they know themselves to begood people, though they're really genuinely committed to not being racist, neverthelessare receptive to messages that play to underlying racial fears, and so these are the messagesthat say, sharia law is coming, there's a muslim in the white house, immigrants arecommitting violent terrible crimes. there's no factual truth underlying any ofthose statements, but it's a powerful narrative that has a fierce hold on the imaginationsof many americans, and politicians are constantly playing to it and continually stoking andrenewing it.