Tired of the Dogwhistle?
Since before the day, in 1976, when Ronald Reagan announced his belief in “states rights” near the Mississippi road where three civil rights workers were kidnapped and murdered twelve years before, tacit appeals to racism have been a regular feature of our political life.
<blockquote> You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger.".
Lee Atwater, speaking to Alexander Lamis, 1981.</blockquote>
When they are most effective, this subterranean discourse isn’t intended as coded “dog whistles” appealing to hardened racists; rather, they prime the unconscious racial biases that we all hold. George H. W. Bush hit Willie Horton hard for many months; in speeches as well as ads. According to The Race Card by Tali Mendelberg, this was very effective in raising Michael Dukakis’ negatives among whites until late in the season, when Jesse Jackson and (eventually) Lloyd Bentsen called the Horton attacks out as racist. Making the subtext explicit appears to have defused the potency of the issue, and the poll numbers of Bush’s opponent began to rise in correlation with news stories that made the racial dimension explicit.
Have you had enough of it? A website launched today, StopDogWhistleRacism.com, aims to demonstrate the scope of symbolic racism of this sort by bringing together evidence of its use from news sources, left and right, from across the nation. The aim is to look closely at both national and local elections, as well as policy debates that occur in this electoral season. (I helped create the larger project the website is part of.) Check it out, and if you can, help us out by providing tips about incidents in your community. (Or if you prefer, join our Facebook group here.)
Howdy there, old-timer. Can I offer you some Obama waffles? (Point box toward Mecca for more obvious racism.) GOP strategists might be more cautious but some of their voters are still proud troglodytes.
Speaking of dogwhistles, did you hear about the monkey-chanting at a soccer game in Europe? Known to have happened before in England, now it was Spain or somebody deriding a black English player.
September 19, 2008 8:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good to see you again!
I have heard about that. It's even less subtle than the waffles....
September 19, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice. Except you overlook this: an overwhelming majority of Americans have stood up during this election cycle to proudly proclaim that we are not dogs. Neither dog whistles nor overt racist tactics will budge us. We want an intelligent, fair-minded, ethical, empathetic President who exhibits common sense and the ability to lead the nation toward progress.
We're okay with the fact that he has a better tan than we do.
True, there may be some right-wing lug-nuts still rolling around brandishing Obama waffles. Yet, the times they are a'changin'.
September 19, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
I hope you are right, and actually I believe you are right in the sense that I think that there will be a crushing victory in the presidential election. But in a larger sense, I think you might be wrong.
There's been a lot of studies on implicit bias - and later, I can try to provide some links - that shows that most of us exhibit a higher degree of race-based group exclusion (if I can put it wonkier terms, please let me know) than we self-report feeling. (The exception is African-Americans, who most frequently report more explicit racial bias than their tacit behavior demonstrates.) So, if this is correct, it's entirely possible that this unconscious bias can be primed, and affect our voting patterns, without our even being aware of it. To take the clearest example (though let me just say that this isn't a Democratic-Republican thing - it's more complicated and in this context I'm not interested in the partisan dimensions), think of all the people who express that they are uneasy with Barack Obama as a candidate, but can't say why.
September 19, 2008 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink