A racist dog whistle (fl. 1968- ) is a message that is properly understood only by racists, just as an ordinary dog whistle is heard only by dogs. It uses colour-blind language so that it seems unracist to most people.
The classic example is the Willie Horton ad used in the 1988 election for US president. Horton, a Black man in prison for murder, was let out on a work furlough, a policy favoured by Michael Dukakis, then running for president. During one such furlough, Horton escaped and raped and killed a White woman.
The ad said nothing about race – it just showed Horton’s face. The deep racist fear Whites have of Black men did the rest. Dukakis lost.
Lee Atwater, who came up with the ad, said in 1981:
“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.”
In the 1968 election George Wallace, famous for saying “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”, ran against Richard Nixon, who promised “law and order”. Nixon’s dog whistle meant much the same thing – keeping Black people in their place – but unlike “segregation forever” it did not sound racist. Wallace lost, Nixon won. It has been dog whistles ever since – till 2015:
Enter Donald Trump. Whites love him because he tells it like it is: Mexicans are rapists, Muslims should not be let in the country, etc. He just says it straight out, no dog whistles.
The press and elected Republican leaders expected Trump to go down in flames for saying such nakedly racist stuff. Instead Trump won the Republican primaries.
The polling so far, though, seems to show that Trump’s racist rhetoric loses as many White votes as it gains. Most Republicans voted against him in the primaries – he won only by a plurality. He does beat Hillary Clinton by 17 percentage points among Whites, but that is no better than Romney’s lead over Obama in 2012.
Stereotypes: The unsaid half of a dog whistle is often a stereotype, stuff like the following:
- 95% of Americans in 1995 imagined the average drug user as Black – even though in real life only 15% of drug users were Black.
- 81% of US terrorists shown on US television news from 2008 to 2012 were Muslim – even though in real life only 6% of terrorist suspects were Muslim.
- Most crime in the US is committed by Whites, yet 42% of television viewers imagine seeing a Black person in crime stories that showed – no one.
Etc.
So:
- “crime”, “drugs” and “welfare” mean Black people,
- “immigration” means Mexicans, and
- “terrorism” means Muslims.
This allows politicians – and the laws they make – to talk about race without seeming to.
This stuff has terrible real-world consequences: It was the “tough on crime” rhetoric – a dog whistle for “tough on Black people” used by Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Clinton I – that led to the War on Drugs, mass incarceration of Black people, and police who look like they are fighting a war in Afghanistan.
– Abagond, 2016.
Sources: FiveThirtyEight, “The New Jim Crow” (2010) by Michelle Alexander.
See also:
- YouTube: The Willie Horton ad
- Whitespeak
- The 2016 election
- used by:
- based on:
- effects
- The Republican Guide to Black People
- The White Liberal Guide to Black People
577
This is brilliant and 100% correct, Conservatives have built their entire political strategy upon it. Democrats do it as well but it usually doesn’t include race but other hot topics and at a much lesser rate.
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Great article
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“Stereotypes: The unsaid half of a dog whistle is often a stereotype, stuff like the following:
* 95% of Americans in 1995 imagined the average drug user as Black – even though in real life only 15% of drug users were Black.
(Bernie’s home state, Vermont, is the state with the highest rate of WHITE drug users!)
* 81% of US terrorists shown on US television news from 2008 to 2012 were Muslim – even though in real life only 6% of terrorist suspects were Muslim.
(Cognitive Dissonance?)
* Most crime in the US is committed by Whites, yet 42% of television viewers imagine seeing a Black person in crime stories that showed – no one.”
(Confirmation bias?)
— If I were a racist white person, I’d be embarrassed and ashamed!
(Problem is many whites deny their racism!)
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This for me is one of the worst kind of micro-aggressive racism. It’s the part that makes my blood boil–not so much the words and their meaning/context, but the arrogance and wilful ignorance.
For me, it’s like seeing someone steal in front of your eyes and when you confront them, they look you in the eyes and deny stealing anything.
I am reminded of a story from a few years back about a bartender who was fired for condescendingly referring to blacks as “Mondays.” When confronted, he admitted he didn’t think the blacks would know he meant them.
It’s pissing in your hair and telling you it’s raining. You don’t know the difference between piss and rainwater. It’s arrogance at his finest.
They talk about you to your face will not calling your name. They condescend to you, as if you’re too stupid to KNOW what they’re doing.
But hey, it’s cool. As long as they don’t use any racial insults or race/ethnic identifiers/epithet.
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@TCDH: I remember that story about the bartender referring to Black people as Monday’s.☹️😠😡
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Yes. The dogwhistle is an application of whitespeak. AllLivesMatter is an example which implicitly expresses the sentiment that the speaker does not care about the issue of disproportionate police killings of black people. The phrase is not objectionable in itself but, as a response to BLM, it’s like showing up at a breast cancer fundraiser to say that all diseases matter. That would be rightfully interpreted as an attempt to devalue the need to fight breast cancer. The context of AllLivesMatter reveals its true meaning.
They think they are slick masking their racism with inclusive-sounding terms. I believe the dogwhistles are intended to go over the head of POC while allowing white people to be comfortably and deniably racist through the use of terms with harmless denotative meanings but racist connotations. I’m reminded of the Native American observation that the “white man speaks with a forked tongue” or Marimba Ani’s concept of the “rhetorical ethic”.
On the latter:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/001.html
(She uses “European” where others might say “Western Civilization”)
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@ Origin
Thank you.
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@Origin: You are on the money.
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Rudy Gulliani’s speech last weekend about “Black people need to teach their children to respect police.” And he always brings up the black on black crime deflection tactic.
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“We are all God’s children” Uggh!😡😠
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@ Origin
“As a response to BLM, it’s like showing up at a breast cancer fundraiser to say that all diseases matter.”
This is a fantastic analogy. I believe it should work with some people I’ve been talking to IRL who haven’t been getting it so far. Thanks.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
What she says about rhetorical ethic is true, at least in the case of most White Americans in my experience. She is not making it up.
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@Mirkwood
Why stop at Celtic and English and German and Scandinavian? Logically (sarc) those concepts do not exist either. They are just *individual* people who happen to live at the same place.
And there is no human body either just hand and foot and kidney and brain and nephron and neuron.
Europeans have no problems talking about their “achievements” and “civilization” but once anyone embarks on a critique they suddenly become a nebulous entity.
I am not the one.
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Sorry to break it to you but there is no uniform German music either just as there is no uniform American music. I could further break that down German music into many different forms like Fugue, Canon, Concerto even contemporary Jazz and Metal. The idea of “German music” is an abstraction. It appears you *are* comfortable with some abstractions but not others. Strange.
Spanish, French, Portuguese, Belgians, Dutch, German, English, Italian, all tried to chop the world up among themselves and employed certain strategies to achieve this. The dominant culture that exists in the world today, which has been imposed on others linguistically, religiously, and politically is causally related to the common imperialistic exploits that era. I think this entitles the people who were the recipients of this aggression to examine it as a whole without being distracted by non-essential trivia like what music they listened to when not chopping off hands.
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The black people with Irish surnames because their slave owner was Irish send two middle fingers right back at ya.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
When was the last time a prominent U.S. politician or political candidate used an anti-Irish dog whistle? 1960?
I say again: Take your battle to your enemy. Find an Orange Order blog or forum and go after them. Stop diverting the issue here from African Americans and other POC to the Irish.
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“The great Irish blogger An Sionnach Fionn has written extensively on this. You should all read his content. He’s amazing.”
.
Speaking for myself, Mirkwood… I’m HERE because this is primarily a BLACK blog where the content is largely of interest to and written by an African descended poster AND commenters whom I happen to find for the most part, “amazing.”
There’s more than enough content HERE to read, re-read and re-read again before I would ever be interested in reading either your site, or a “great Irish blogger.”
Irish people had their ample opportunities to stand with Black folks, yet for their selfish reasons decided not to. Don’t waste your time telling me about your grandfather’s (and the IRISH) role in the Civil War… blah, blah.)
Thank you!
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I don’t see the relevance of that message to me as I’m not a British soldier. But I can see that staying on topic is not your strong suit!
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Great article
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Kiwi, Asians do eat dogs, why are you embarrassed by that fact? Are you ashamed of Asians?
The Chinese have been eating dogs since 1700 B.C. or 3715 years!
They believe in “Dragon meat in heaven, dog meat on earth”.
In case you’re tempted to deny these facts, my source is Chinese, the real Chinese, not some phony, wannabe white, Chinese. (http://www.whatsonweibo.com/20-facts-about-dogs-dog-eating-in-china/)
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@gro jo
I myself love ‘dog’ extra crispy..
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TeddyBearDaddy
Does it taste like fried chicken?
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As an Asian, I will admit I have eaten dogs before.
What? Don’t hot dogs count?
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@abagond
“What she says about rhetorical ethic is true, at least in the case of most White Americans in my experience. She is not making it up.”
Yup. She has a way of clearly articulating things you’ve always felt and validating your experience of living in a racist white supremacist society that basically “gaslights” you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
I can’t say I agree with absolutely everything she has ever written but the vast majority of her book had me nodding like a bobblehead.
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“As an Asian, I will admit I have eaten dogs before.
What? Don’t hot dogs count?”
Cute, but no, only our four-legged friend “fido” counts.
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Skimming through the rest of the gaslighting article I came upon this section:
Wow: victims have “a tendency to incorporate and assimilate what others externalize and project onto them”. It’s amazing how many times I find analogies between accepted psychological analyses of abusive or violent individuals and their effects on their victims and the behavior of white people, as a collective, towards other groups of people and how those groups react.
The article also mentions that:
The road leads back to Bobby E Wright’s “Psychopathic Racial Personality”. Anyway, this is a bit OT but everything is connected when you start to examine how this society functions.
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@ gro jo:
Ah, well then. I can unequivocally say I have never consumed canine flesh. The Asian folk, the ones I know personally, also haven’t touched the stuff with one exception – one of my grand, old aunties. She said her family was starving during WW2. Out of desperation, some poor “Fido” was put in a pot and, well, as you can guess, fed her family. Just once, though. I asked her regarding the taste and she described it as not tasting like chicken at all.
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It didn’t taste like chicken? I’m crestfallen.
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Scary and true.
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Kiwi, I didn’t know that Blacks ran the prostitution, drugs, gambling, smuggling and protection rackets in Asia and the China-towns the world over. Thanks for enlightening me!
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@ Kiwi
Dog-whistle tit-for-tat? How lovely.
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I wish @ Mack Lyons had not thrown his two cents in, it only detracts from the purity of our exchanges.
Were you referring to me or @ Mack Lyons when you wrote the last paragraph of your comment? You know I have no qualms taking and dishing it, as our habitual exchanges attest to.
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I’m a fan. Don’t let Linda, or anyone else, talk you out of your Kiwi the racist a**hole persona. I find you more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Does anyone really find a barrel of monkeys fun?
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No
because even the Mama monkey smacks them in the heads for being annoying little sh’ts!
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My dear Kiwi, when have I ever been “outraged” by anything you wrote? Yes, like you, I’m a racist hypocrite. Are you happy now?
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You egomaniac, I find you amusing, that’s all.
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I’m still waiting for you to thank me for letting you find your true voice. All that “politically correct” friend of the Blacks nonsense just wasn’t for you.
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Kiwi, don’t be a stranger, why do you stay away so long? Do you know how hard it is to find a good, pretension clown? Blakksage is auditioning for your part, so far he has been a bit of a disappointment.
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typo in my last comment. “pretension clown” should have been “pretentious clown”
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This blog is teeming with racists. Reading through some of the comments is entertaining to say the least. It’s hilarious how ya’ll try to mask your racism under a guise of intellectualism. Collectivism, i.e. left wing ideology, has always been the most brutal and evil historically speaking. It’s sad to see folks picking up the porch. It doesn’t matter how you cut it if you’re white and you see black people as nothing more than black people you’re racist. If you’re black and you see white people as nothing more than white people you’re racist. It doesn’t matter what historical or modern justifications you spew. Hitler didn’t believe himself to be evil. Nor do most racists. You all have different justifications, but you’re all the same. Cut from the same cloth so to speak.
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Thanks for your advice!
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