Dog Whistle Politics - By Ian Lopez Haney
A Critical Review

September 8, 2015

Dog Whistle Politics is an extremely important book about race and the dissolution of the middle class over the last 30 years.  The complexity of how these topics are related is reflected in the in the complicated organization of the book, which may unfortunately weaken some of the powerful messages.  To provide context for understanding how race is related to the loss of economic opportunity for the middle class, Lopez digresses from these two main themes again and again to lay out supporting subthemes.  As a result, many readers may have taken away only one idea: how Republicans use codes or “dog whistles” to re-awaken and attribute negative racial stereotypes to minorities.  Instead, the more fundamental idea is how the failure to resolve the racial antagonisms of the U.S. continues to undermine its political comity.

Dog whistle politics is the use of racism as a strategy for political ends such as winning political office.  Lopez elucidates dog whistle politics as the cold, calculating, and considered strategic manipulation of racial animosity as a way of achieving one’s own ends.  Thus, dog whistle politics doesn’t come out of racial animus or desire to hurt minorities.  Instead, it comes out of a desire to win votes.  George Wallace, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and Mitt Romney used racism as a strategy to win votes.

Dog Whistle Politics 
By Ian Haney Lopez 2015

Lopez elucidates dog whistle politics as the cold, calculating, and considered strategic manipulation of racial animosity as a way of achieving one’s own ends.

Dog whistle politics operates on two levels.  On one level it allows plausible deniability and on another level it provides a stereotypical message for those who are predisposed to hear it: “minorities are threatening us.”  Dog whistle politics, allows the whistler to claim “this isn’t about race;” when those who hear the whistle know it’s about minorities pilfering welfare or food stamps.

The most eloquent and comprehensive explanation how dog whistles work was given by Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan’s political director and George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager.  According to Atwater

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, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, 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 taxes and 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.” So anyway you look at it, race is coming on the back burner.

Lee Atwater

Dog whistle politics is also a way of convincing mostly white voters to disparage the federal government for allowing undeserving minorities to leech from the government.  Food stamps are cut because it's part of the stereotypical narrative that food stamps are pilfered by undeserving minorities with the acquiescence of a government gone amok.  

The federal government is portrayed as supporting policies that make economic inequality even worse.   Dog whistle politics convinces mostly white voters the federal government doesn’t work because it taxes hard working whites to squander aid on minorities, and thus, its use provides the rationale for giving many of the federal government’s regulatory controls to private corporations.  

Dog whistle politics is also a way of convincing mostly white voters to disparage the federal government for allowing undeserving minorities to leech from the government

In one example of how dog whistles can work in politics, Lopez considers President Barak Obama.  When Republicans accuse President Obama of being foreign born and a Muslim, the dog whistle is heard by some as a claim Mr. Obama is an outsider, not one of us, and an illegitimate President.  When the Affordable Health Care Act is called ObamaCare, some white voters hear another federal government policy is being used as a boondoggle for aiding undeserving minorities at the behest of a minority President.

Apart from the racism inherent in believing minorities are undeserving, this dog whistle ignores the whites who have health insurance for the first time or who maybe don't have to work a second job to have health insurance.  Conservatives claim ObamaCare or other government aid make the recipients lazy, laziness being a stereotype for minorities.  Every time ObamaCare is used for the Affordable Care Act, the racially charged code is, “here comes a black man who exemplifies the way in which the federal government is being used to waste our tax dollars on undeserving minorities.  The admonition is don't trust the federal government and don't vote for politicians unless they promise to rein in the federal government.  The irony is these same politicians are going to give more tax cuts to the very rich at the expense of New Deal programs that primarily benefitted whites.

Washington Free Beacon

The New Deal programs primarily benefitted whites because of exceptions, exclusions, and in some cases, outright disregard of the law, made to satisfy racist practices in the South.  For example, Social Security benefits were not provided for farmers and domestic household workers because blacks in the South predominated in those occupations.  Southern Congressmen refused to support Social Security if it benefitted black workers.  Similarly, the GI Bill benefitted mostly whites because blacks who resided in the South could not attend segregated colleges and universities.

The civil rights movement and Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to promote a more racially just and equitable society required an assault against social programs primarily benefitting whites.  This assault created a window of opportunity for privileged whites who opposed the cost of the New Deal programs and racist whites who opposed blacks benefitting from these programs to coalesce against Democratic liberalism.  This coalition attacked the New Deal programs on the grounds they helped “undeserving, lazy minorities rather than people like you.”  The attack based on race allowed an extreme faction of the wealthy, those most dedicated to the power of big money and the power of corporations to hijack both the Republican Party and New Deal liberalism.  Today, the Republican Party is committed to gaining votes by increasing racial antagonism and fear even though it is at the cost of destroying democracy.

US President Lyndon B Johnson hands a pen to civil rights leader Rev Martin Luther King Jr during the the signing of the voting rights bill as officials look on behind them on 6 August 1965. Photograph: Washington Bureau/Hulton Archive

The political approach responsible for tying dog whistle politics to the Republican Party was the Southern Strategy. The Southern Strategy was a term of derision coined by New York Republican Senator Jacob Javitz when he saw the Republican Party in l963 and l964 moving to attract white southerners who were disaffected by the Democratic Party’s promotion of racial justice.  Lopez quotes Democratic Presidential George McGovern’s explanation of the Southern Strategy after losing to Richard Nixon who won 70 percent of the white vote.

What is the Southern Strategy?  It is this.  It says to the South: Let the poor stay poor, let your economy trail the nation, forget about decent homes and medical care for all your people, choose officials who will oppose every effort to benefit the many at the expense of the few—and in return, we will try to overlook the rights of the black man, appoint a few southerners to high office, and lift your spirits by attacking the ‘eastern establishment’ whose bank accounts we are filling with your labor and your industry.

Richard M. Nixon, candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, is seen arriving at the airport in Atlanta, Ga. with his wife, Patricia, on May 31, 1968. A crowd of about 350 people greeted them as Nixon visits the South to meet with delegates from various states. (AP Photo)

The Southern Strategy, however, works throughout the entire country, not just the south, according to Lopez.  Although race remains especially important in the states of the former confederacy, Lopez argues the racial antipathy toward minorities can be found throughout the U.S.  Moreover, the influence of the South, in part through its growing importance within the Republican Party, is growing nationally.

One of the central dynamics in American politics since Nixon implemented the “Southern Strategy,” has been the use of cultural provocations--primarily but not exclusively race--to try to advance a conservative agenda favoring tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of industry, and dismantling the social safety net for the disadvantaged.  Race has been one of the ways in which we understand why certain groups get privileges and advantages other groups are denied.  The Southern Strategy explicitly tied race, and its cultural baggage, to privilege and disadvantage through the use of dog whistles. 

Today the Republican Party today is 90 percent white in terms of where it draws its support and it's 98 percent white in terms of its elected officials. The country as a whole is almost is 65 percent white. You don't achieve that level of racial homogeneity by accident.  It reflects 50 years of using race to mobilize white voters, as the Republican base.  

Today the Republican Party today is 90 percent white in terms of where it draws its support and it's 98 percent white in terms of its elected officials. 

Besides dog whistles relying on words (lazy) or stories (welfare queens driving Cadillacs), ideologies can also be dog whistles.  Modern U.S. conservatism is built on the foundation of racism.  Lopez points out many whites affiliate with conservativism because it resonates with their world view of their identity and race.  Race is the formative element of conservatism and the dividing point between conservatism and liberalism.  Consequently, conservatism is the shrillest dog whistle of them all: lower taxes and smaller government is heard by some voters as a racial attack on minorities.

The conservative ideology dog whistle works.  It has led to a systematic dismantling of the New Deal and 50 years later, has resulted in levels of wealth inequality not seen since before the Great Depression.  Despite the success of the conservative ideology, racial pandering is not openly expressed as it was through the 50s and into the 60s.  Even though it didn’t all go away, racial pandering is still there under the surface. We don’t hear it expressed in the language of race; instead it is heard in the language of culture and behavior.

Democrats understood as early as 1970, Republicans were going to use race as a wedge issue against them.  Initially, Democrats planned to respond by distancing themselves from minorities.  Democrats avoided talking about race, hoping their silence would insulate them from racially-provocative charges.  Rather than confront dog whistles, Democrats thought they’d ignore them until they were no longer an issue.  

Democrats avoided talking about race, hoping their silence would insulate them from racially-provocative charges. 

Democratic dog whistle politics isn't the same sort of dog whistle politics practiced by Republicans.  Democrats thought minority voters did not have anywhere to go because the Republicans were so hostile to minority voters.  So Democrats practiced a cyclical dog whistle politics slapping minorities down and demonizing them between elections.  Then near elections, Democrats verbally addressed minority needs to garner minority votes.

Lopez writes that Republicans and Democrats are united in agreeing to react to race with colorblindness.  Pretending not to see color is appealing because it seems to be the world we would all like to see.  Lopez argues, failing to forthrightly address color, however, leaves confused and erroneous beliefs about race unchallenged.  It is an especially bad approach for resisting dog whistle politics because it derives some of its power from unspoken stereotypes.  

Mitt Romney, using dog whistle politics, won a majority of white voters in 46 out of 50 states.  In addition, Romney won a majority of the white vote in every age cohort of white voters.  There is tremendous support in the white community for politicians who warn the public about the dangers confronting them by minorities who warn them about a federal government that is ostensibly by and for minorities.  As Lopez points out, when 60 percent of whites are willing to vote for a politician who promises to slash taxes for the rich, to deregulate the economy, to slash social services, and indeed, to defund large parts of the federal government, there is a problem in our society.

Reuters/Frank Polich/Salon

One of the problems with our society is that it creates some people who operate as racists.  Lopez holds that m most people- even racists are good.  They are neither sick nor ruled by anger or raw emotion or hatred. They are complicated people reared in complicated societies.  They're fully capable of generosity, of empathy, of real kindness. But because of the idea systems in which they're reared, they're also capable of dehumanizing others and occasionally of brutal violence. And that's an important truth.  Most people are not racists out of some sort of a sickness of the soul.  They're racist because of the society in which they operate.

Politicians use dog whistles to convey stereotypes and racist messages that are counter to widely held values and norms of racial egalitarianism.  The triumph of the civil rights movement is to teach us, to teach Americans that we're all human, we're all in this together.  Politicians who come forward and say, I want your support because minorities are threatening and I believe that you ought to vote in solidarity with whites must disguise those messages. 

Dog whistle politics is about pursuing a dream that’s been interrupted; we’re trying to recover FDR and a Second Bill of Rights. We’re trying to recover New Deal liberalism. But not a New Deal liberalism divided by race. We need to understand that the middle class is not a term that should have a racial signifier.

This is an important book despite Haney’s unusual organizational structure.  Without resorting to the ideas in this book, Donald Trump cannot be understood or Bernie Sanders’ inability to gain support in the minority community predicted.  This book is much more than a reminder that ambiguous terms can be used for racial pandering.