| Donald Trump’s campaign for both the Republican nomination and has been a paean of plain talking racism and xenophobia. Although many Republican voters celebrate Trump’s crude racism, many of the other voters he needs to win the Presidency have been so thoroughly disgusted with his racist speech, they are signaling their intent to vote for Hillary Clinton. Trump’s plain talking racism and campaign style clearly demonstrates that he does not understand how the modern GOP was formed nor what it takes to win the entire GOP base. When Lyndon Johnson’s prediction that the Democratic Party had lost the possibility of electoral victory in the South for at least a generation was fulfilled, most Americans understood it was because the Democratic Party led the fight for the inclusion of African Americans in the social and political life of the U.S. To capitalize on white disaffection with the Democratic Party, Richard Nixon and the Republican Party touted states’ rights and “law and order” to thinly veil an appeal to white racism. As some aspects of the inclusion of African Americans became more acceptable throughout the country, even thinly veiled appeals to white racism became more taboo. Republican strategist Lee Atwater explained the derivation of the more robust “dog whistle” as a way of disguising appeals to racism. |
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." |
| Maintaining the appearance of racial neutrality was so important to Reagan that he substituted the phrase “young man” for the more racially tinged “young buck” to describe a welfare cheat. Appearing racially neutral was a requirement for obtaining the electoral support of Republicans in the northern suburbs. Any overt appeal to racial animus would be a barrier to electoral support. Dog whistling was the mechanism for appearing racially neutral and obtaining the electoral support of racial moderates while simultaneously appealing to those who harbored racial animus and obtaining their votes. While the racists who support Trump are quite happy to hear his racist remarks and avoid the usual GOP dog whistles, Trump has been hemorrhaging Republican voters in the northern suburbs. Just as previous GOP Presidential candidates have had to send mixed messages to obtain the support of two very different factions of their party, Trump is now appealing to northern Republican voters, after having cemented the support of racist voters. Trump’s faux appeal to Afro American voters is a way of signaling to moderate Republicans that he is not as racist as his affinity for Senator Jeff Sessions, David Duke, and other members of the alt right. |
