The Dog Whistle Politics of Race

[Coyotl]

The Dog Whistle Politics of Race
February 26, 2014 http://billmoyers.com/segment/preview-the-dog-whistle-politics-of-race/

It may be hard to believe but the 2014 midterm elections are just nine months away. With the campaign season now gaining momentum, you may already be witnessing political stump speeches, advertisements and diatribes hoping to sway your vote. You may also need to tune your ear to the sound of dog whistle messaging, says Bill’s guest, author and legal scholar Ian Haney López.

This week on Moyers & Company, López, author of the newly released book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, joins Bill to talk about how racism has changed in America since the civil rights era. The dog whistle of racism, says López, is “the dark magic” by which middle-class voters have been seduced to vote against their own economic interests. Politicians have mastered the use of dog whistles – code words that turn Americans against each other while turning America over to plutocrats.

And yet, “dog whistle politics doesn’t come out of animus at all,” López tells Moyers.“It doesn’t come out of some desire to hurt minorities. It comes out of a desire to win votes. And in that sense, I want to start using the term strategic racism. It’s racism as a strategy. It’s cold, it’s calculating, it’s considered, it’s the decision to achieve one’s own ends — here, winning votes — by stirring racial animosity.”

[Capt. Obvious]

1. I'm reading that now

Everyone here, but especially the ones fretting about the term white privilege needs to read it.

[rustbeltvoice]

2. white privilege is a phantom

Being a poor white man is not much of a privilege. One does not often get a dollar more out of the system for being the same color as the Koch brothers or Bill Gates. The advantage of feeling superior to supposed "non-whites" is worth nothing. Those taking pride in being "white" have nothing. The only privilege one gets from the cops doesn't last more than seconds, or milliseconds. The really privileged have no problem pissing on people of their own color.

[BainsBane]

3. That's one of the dog whistles

You are conflating race and class. White privilege does exist.

[AverageJoe90]

5. Exactly so.

Hell, the .1% and the ringleaders of the various reactionary movements will gladly trot out the word "privilege" themselves(okay, more in context than actually using it).....just in the context of "This privilege is rightly yours and the libruls are taking it from you. New World Order! Obammy! Illegulz! Joooz!", etc.

My point is, the .1% have indeed used the illusion of privilege to get certain types of white folks to do their bidding; just look at how the Teabaggers operate for example! But that's all this supposed privilege is: an illusion, used to divide and conquer from the days of the Civil War to Civil Rights and even beyond.

[bettyellen]

7. seriously- getting arrested and having your life fucked up = milliseconds????

On what planet? Do you really not know how different it is to be black in America? Wow. You have a lot to learn.

[merrily]

8. Statistics belie the bit about the police.

I don't want to rake up old stories, but, to my knowledge, no white Harvard professor was ever handcuffed in his own home for questioning what the police were doing there and why they were questioning him. And Cambridge is a very blue town in a very blue state.

[rustbeltvoice]

14. Yes there, but also...

What you say about Henry Louis Gates is true. Over all, the police do treat black people worse. That was not my point.

When a cop decides to go after someone, he does. He usually does so without impunity.

In one local incident here, Cleveland, one on duty, and one off duty cop drove to a suburban home and killed the resident, Dan Ficker. Ficker was white. Ficker had fought back, and the shooting cop is free, the off duty cop got in trouble for failing to help the other cop.

This is under review by the Federal Justice Dept, along with other Cleveland police shooting incidents, including a sixty car pursuit of two unarmed black people which involved the firing of 137 bullets.

[merrily]

15. Nothing you said, though, proves that white privilege is only a phantom.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

9. Simple example: poor white arrested people get treated better than middle class black arrestees. nt

[Duppers]

10. you're wrong. nt

[Capt. Obvious]

12. I'm just going to start putting you people on ignore

[IronLionZion]

13. privileged white people piss on poor white people all the time

They have tricks of manipulating people for votes. Poor rural white people are the biggest benefactors of most food stamp and other assistance programs by a very lopsided majority.

[El_Johns]

4. and racial animosity (or inter-group animosity generally) follows from competition

for a shrinking pool of resources.

The politics of fascism.

[Coyotl]

6. A few people got very rich breaking up the Soviet Union. All that oil.

Of course, there is more oil under the public lands in the USA than they stole in Russia.

[WilliamPitt]

11. I like Bill Moyers.

He likes me, too.

Grind on, boss.