Dog Whistle Politics

How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class

De: Ian Haney López

Narrado por: Eric Yves Garcia

Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving "welfare queens" and "strapping young bucks" buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president.

In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney Lopez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog-whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform.

Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney Lopez links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class - white and nonwhite members alike.

©2014 Ian Haney López (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Compelling

This book offers a thoughtful, unabashed insight into contemporary racism: Its roots as well as its effects. The book is pregnant with connections to racism in the political sphere of the last 50 years. If you read The New Jim Crow, this book offers a parallel view, but from a much more political point of view. Highly recommended.

LOVED the book— not the narrator

Everyone should read/listen to this book to understand how dog whistle politics has and continues to destroy our society.

For the audiobook version— the narrator’s style made me take twice as long as usual to finish the book. He speeds up and slows down, as well as raises and lowers his voice in each long sentence. Most of the time he is on the slow side, so I sped up to 1.25x and that helped a bit. My biggest problem with his narration was that he always ended his sentence, especially the ones that finished on a poignant or an important remark, on a whispered tone that made me have to rewind the book several times. It was very annoying. Frankly, if this audiobook’s topic wasn’t of such importance, I would’ve returned it on day one.

Fantastic and Accurate

Love that this book is fair...that is not to say it is balanced...it is decidedly left-leaning, as should any listener be (particularly on the issue of race) once listening to what Lopez has to say. However, it does not demonize (even kind words are said of George Wallace). It simply tells the story of how race became as it is in the American political landscape.

Relevant today as when published

Professor Ian Haney Lopez's book is a must read to understand our racialized politics today.

Powerful Insight on Racism as a Tool in Politics

I enjoyed how the book told the story of dog whistling in politics in a chronological manner. While providing meaningful analysis of how racism is understood and used/reinforced in our society.