Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class

Voorkant
Oxford University Press, 12 dec 2013 - 272 pagina's
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 López 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 López 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.
 

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Inhoudsopgave

IntroductionRacial Politics and the Middle Class
1
1 The GOPs Rise as the White Mans Party
13
Strategic Racism
35
Reagan
55
4 The False Allure of Colorblindness
77
Clinton and W
105
6 Getting Away with Racism
127
The Tea Party and Romney
147
8 Whats the Matter with White Voters? Commonsense Racism
169
9 Obamas PostRacial Strategy
191
ConclusionTo End Dog Whistle Politics
211
Appendix
233
Notes
235
Index
265
Acknowledgments
275
Copyright

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Over de auteur (2013)

Ian Haney López is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. An incisive voice on race and identity since the publication of his path-breaking book White by Law (1996), he remains at the forefront of conversations about racial politics in modern America. He has been a visiting professor at both Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

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