Karin Kamp — Preview: The Dog Whistle Politics of Race

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.”

BillMoyers.com
Preview: The Dog Whistle Politics of Race
Karin Kamp