The Dog Whistle Politics of Race, Part II
March 7, 2014
This week on Moyers & Company, Bill continues his conversation with author and legal scholar Ian Haney López about dog whistle politics – code words that use race to turn Americans against each other.Politicians
manipulate deep prejudice to rouse hostility against minorities and the
government, according to Haney López, and summon support for policies
that make economic inequality even worse. And it’s not just Republicans
and the tea party who have used this “strategic racism” to win votes,
but Democrats as well.
“Democrats have understood, even as early
as 1970, [that] race was gonna be an effective wedge issue against them.
And when the Democrats responded they responded not by contesting that
politics but instead by embracing it. And this is part of the story of
dog whistle politics — Republicans shift right and the Democrats have
tracked rightward, following them,” Haney López tells Moyers.
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