Book Review: Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class, by Ian Hanley López

Abstract

Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class. Ian Hanley Lopez. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. 273 pp. $24.95 hbk. $9.99 ebk.In the post-civil rights era, racism remains a permanent feature within social institutions in the United States-including mass media and educational, political, and criminal justice systems. Many communication scholars of race analyze discourses of racism to reveal the roots of racist thinking and practices ingrained in U.S. history and culture. In examining racist thinking and practices, communication scholars not only have brought attention to overt acts of racism, but they also have highlighted covert acts of racism that are pervasive in contemporary society. Ian Haney Lopez's book is important for scholars examining how mundane and everyday language masks operations of power and promotes social inequalities. Lopez, the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, provides a comprehensive and compelling account of how U.S. politicians used coded racial appeals to persuade white lowand middle-income voters to support policies that threaten their own economic interests in favor of upper-class elites. The strength of this book lies in Lopez's detailed exploration of racialized communication tactics that politicians used to curb social services, trample unions, defund public schools, give corporations regulatory control over financial markets, and oppose health care reform since the 1960s, starting in the era of George Wallace, Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, and continuing in age of the Tea Party and the first black president, Barack Obama.Lopez holds nothing back in pointing out the manner in which racial codes have been skillfully deployed in U.S. politics. In this thoroughly researched, but highly partisan account, Lopez writes about how conservative politicians in the Republican Party embraced racial pandering and race-baiting arguments to gain support from white voters, and ultimately win elections. So how has the GOP managed to use coded racial appeals in political campaigns despite taking stances on policies that largely disregard the impact of race, gender, sexuality, and class on historically oppressed groups? The answer, according to Lopez, is seen in their use of racial entreaties couched in what he calls Dog Whistle Politics.Lopez uses this phrase to explain how race remains central to U.S. electoral politics. He argues that racial entreaties work like a dog whistle-a metaphor signifying how modern racism is frequently inaudible and denied, but triggers strong responses from those who are attuned it. Like a canine reacting to the piercing blast of a whistle, voters react to the subtext of political messages (e.g., welfare cheats, gangbangers, terrorists, or food stamp president), which hints to sharp, penetrating racial stereotypes of people of color. This kind of dog whistling is not motivated by pure malice. …