Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Author: Visit Amazon's Ian Haney López Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0199964270 | Format: EPUB
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Description
Review
"This is one of those books that should be required reading for anyone and everyone who is struggling to understand how and why political elites succeed, time and again, in persuading poor and working class whites to support regressive policies that are a boon for corporations but actually harm them and wreck the middle class. The answer to the riddle has far more to do with race than most want to acknowledge. But it isn't old-fashioned, malevolent racism that's to blame. No, as Haney López brilliantly and painstakingly lays bare, what is unraveling our nation is not bad people, but a stubborn refusal to deal openly and honestly with the reality of how race operates today." --Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow
"Read this book to understand how dog whistle politics enables the wealth gap to stay the same and even to get worse not just for blacks or other people of color but for the white working class as well. As Haney López demonstrates, the vocabulary of race has changed. Nonetheless, race is still skillfully used to distract our attention from ongoing and pernicious disparities in economic opportunities." --Lani Guinier, Bennett Boskey Professor, Harvard Law School, and author of The Miner's Canary
"A brilliant guide to modern politics, for anyone who wants to understand how outright racist appeals morphed into the genteel rhetoric of 'states rights' and from there into today's 'defund Obamacare' -- and why Democrats too often collude in rather than repudiate dog whistle politics." --Joan Walsh, Salon.com and MSNBC, and author of What's the Matter With White People
"Grounded in history rather than theory, this is recommended to readers engaged in today's political discourse." --Library Journal
About the Author
Ian Haney López is the John H. Boalt Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. An incisive voice on white identity since the publication of his path-breaking book White by Law (1996), he remains at the forefront of conversations about race in modern America. A past visiting professor at Yale and Harvard law schools, in 2011 he was awarded the Alphonse Fletcher Fellowship, given to scholars whose work promotes the integration goals of Brown v. Board of Education.
- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 13, 2014)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0199964270
- ISBN-13: 978-0199964277
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I have long argued that what underlies the opposition to taxes and government in general is the sense on the part of whites that government is for Them, meaning originally blacks but now also immigrants as well, especially Hispanic immigrants. So I was pleased to find this erudite scholar making the same point. His arguments are a bit abstruse, especially when he discusses the import of color-blindness and post-racialism. Color-blindness is the pretense on the part of whites, mainly conservatives but also progressives, that race doesn't even occur to them. Lopez shows how this seemingly noble point of view is actually very destructive and allows racism to continue, unacknowledged and unchallenged.
I had a little more difficulty understanding his point about post-racialism, which is Obama's position. I would be hard-pressed to try to paraphrase what post-racialism means and how it is different from (false) color-blindness. As a disappointed Obama supporter, I did appreciate his clear explanation of how Obama went wrong right at the start of his presidency, by failing to openly avow liberalism and instead using the power of government to help in a crisis in such a subtle way as to strengthen the narrative that taxes are the enemy of the good life and government had best get out of the way. I agree with him in wondering just how progressive Obama really is, and to what extent his embrace of conservative ideas (such as school choice) is from the heart and how much is to avoid being seen as "the black president."
The final chapter, in which Lopez supposedly offers ideas on where to go from here was likewise not as clear and powerful as I could have wished. His main point is to continue to speak up on race and how it is always there.
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