Dog-whistle politics—code words that don’t refer explicitly to race but are fraught with racial meaning—has been used by both major political parties. But the GOP’s enthusiastic embrace of this tactic since the 1960s has led to an astonishing result—since 1972, no democratic candidate for president has won a majority of the white vote. Watch this discussion of Ian Haney López’s “A Framing Paper for Dog Whistle Politics,” an article prepared for the AFL-CIO to launch a discussion in unions about racism in politics. Presented by Anita Waters, CPUSA National Board member and Professor Emerita of sociology at Denison University.
Image: “A literal dog whistle cannot be heard by human ears; as a metaphor, it describes coded messages that carefully manipulate hostility toward nonwhites” (López). Wikimedia Commons.
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