Abandoning The Dog Whistle

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Ni***r, ni***r, ni***r." By 1968, you can't say "ni***r" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Ni***r, ni***r."  -- Lee Atwater, 1981

Ronald Reagan, the ultimate master of dog whistle politics, launched his first presidential campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a place notorious for the 1964 slaying of three civil rights workers, and gave a speech about states' rights:  "I believe in states' rights.... I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment."  What Reagan was really signaling by talking about states' rights in that particular venue was that he was squarely on the side of White America.  It presaged his relentless hostility to civil rights and voting rights, and his opposition to entitlements for the poor, particularly, African Americans, who he later famously disparaged with another classic dog whistle -- his unsubstantiated story about a "Cadillac-driving welfare queen."

Ever since, Republican politicians have been expert at using coded language to tap into anxiety of white middle and lower class Americans about losing ground culturally and economically to African Americans and immigrants.  Support for states' rights, calls for curbing food stamps, blaming poverty on a "culture problem," referring to illegal aliens, expressing fear of the spread of Shariah law, and framing opposition to LGBT rights as "religious liberty" all get the message across without sounding overtly racist, bigoted, xenophobic or homophobic.  The references to "Barack Hussein Obama" and relentless questions about Obama's birth certificate, of course, tap into the code as well.

But Donald Trump discarded the dog whistle during his campaign.  He referred to Mexican immigrants as drug dealers and rapists.  He argued for discriminatory treatment of Muslims.  He asserted that the judge presiding over the Trump University fraud cases, born in Indiana but of Mexican heritage, must be biased against him in light of Trump's proposal to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. 

And then he won the presidency, anyway -- or, more likely, because of it.  And after that, he brought white nationalists into the White House to be key advisors and installed them in his cabinet.  He sought to impose a travel ban on Muslims.  He sought to redirect a counter-terrorism program to focus solely on "radical Islamic extremism" and no longer target white supremacists.  The civil rights division of his Department of Justice is redirecting resources to investigate university affirmative actions policies. He has anointed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to lead an investigation of non-existent voter fraud that is aimed at voter suppression in minority communities.  And his Department of Homeland Security is presiding over hyper-aggressive deportation policies. 

None of this was subtle.  And none of it was opposed by the leadership or rank and file of the Republican Party. 

So it is not surprising that white nationalists armed with torches and Nazi flags felt emboldened to rally in Charlottesville.  And it is not surprising that in the wake of this disgraceful display of racism and anti-Semitism, culminating in the tragic death of a counter-protester, that Trump would do no more than call out "many sides" rather than directly and forcefully denounce the one side that was demanding white superiority.

Some of Trump's fellow Republicans criticized him for his tepid response.  Others tried to explain what Trump really meant -- that, of course his comments "included" white supremacists and Nazis and that he would have more directly condemned them but didn't want to dignify them by doing so directly (like dignifying "Radical Islamist Terrorists").    

But the fact is that Republicans are merely embarrassed and discomfited by their leader's inability to effectively use the dog whistle.  So as they have done since before the election, they will continue to distance themselves from his most offensive tweets and insensitive remarks while supporting his policies -- their policies -- that seek to undermine the civil rights of the people the white supremacists and Nazis were rallying against.  It is what they've been doing for decades.