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Based on the Preface, Introduction and Chapters 1-4 of Ian Haney López's Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented...

Haney Lopez speaks about how the Republican party uses what he calls a "dog whistle," or a coded message to a target audience (page 4) to appeal to the shrinking portion of the electorate made up of white people. The "dog whistle" contains a thinly veiled reference to race and uses fear to blame nonwhite people for issues such as welfare fraud and illegal immigration; denies allegations that the GOP is pandering to whites; and denies nonwhites' claims of racial discrimination. In other words, while blaming race for many of society's problems, this form of dog whistling involves Republicans denying that they are doing so. The coded messages teach their audience that minorities are the cause of many of society's ills and that whites are the victims.


The first two chapters of this book trace the rise of the GOP as what the author calls "the white man's party" with Nixon and the turn to the party's use of what the author calls "strategic racism" to win votes. Chapter 3 discusses Reagan's use of "dog whistle" politics to dismantle the government's commitment to social welfare and the middle class, and Chapter 4 discusses the way in which "dog whistle" politics falsely promote colorblindness. 

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