Dog Whistle Politics

(W)e have got a tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working. And just generations of men not even thinking about work or learning the value of work, and so there's a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

                                                                                       Rep. Paul Ryan (D-IL)

The 2012 Republican candidate for Vice President made this comment Wednesday (March 12) on Morning in America, a radio talk show hosted by Reagan administration Secretary of Education and compulsive gambler Bill Bennett. He followed it up the next day at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention with a denunciation of the school lunch program.

You don't need a secret decoder ring to interpret the message in Ryan's latest remarks. Later that day, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) released this statement:

Ryan's comments about “inner city” poverty are a thinly veiled racial attack and cannot be tolerated. When Mr. Ryan says “inner city,” when he says “culture,” these are simply code words for what he really means: “Black.”

Ryan defended himself by saying, “This has nothing to do whatsoever with race. It never even occurred to me.”

Two weeks ago, I posted some candid remarks by the late Republican campaign manager Lee Atwater, a primary advocate of the “Southern strategy.” Atwater pointed out that, in the 1950s, it was considered acceptable for politicians to appeal openly to the racial fears of White voters. However, by 1981, it was necessary to use more “abstract” language, such as favoring “states' rights” or “cutting taxes.”

Ian Haney Lopez, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has a new book, Dog Whistle Politics, about the history and current relevance of race-baiting in political campaigns. (I haven't read it yet; I have it on order.) He uses the metaphor of the dog whistle since it is inaudible to the human ear, but reliably influences the dog's behavior. Dog whistle political appeals seem on the surface not to be about race, but they are understood as racial by White voters. The fact that these statements refer to something else gives the politician plausible deniability when he or she is accused of racism. Here is Dr. Haney Lopez discussing his book on Democracy Now.

In recent years, the Republican Party's domestic political message has become almost synonymous with symbolic racism. It is intended to persuade White Americans that social welfare programs primarily benefit urban Blacks and other minorities, and that the overrepresentation of Blacks among the poor is due to lack of motivation to work. Government is portrayed as stealing their hard-earned tax dollars and giving them to lazy poor people. But the people influenced by this message are actually voting contrary to their economic self-interest, since, when elected, Republicans pass policies that primarily benefit the wealthy. These government policies have been the primary cause of the large increase in inequality that has occurred over the past 30 years.

Ryan's remarks imply that poverty is largely an urban phenomenon, but that is not the case. These data from the U. S. census show that the poverty rate is higher in rural areas—not coincidentally, the Republican base.

It is also not the case that a disproportionate amount of tax money goes to minority recipients. The Congressional Budget Office reports that while African-Americans make up 12% of the population and 22% of the poor, they only receive 14% of government benefits. Non-Hispanic Whites, on the other hand, are 49% of the poor and receive 69% of government benefits.

Black unemployment can best be understood as a result of lack of opportunity, specifically, the disappearance of industrial jobs from urban centers, and well-documented hiring discrimination against African-Americans. The Republican "culture of poverty" message is an obvious attempt to blame the victim. (See my earlier post on this important social-psychological concept.)  

Ryan's response to criticism of his “Blacks are lazy” comments illustrates the role of plausible deniability in dog whistle politics. On the one hand, given Ryan's prominence in the Republican Party, it is totally implausible that his remarks were thoughtless or unintentional. The Southern strategy is Campaigning 101 for Republican candidates. Yet the corporate media accept his denials without skepticism. In fact, they almost never call out Republicans for race-baiting. Could it be because Ryan's budget proposals, which call for cutting social spending and reducing taxes on the rich, coincide with the policy preferences of the small number of wealthy owners and managers of the corporate media?

You may also be interested in reading:

A Racist Who Loved the Blues

And Then There Were Five, Part 1

Blaming the Victim