Dog Whistle Politics Chapter Summaries

Paper #4 In his book “Dog Whistle Politics”, Ian Haney Lopez shares how politicians have been silently pushing a racist agenda while they minutely express other topics. Sometimes this racist agenda isn't purposeful, but can be, and has been. I believe the example given in this paper, is one of those purposeful instances. Lopez defines Dog Whistle Politics as “simply speaking in code to an audience”. Dog Whistling has been shown in multiple examples in American history, with Bill Clinton’s “War on Crime”, Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs”, George Bush’s “War On Terror”, and many more. All of these situations had been made to solve a problem, while simultaneously creating, or in some cases reinforcing, racist beliefs. I would like to show that a good example of Dog Whistle Politics, is Jack Martins’ public campaign mailer he sent out in previous 2017. Jack Miller was running for Nassau County Executive early November 2017. He ended up losing to Laura Curran, and this phenomenal example of Dog Whistle Politics is probably why. He sent out a public campaign mailer that immediately catches your attention. In the center of the mailer is three, intimidating, tattoo-ridden, Latino-American men. You can …show more content…
Hill’s book “The Everyday Language Of White Racism”. In this book Hill talks about something called “Covert Racist Discourse” this is a way of speaking in which whites don't see it as racist, but still helps reinforce negative stereotypes. This supports what I said in the starting of my paper on how, sometimes dog whistle politics can not be racist on purpose. This mailer sent out by Martins is an example of this because Martins might not realize how severely racist his letter is. Even though he clearly supports the idea of not having gang members in his neighborhoods, he is supporting the idea that all illegal immigrants, and Mexican-American people in general are gang