Book Review of Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney Lopez

Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class
by Ian Haney Lopez
ISBN 9780199964277
Oxford University Press
Reviewed by Clint Walker

For years on my blog, as well as among other people I know, I have often made the case that racism is on the rise in America. This is especially evident in conservative politics, and even more evident in groups like the Tea Party.

Author Ian Haney Lopez goes back a lot further than the two election cycles with this encoded language that subversively excites often latent and unrecognized racial bias among people. Dog Whistle Politics goes back to the politics of Reagan and before and shows the implicit racial bias in the politics of conservative movement. In many ways Dog Whistle Politics can expose, in my opinion, a more difficult and dangerous racial bias, because it lies under the surface, and cannot be as easily exposed and spoken to as the blatant racism of the pre-Civil Rights South.

If I don't give this book away, I will be returning to it over and over again to read and re-read sections that better articulate what I have been noticing and feeling for a long time.