identifying dog whistles in the wild

bad faith actors 🤝🏻 dog whistles

if you engage bad faith actors long/often enough, chances are good you’ll experience them deploying a dog whistle

dog whistling is expressing racially loaded ideas in coded terms
so let’s review—a non-exhaustive list— of some common ones

"inner city"
signaling: racist stereotypes about Black and Brown communities suggesting urban areas are overrun with crime, poverty, and decay
example: "we need to clean up the inner cities and make them safe again”

"law and order"
signaling: support of aggressive and racist policing, primarily in Black and Brown communities—implying they inherently experience more crime
example: "we need law and order to control the chaos”

“traditional family values”
signaling: advocating for conventional white supremacist patriarchal social norms that reject all LGBTQ+ rights and non-traditional families
example: "if we want to fix societal issues we need to return to traditional values"

“cancel culture”
signaling: rejection of accountability for racist behavior and minimizing the importance of social justice movements
example: "cancel culture is ruining free speech"

election integrity
signaling: support for strict “voting laws” that are not justified and are intended to increase voter suppression, targeting predominately Black and Brown communities that often break left
example: "we need election integrity to prevent fraud and ensure a fair and free election"

“national security”
signaling: racist, false, and xenophobic stereotypes about immigrants that are often deployed along side appeal to ignorance
example: "we need to secure the border because caravans of migrants are the biggest threat to national security”

reality: white supremacy is the biggest threat to national security in the united states

read more here >> https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s894/BILLS-116s894is.xml

and there are many, many more

“stand back and stand by”
“very fine people on both sides”
something about “welfare queens”

(the largest block of welfare recipients—around 43%—are white btw)
these are just a few that we may hear more and more frequently the closer we get to november (during any election seasons truly)

and just like with strategies and tactics of bad faith actors, being able to recognize dog whistles is crucial to being able to identify, address, and refute them