Ian Haney Lopez

Ebola fearmongering: the Right’s new dog whistle

Ian Haney López writes for Moyers and Company, October 17, 2014

It seems that those spreading panic about Ebola, ISIS and the southern border hope that their new rhetoric will reinvigorate an old tactic: racial dog whistling. It has never been bigotry amid politicians that drives this, so much as the cold calculation that stimulating racial panic can win votes.

How the politics of immigration is driving mass deportation

Ian Haney López writes for Moyers and Company, October 7, 2014

In June, Obama recognized that continued mass deportation has “meant the heartbreak of separated families.” Dog whistling on the right is responsible for much of this heartbreak. But fault also lies with the Obama administration’s repeated decisions to defer and delay acting unilaterally, for the last six years, and now for a few more months, at least.

Dog whistling about ISIS — and Latinos too

Ian Haney López writes for Moyers and Company, September 30, 2014

There’s relatively little discussion of ISIS agents entering the country through airports, visa in hand, as the 9/11 attackers did. … Instead, the spotlight is on the border with Mexico, in a way that combines fear of terrorism in the Middle East with metastasized anxiety over Latino newcomers.

Heavy police tactics a reality for immigrants, Latinos too

Ian Haney López quoted in NBC News, Latino blog, August 28, 2014

“In the black community and in the Latino community, what you see now are protests against the way we have been dehumanized. That dehumanization is reflected in state policies and over policing,” said Ian Haney López.

It’s Worse than Paul Ryan: The right has a new ugly, racial dog whistle

Ian Haney-López writes for Salon, March 22, 2014

Race-baiting superficially aims at minorities and hits nonwhite communities hard, including the 24 percent of food stamp recipients who are black. But just as cuts to food aid also afflict the 38 percent of program participants who are white, dog-whistle politics savages Americans of every race. And it devastates every class, too, for this sort of racial politics doesn’t just slam the poor, it imperils all who are better off when government protects the broad middle rather than serves society’s sultans.

 

Is Paul Ryan racist?

Ian Haney-López writes for Politico, March 14, 2014

These instances of racial pandering typically have been treated as disconnected eruptions, when in fact the GOP has made a concerted effort to win support through racial appeals. This pattern is so entrenched—and so well known—that two different chairs of the Republican National Committee have acknowledged and apologized for this strategy.

Preview: The dog whistle politics of race

Ian Haney López interviewed on Moyers & Company, February 26, 2014
“Dog whistle politics doesn’t come out of animus at all,” Haney López tells Moyers. “It doesn’t come out of some desire to hurt minorities. It comes out of a desire to win votes. And in that sense, I want to start using the term strategic racism. It’s racism as a strategy. It’s cold, it’s calculating, it’s considered, it’s the decision to achieve one’s own ends—here, winning votes—by stirring racial animosity.”

How politicians and plutocrats persuade Americans to vote against their interests

Ian Haney López interviewed on Background Briefing with Ian Masters, February 19, 2014
Then finally we speak with Ian Haney López … author of the new book “Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class”. We discuss his ground-breaking analysis of how politicians and plutocrats use veiled racist appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich while threatening the real interests of middle class and working Americans.

Exploring the myth of the ‘welfare queen’

Ian Haney López interviewed by HuffPost Live, January 28, 2014
“Through terms like ‘welfare queen,’ Republicans have convinced the majority of whites that the biggest threat in their lives comes from poor minorities who are ripping them off, when, in fact, the biggest threat in the lives of almost all Americans comes from concentrated wealth: from very rich individuals and from corporations that have taken over government, have taken over the marketplace, and have rigged the rules in their favor.”