What exactly is a “racist dogwhistle”?
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“Dogwhistle” in this context is synomonous with “euphemism”.
A statement that on it’s face to an average person might seem reasonable (or at least not overtly alarming), but to it’s target audience signals that they share some belief or sentiment that they might catch flak for if they said so outright.
This video does a very good job exploring this:
[The Death of a Euphemism](https://youtu.be/0dBJIkp7qIg)
To build on what other people have said the most important part of a dog whistle is that it has **plausible deniability** and is as ridiculous as possible such as the Pepe frog and etc..
For example: Person A is a racist who is in the know and says a racist dog whistle. This statement is meaningless to everyone who isn’t in the know. Person B is educated on the dog whistle but isn’t racist and states that Person A is being racist, trying to convince the audience.
Person A denies this, and states that Person B is being ridiculous. And it does seem ridiculous if you don’t know what the dog whistle is. The uneducated audience doesn’t get that Person A is spouting racist propaganda. Now the audience thinks that Person B is untrustworthy and Person A gets away with their racist shenanigans.
Adding to the pile:
I was in line at a store in Texas. A man stood behind me (cowboy boots, belt, hat) and said he knew my Aunt Regina. I told him he was mistaken, as all my Aunt’s live in a different state/in my home country.
He kept insisting with a weird smile that he knew my Aunt Regina. I later learned if you ignore the aunt and spell Regina backwards you’d get what the guy was getting at.
Another time I walk into a store and two (white) guys who were seemingly having their own conversation, switched to a different topic when I got in line behind them. They started talking about how much they hate Mondays, everyone hates Mondays, the world would be better if Mondays didn’t exist, etc.
Like yea that day of the week sucks for people working 9-5s/M-F. But it just felt out of place to have that conversation at that moment and it wasn’t even close to a Monday. Later find out Mondays is a term for black people.
So yea, racists are able to just say blatantly racist things, but people who don’t understand the language/terms being used won’t pick up on what is being said. Only other racists (or people in the know) can understand it.
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