by guest blogger Ben E
Certainly, racism isn't always overt or conspicuous. Such is the nature of the latent, racist rhetoric sprinkled throughout in this presidential primary season. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote about the underlying racist undertones in campaign messaging in a column this week for Bloomberg, calling this rhetoric "dog whistling."
Writes Goldberg: "Dog-whistling -- the use of coded, ambiguous language to appeal to the prejudices of certain subsets of voters -- is one of the darkest political arts. In this race, Newt Gingrich is streets ahead of his nearest competitor in its use. In addition to his comments about black children working as janitors, he has repeatedly referred to Obama as the country’s 'food-stamp president.'"
Take a look:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/how-to-listen-for-racism-on-the-campaign-trail-jeffrey-goldberg.html
It's pathetic how low the Republicans have to go into order to 'appeal' to the voters they are trying to get. I was disgusted by the sexism of the 2008 campaign, and the racism in this one is going to make 2008 look like a garden party.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me sick too....that people always revert back to the worst possible depiction of a race/gender/preference to distort another. One would think that the year 2012 would put us past this.
ReplyDeleteThe part in the article about Rick Santorum saying black people and then denying he said by stating that he said black people, but instead Blah people. Lol
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