Thursday, September 25, 2008

Dog Whistle Racism: Silent But Deadly

In response to my post Dog Whistle Racism, I got a comment from a group wanting to stop something called "symbolic racism". Apparently, this is anything which can be interpreted as racist if the interpreter tries hard enough.

www.StopDogWhistleRacism.com is a non-partisan research project of the Center for Social Inclusion that examines the way that race figures implicitly in many political discussions. We're spreading the word about the site, what it includes, and how it can be used. StopDog will include a toolkit to help people use the site, spot the attacks, and do something about them.

The aim of this site is to document the full scope of symbolic racism in our political discourse by bringing collecting and preserving news and commentary on Dog Whistle Racism, elections, and policy.

Having looked at the site, I conclude that they're dedicated to finding any hint of racism so as to get Barack Obama elected. Non-partisan my eye.

The dog whistle, as a metaphor for detecting things others can't, ought to come with an irony detector. StopDogWhistleRacism apparently broke their irony detector somewhow. Symbolic racism? We've got enough overt racism in the presidential campaign this year, all of it coming from Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats, that we don't need to look at such subtleties.


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