You call that a dog-whistle, cracker?

I'm going to double up a couple posts here to talk about this topic, and for a moment, I'll have to talk about politics. Boiling water is on standby so I can scrape myself clean afterwards, but before I begin, I want to point out, I am not a dirty liberal leftist Democrat. Nay, I am a moderate polyamorist communist. There's never been a candidate in the running who came close to representing my views, so I can always be relied upon to see the bad in both parties, and to rarely see their good sides. So even if I'm ribbing on the other guys for a change of pace, don't pat me on the back cause you think I joined your side, or that I endorse your guy. That way lies hurt feelings when I point out your party is also full of douchebags next week.

But let's talk about the GOP debates and the so-called "dog-whistle" language being used to bait racists. First, look at this Bloomberg post and read through some of the claims made by white GOP politicians about blacks, which is all done in an effort to win the votes of racist white southerners. (And northerners who pretend that their forms of racism are really rational social ideals, not the same thing as the backwards bible preaching those goober hicks in the south believe.) Knowing that these people are appealing to the racist vote, I thought it might also be relevant to post this article, which lists black victims who have been lynched in the US after the civil war.

I do this because these white voters are the descendents of people who thought murdering blacks asking for equality made them righteous. Now they don't want to talk about those old days, but they do mutter how "the south will rise again." They still believe in white supremacy, and they still would love to string a few more blacks up, maybe even revive slavery. Let us not coddle language and allow a racist to hide behind "dog whistles." When Newt Gingrich says that black kids should be janitors, that's not a fucking dog-whistle call anyway. That's blatant fucking racism.

BUT, it's not deemed racism by the white majority so long as the white media outlets continue to call it "masked sentiments." There's nothing masked about this, any more than Ronnie Reagan was wearing a mask when he coined the term welfare queens. It's a way to continually demonize blacks as the real reason America sucks. Not evil bankers. Not politicians who promise one thing and deliver environmental disasters, war, and fear mongering. Not rich white men who own everything and drive political wedges in the population using their media conglomerates. NO! The real problem is poor people with weak political influence and few resources to combat the prevailing media message that "all's well."

The bigger problem is, the left is enabling this racism because they keep pointing to Obama being in office as proof of their racial "mission accomplished." And much like the GOP president they criticized for living in a bubble, white people on the left do not want to admit that electing Obama actually served to make race valid to racists all over again. That's why Newt is up there using old boy speeches to garner the racist votes. Because enough whites are afraid that blacks really are taking over that this tactic has seemed viable to him.

So what if the vast majority of the government is still white? The dude in the white house is black, and that means "they're taking over." So the racists are galvanized now, and along comes this asshole saying exactly what they want to hear. The white media outlets may cluck their tongues at this tactic, but the fact they don't acknowledge is, that language goes a long way toward creating a platform for Newt. And if that's working as a tactic, even in a few states, then no, the white left has not accomplished any mission toward racial equality. Racism is still alive and well, even with Obama in office. We all need to own that fact, even white voters on the left who genuinely aren't racist.

The other problem is GOP voters who always fall back on the defense that they are not really racist even if they voted for the white guy using racist language to court the south. No, these GOP voters are "fiscally conservative," and cannot vote Democrat because they will "just spend it on social programs." (Which is traditionally also used as a dog-whistle for "black people funds," incidentally.) So even though there hasn't been a GOP president who didn't incur huge debts and inflation, the voters still keep claiming that they're really voting for the sake of their wallets. Fiscal conservatism of this sort is willful ignorance at best, and polite buzzwords to cover racism at worst.

The first step we have to take in stopping racism is to stop making apologies for racist language and calling it something else like "dog whistling." This is bating the racists, and we need our media to point this out instead of downplaying the tactic as being "edgy." There is nothing edgy about clinging to values that should have been dead two centuries ago.

That white conservatives don't condemn Newt for his antics goes to show how racist many of them are, and I really don't care how many black friends they claim to have. Their politics have always shown their true colors, and that's why I don't cotton to the claim that Newt isn't really racist, that he's just using a bait to get a certain kind of voter. If he wasn't racist, he would find this tactic to be repulsive. But he fucking wallows in racism like a pig in shit. He smiles and laughs as he says these things. No, this is not just a white man trying to win the votes of the south. This is a full on racist, and the whole election would have been better served if someone in the media early on had called him on this and dogged him about it until he dropped out or admitted that he was soliciting hate groups.

We need to stop letting racists off the hook with platitudes that they don't really mean what they say. And we cannot walk away and pretend this isn't happening, because that will lead to more back sliding, not to any form of social progress. Stay in this fight, and be prepared to call someone out when they try the same things that Gingrich is. And for the love of God, will someone call out Newt before we get to the primaries? Can we possibly send BET to put a mic in Newt's grill and tell him, "Cracker, you're a motherfucking racist, so how are you going to get the black vote now that you've positioned yourself as a fan of the white man only?"

No? Well then I guess we should get used to the rise of more "dog-whistling" in future elections.