The politics of distraction
... Ian Haney Lopez: ... Act one of the play, some politician decides to gin up controversy by pushing a racial idea or meme into the conversation, but doing so through a coded term that allows plausible deniability ...
Act two, the person who is dog whistling about race comes forward and exercises the plausible deniability of these terms and says, hey, me? I didn't say anything about race, or, as Donald Trump tweeted, "I don't have a racist bone in my body."
Act three, turn around and say, but you know who is talking about race? It's my critics. My critics have accused me of being a racist. And since I'm not a racist, they're the real racists, because they are falsely smearing me with this awful charge of being a racist ...
I see a very treacherous moment ...
We have a president who .. who sees himself benefiting from social division and acrimony ...
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trumps-racist-tweets-and-the-politics-of-distraction
= new reply since forum marked as read
