Dog Whistle Politics Of The 1960s - 2333 Words

Jacob Garbison Professor Sean Trundle History 355 4 December 2014 Dog Whistle Politics of the 1960s On July 2, after signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon B. Johnson reportedly said to his staff, â€Å"I think we just gave the South to the Republicans for your lifetime and mine.† (Perlstein 365) He was wrong. Although he never lived to see it, Jimmy Carter won a Democratic South in 1976 - but it was for the last time. Nonetheless, the party which had dominated the South for almost a century had put it up for grabs with the stroke of a pen. The impact of racism on presidential politics during the ‘60s is difficult to overstate. Race and racially coded language in particular played a profound role in the GOPs success at winning†¦show more content†¦Here, Wallace did something new. Gone were the overt references to white supremacy, segregation, or even race. Instead, he positioned himself as a defender of the constitution against tyrannical government overreach: â€Å"I stand here today, as Governor of this sovereign State, and refuse to willingly submit to illegal usurpation of power by the Central Government.† [1] Wallace went on, giving voice to the politics of the South in language that was palpable, even agreeable, to the North. The dramatic â€Å"Stand in the Door† was all for show of course. Wallace stood aside, allowing three black students to register for classes later that day, but the effects of the speech would have wide repercussions. Wallace received nearly 100,000 telegrams in response to his speech from all across the country, an almost unheard of number for a lowly Southern governor. More shocking still was that nearly all of them, about 95%, were praising his bravery. (Lopez, 15) â€Å"They all hate black people, all of them.† Wallace reportedly exclaimed, â€Å"They’re all afraid, all of them Great God! That’s it! They’re all Southern. The whole US is Southern!† (Lopez, 15) Wallace had discovered the dog whistle, a way to communicate racial animosity without using explicit racism. This is a distinctly modern expression of racism which, as Ian Haney Lopez says, â€Å"[stimulates] the intended audience without overtly