Republican politicians and media have repeatedly blamed diversity efforts for recent tragedies, from the Los Angeles fires to the D.C.-area plane crash.
Commentary on leading, national news stories is a tried and true way for partisan media figures to drive engagement online. But stoking anger about diversity efforts in particular is also shorthand for a much larger story, said Ian Haney López, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and the author “Dog Whistle Politics.”
“The story is something like this: We as a society used to hire on the basis of competence and meritocracy. But that system has been hijacked by powerful minorities,” he told NPR.
“Again and again, we see these efforts to trigger people’s latent resentments against groups that historically have been socially marginalized, socially reviled in terms that do not embrace a blatant direct bigotry, but that instead seek to clothe themselves in some form of neutrality or even a commitment to fairness or excellence.”
It’s the definition of a dog whistle, said Haney López, and it’s been happening in various forms since at least the end of the Civil War.
Copyright 2025 NPR
