Plausible Deniability

One key tool in the toolbox of white authoritarianism is plausible deniability. Plausible deniability essentially means the ability to explain away illegal or unethical things under the guise of a possible innocent explanation. This is a key function in “dog whistles”. A literal dog whistle is a type of whistle that is so high-pitched that it can only be heard by dogs. The metaphorical dog whistle is a statement, symbol or motion that only other people with beliefs that align with your own would be able to recognize, and anyone who does recognize it and doesn’t agree with you wouldn’t be able to prove negative intentions beyond reasonable doubt. A more innocent version would be like making a reference to a tv show, game, or band that only people who have also seen that tv show, game, or band would be able to recognize. I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads “3 guns, 2 snakes, 1 love. Vote for Ally”. Most people would see that bumper sticker and just think it’s something silly, but people who watch Game Changer would know that I also watch Game Changer. However if someone were to accuse me of watching Game Changer, and I wanted to deny it for some reason, there’s a reasonable possibility that I just saw a silly bumper sticker and wanted it for my car, or that I watch other shows on Dropout but not Game Changer, or that the bumper sticker was a gift from a friend who does watch Game Changer and I had no idea that’s what the sticker was from. This is how dog whistles function via plausible deniability.

‍ ‍Politicians use these dog whistles in their speeches, and have done so since at least the Civil Rights movement. Politicians have campaigned on issues like welfare queens, Sharia law, immigrant crime, critical race theory, DEI, “woke”, and terrorism. These phrases refer to real things that have happened before, but all too often when politicians refer to them the intention is to stoke fear of violence or oppression against white people. The purpose of this fear originally was mainly to get elected, because if you don’t elect this politician who will protect our helpless and pure white daughters? However once elected, people expect politicians to follow through on their campaign promises.

The reality is while for many the phrase “welfare queen” conjures up the image of a black woman, the only documented welfare queen was a white woman who appeared racially ambiguous named Linda Taylor. In Slate, Josh Levin states that “Linda Taylor showed that it was possible for a dedicated criminal to steal a healthy chunk of welfare money. Her case did not prove that, as a group, public aid recipients were fur-laden thieves bleeding the American economy dry”. This myth has lead to stricter welfare policies that make it harder for anyone to receive help when they need it, and fewer funds towards welfare programs causing people who are able to qualify for welfare to receive less help than they need.

Another phrase that’s been slung about for the purpose of stoking fear lately is Sharia law. Sharia literally means “the correct path” and refers to the guidelines Muslims are intended to follow to bring them closer to God. It is not the same as Islamic law, and has multiple interpretations of it. Sharia law is easily comparable to Christian religious doctrine. There is some controversy in the recommendation of corporal punishment drawn from traditional interpretations of Islamic law, however today most Muslim-majority countries don’t administer physical punishments. Similarly, Christian doctrine recommends killing witches and stoning prostitutes or blasphemers or rebellious children. The only real difference is most Christian nations have been able to modernize to the point of not killing people over superstition. Discrimination and violence against women and LGBTQIA+ individuals is also legal and common in most majority Muslim countries, however I don’t believe for a second that the conservative Christians fearmongering against Sharia law are worried for the well-being of women or LGBTQIA+ people. Intisar Rabb, a professor at Harvard University, states “A lot of the rules that are called Islamic are often local, culturally inflected preferences that come to have an Islamic veneer”. In my opinion, so long as we maintain our freedom from religion and separation of church and state w ithin the U.S., we’re safe from any kind of implementation of Sharia law. However, once schools are required to include the Ten Commandments in their curriculum, Christians cannot get hysterical about the same schools teaching Sharia law.

Another common dog whistle used by politicians is immigrant crime. This is a myth, plain and simple. That is not to say that no immigrants commit any crime ever, but according to the American Immigration Council, “welcoming immigrants into American communities not only does not increase crime, but can actually strengthen public safety. In fact, immigrants - including undocumented immigrants - are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S. born. This is true at the national, state, county, and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime”.

There is also the commonly spouted “issue” of Critical Race Theory, which few Republicans seem to even be able to define. According to Education Week, “critical race theory is an academic concept that is more than 40 years old [as of 2021]. The core idea is that race is a social construct, and that racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies”. The whole thing is based in a legal analysis framework meant to observe instances of legal discrimination, such as discriminatory criminalization policies and “redlining”. One perfect example of discriminatory criminalization is Nixon’s 1971 War on Drugs and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The Anti-Drug Abuse act gave the same 5-year minimum imprisonment penalty for possession of 5g of crack cocaine as for 500g of powder cocaine. Why is that? According to Drugsandme, “Crack users were more likely to be Black, ‘less; educated, and have lower income… The vast majority of crack cocaine offenses were dealt to Black people, and by 1989 a quarter of Black males aged 20-29 were incarcerated or on probation.” This happened not that long ago, and you can see similar disparities in the treatment of Black people within our legal system today. One more example of this is redlining, which Cornell Law School defines as “a discriminatory practice that consists of the systematic denial of services such as mortgages, insurance loans, and other financial services to residents of certain areas, based on their race or ethnicity”. Bill Dedman wrote a series of articles referred to as “The Color of Money”, which revealed that “Atlanta’s banks and savings and loan institutions, although they had made loans for years in even the poorest white neighborhoods of Atlanta, did not lend in middle-class or more affluent black neighborhoods”. All of this being said, the concept of Critical Race Theory is not intended to “judge white students for crimes they didn’t commit, burdening them with an irredeemable guilt based solely on the color of their skin” like the dumbest people at Fox News claim it is. The whole concept of Critical Race Theory is to teach legal history and highlight the idea that race is a social construct with no real scientific basis.

DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This concept originates in the Civil Rights act of 1964 (Title VII) and specifically prohibits employment discrimination based on characteristics such as race or sex. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, “Employers violate Title VII if they take an employment action motivated - in whole or in part - by race, sex, or another protected characteristic. Title VII explicitly provides that a “demonstration that an employment practice is required by business necessity may not be used as a defense against a claim of intentional discrimination”. This means that if an employer takes any employment action that takes your race, gender, or any protected characteristic into consideration, you have the right to sue them. Nobody is (legally) getting hired to meet a diversity requirement within a company.