Were Trump's Tweets Racist? They Were (Sort of) Deniable Dog Whistles

Were President Donald Trump's tweets asking four minority Democratic Congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley, to "go back to the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came," racist? Liberals say yes, President Trump and his ever-loyal supporters say awful things and deny that you said them is a rhetorical trope. It was an odd trope, since only Omar was born outside of the United States, and she came to the United States as a child.



During the last week or so, we have heard several instances of national figure saying things that sounded innocent but which many people (including me) perceived to be bigoted. Some people call this dog-whistle politics, but it goes farther. It stops open conversation.

The idea of a dog whistle is that a dog can hear it but people can’t. Sometimes in dog-whistle politics a politician can say something that his or her followers understand perfectly well, but that other people might overlook. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in his 2012 Acceptance Speech at the Republican National Convention, “when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American.” That sounded perfectly patriotic, except that the audience heard it as a dog whistle about the Barack Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories. At the same time, Romney could deny being racist. When Republicans call Democratic politicians “lawless,” Democrats probably hear an odd exaggeration. But a member of the Christian Right will instantly recall apocalyptic theology: “the lawless one is revealed” (2 Thessalonians 2:8 NRSV).

Bethany Albertson, a political psychologist at the University of Texas, calls this multivocal communication. “Multi” means “many” and “vocal” means “voice,” thus, speaking with more than one voice. She explains: “In political speech, multivocal communication reflects situations where the sender of the message sends a targeted appeal to an ingroup that understands the specific meaning of a particular phrase based on a shared history of past practice while an outgroup remains unaware.” Shared history is the point. Racial and ethnic minorities have heard through history: “Go back where you came from.” “Go back to Africa.” “Go back to Ireland.” Go back to wherever. One statement, two meanings, depending on how the audience hears it.

One reason that politicians use multivocal speech is so they can say awful things while denying that they said anything bad. Trump is past master. Liberals condemned Trump’s tweets as obviously racist. Trump himself denied it: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” 

Trump could deny that he was racist because his tweets were multivocal. He didn't use irrefutably racist language; he did not say in so many words that the four congresswomen should leave because they were minorities. He used an ambiguous message instead. He gave his supporters an opening to defend him. For example, conservative Mark Levin seemed quite happy to accept Trump’s denial. Levin said that Trump was complaining about the women’s character, not their ethnicity. That’s unlikely, but that’s the dubious magic of multivocal communication.

During the Cold War, diplomats aimed for “plausible deniability.” Say or do things that you can deny. Learn to deny them with a straight face. That is exactly what Trump did: he said something that was horribly racist but left himself room to deny. Was anyone fooled? Yes, you bet, plenty of his supporters swallowed his line – or pretended they did, which, with multivocal communication, amounts to the same thing.

If we want to have a healthy country, multivocal communication causes big trouble. It’s hard to confront evil if evil leaves itself room to wriggle and squirm away. We can’t talk about our differences if we pretend they don’t exist.

This wasn’t the only recent multivocal communication. I’ll try to write more in coming days.