Mitch McConnell and the Art of Dog Whistles

Mitch McConnell

Mitch McConnell and the racist dog whistle ride again. In political rhetoric, a dog whistle is a statement that can say something different to different audiences. That is like the way that a dog might hear a whistle that a person cannot. Asked during a recent press conference about the concerns that people of color felt about voting rights in the United States of America, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this:

“Well, the concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just [as a] high percentage as Americans. A recent survey 94% of Americans thought it was easy to vote. This is not a problem.”

Of course, “this is not a problem” is the conservative mantra. If you pretend that nothing is wrong, you can pretend that you don’t need to change. By falsely denying that voter suppression is real, McConnell could pretend to justify his anti-voting rights agenda.

Dog-Whistle Speech

Politicians speak in dog whistles so they can deny what they themselves say. In this case, McConnell could deny that there was a problem in the same breath that he helped to cause the problem. Similarly, one might recall that former President Ronald Reagan talked about “young bucks and “welfare queens.” Everyone knew that he was talking about African Americans. Still, since these were dog whistles and not explicit statements, Reagan could blithely deny any racist intent. His racist core voters got the idea. Yet, the proverbial suburban housewives could pretend they heard no racist content. Likewise, when King Henry II supposedly asked, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” it didn’t sound like a solicitation to murder. It was a deniable dog whistle.

McConnell’s dog whistle itemized a racial divide. His critics jumped on the obvious. McConnell distinguished between “Americans” and “African Americans.” Otherwise, he could have said that African Americans vote at the same rate as other Americans. That would have been untrue, as we will see in a moment, but it would acknowledge that Black people are Americans. Instead, McConnell’s words implied that African Americans aren’t Americans. A person might, in contrast, say that Polish-American voters vote at a higher (or lower) percentage than Ukrainian-American voters. That might make at least a little bit of sense. McConnell did something else. He distinguished between African-Americans and (real?) Americans.

McConnell, of course, quickly denied that he meant to do any such thing. “I’ve never been accused of this sort of thing before,” he said, “and it’s hurtful and offensive.” He then described his commitment to civil rights in the 1960s, saying that he had attended the 1963 March on Washington and that he witnessed President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He also explained that he had, over the years, hired African Americans to work in his office. This led Charles Booker to comment, “Mitch McConnell wants you to know it’s fine for him to block Voting Rights because he has Black friends.” Of course, anyone who grew up in the South in the pre-Civil Rights era – as I did – knows that “I have many Black friends” is the racist’s favorite refrain.

None of McConnell’s defensive comments about a distant past, however, explain why he opposes voting rights legislation today. So, we ask, what did McConnell really mean? To understand dog-whistle communication, we need to listen for clues as to the speaker’s real meaning. We also need to listen for what the speaker did not say. After all, what a speaker does not say can convey as much meaning as what the speaker does say.

The Golden Trump at CPAC 2021: Why Is the Christian Right Silent?

Politicians often use dog whistles to sneak in their true meanings. For example, predating McConnell’s outrageous statement, former President Donald Trump once said that “MAGA loves black people. ” That implied that Black people were not part of Trump’s MAGA crowd. Pretty much the same thing that McConnell implied.

Donald Trump Says That the MAGA Crowd Loves Black People, Except When They Don’t


Why Speak in Dog Whistles? 

Dog-whistle communication gave McConnell a clever way to speak out of both sides of his mouth. Did McConnell respond to the uproar by supporting any kind of voting rights legislation, however moderate? No. Did he specifically assert that “Yes, African-Americans are real Americans?” Not that I have heard. He defended himself, but that is not the same as denying his dog-whistle meaning. His core supporters can come away confident that McConnell sides with their opposition to civil rights. More moderate Republican voters can pretend that he was misunderstood. The dog whistle helped McConnell appeal to a bigger audience than what he could reach if he spoke clearly.

Was McConnell’s statement undeniably racist? Well, no. He did not use the N-word. He did not accuse Black people of being lazy or ignorant. His statement was obvious but deniable, which is the whole point of a dog whistle. We all know that Mitch McConnell pretends to support voting rights when he does not. Unfortunately, because of his tricky way of speaking, it’s hard to prove. Yet, how can we solve our nation’s problems if we can’t even acknowledge them?

Scholars sometimes call dog-whistle speech “multivocal communication.” What that means is that a single statement can mean different things to different audiences. In this case, “African American voters are voting in just as high a high percentage as Americans” carries at least two meanings. It can mean that African-American voters and American voters are two different groups. It also could mean that McConnell found a statistical equivalence between the voting rates of White Americans and Black Americans. The first implication is much more racist then the second – not that either is defensible. 

Fact Check: Was McConnell Right? No.

By the way, did McConnell have his facts right? Of course not. The United States Census Bureau found that 71% of qualified white voters voted in the 2020 election. This is substantially more than the 63% voter turnout rate of African-Americans.

What about my own experience? I have lived in the voter suppression states of South Carolina and Texas since 2005. The most recent scandal results from Texas’ new voter suppression law, which restricts mail-in ballots. When you fill in the mail-in ballot application, you need to write down your driver’s license number, your voter ID number, or the last four digits of your Social Security number. However, what if you originally registered to vote, maybe years ago, using your voter ID number, and yet put your driver’s license number on the application?  Or vice versa? The application will likely be rejected. Rejected applications need to be refiled. There is no guarantee of success, since the state’s voter records are a mess. Or, when I lived in South Carolina, voting locations changed willy-nilly, often with no notice to voters. These are just two of the 19 states that have proposed or adopted aggressive voter suppression laws. Yes, contrary to Mitch McConnell, some states pull nasty tricks to suppress voter turnout.

And, since voter suppression is patently unjust, politicians like McConnell speak in dog whistles to conceal or distract. It did not work this time. Often enough, however, it does.   
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Other examples of dog whistle speech:

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

“And This Is Their New Hoax:” Donald Trump’s Six Deadly Words Still Ravage Our Nation
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Research note: Interested readers will want to look at Bethany Albertson’s important article to learn more about multivocal communication.

Image: Congressional photo, via Wikimedia  

Martin Luther King's Speech “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Radical Tradition

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose national holiday we celebrate today, gave his most influential speech on November 16, 1961. This speech is called “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents. He showed that people stand in an ancient tradition when they break unjust laws.


A Thoughtful Speech

The speech, which he presented to a group of student civil rights workers, did not rise to the heights of thrilling oratorical excellence for which King was remembered. So, why do I say that it was influential? That’s because “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” was a carefully reasoned speech that shaped, justified, and explained the principle of nonviolent resistance to racial oppression. This speech, now largely forgotten, guided the Civil Rights movement. That movement would reach its climax three years later, during the Birmingham demonstrations, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the now-gutted Voting Rights Act of 1965 soon to follow.

In my previous post, I explained how this speech laid out the Civil Rights’ movement’s philosophical and moral foundation. The speech also justified the principle of nonviolent resistance to unjust laws. While King’s philosophical foundation relied heavily on Christian theology, his principle of nonviolent resistance owed more to Mohandas Gandhi and New England transcendentalism. Like many speakers before and since, King showed that his seemingly radical ideas rested on strong traditions and historical precedents.

Radicals, like King, seek social change. Conservatives look to tradition. Paradoxically, King combined the two opposing ideas. His agenda, which called for sweeping social and legal change, were considered radical in 1961. They would still be considered radical in 2022.

Yet, King’s astute persuasive tactic helped make his methods seem – well, not radical at all. By tying nonviolent resistance to history and tradition, King implied that his movement’s actions were traditional. More than that, however, he turned his critics’ arguments against them. It was they and not King, who rejected tradition – the tradition of civil disobedience. This was King’s subtext.


The History of Civil Disobedience

To begin with, King started with Greek philosophy. “There is nothing new about this,” King insisted. Indeed, he said that “We go back and read the Apology and the Crito, and you see Socrates practicing civil disobedience.” King also appealed to religious tradition, pointing out that early Christians also refused to obey unjust laws:

“The early Christians practiced civil disobedience in a superb manner, to a point where they were willing to be thrown to the lions. They were willing to face all kinds of suffering in order to stand up for what they knew was right even though they knew it was against the laws of the Roman Empire.”

How many conservative Christians have thought about that? About a time when the very act of worshipping as a Christian was civil disobedience? Not stopping there, King reminded the students that the United States of America has a long history of civil disobedience. He mentioned the Boston Tea Party and the work of pre-Civil War abolitionists:

“And even let us come up to America. Our nation in a sense came into being through a massive act of civil disobedience, for the Boston Tea Party was nothing but a massive act of civil disobedience. Those who stood up against the slave laws, the abolitionists, by and large practiced civil disobedience.”

The point here? Few of King’s opponents in 1961 would try to say that slavery was just. The abolitionists, who were the radicals of the 1850s, worked against the monstrous laws that perpetuated slavery. History now admires them. They became heroes – to later generations – by helping slaves to escape. However, they were heroes only because they broke the law. That obvious fact gave King a powerful historical and moral precedent.

There is, however, the other side. Are laws not supposed to be the guardians of public order and morality? Are we doing the right thing when we follow the law? Sometimes, King said, we are not.

 

What Is Legal Isn’t Always Right

In other words, that something is legal does not, in King’s philosophy, mean that it is right. Indeed, the law might require you to do something wrong. That was a radical concept – it is hard to imagine a more radical idea – and yet King’s logic seems inescapable. Throughout large parts of the United States in 1961, racial discrimination and oppression were actually required by law. Did that make it right? Was it right for people to obey such laws?

King offered a powerful rebuttal, founded on history and yet tied to the present day. King insisted that actions are not always righteous just because they are legal. He asked people to rise above popular morality and legal principles. He said that we should instead live by conscience. That is a difficult challenge, to which few of us ever rise.

For example, King reminded the students that Nazi Germany applied the force of law to commit acts of stunning evil. Evil people created Nazi law for evil purposes. King called for his workers to have the courage to reject legal but monstrous evil like Hitler’s:

“We must never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal.’ It was illegal to aid and comfort a Jew, in the days of Hitler's Germany. But I believe that if I had the same attitude then as I have now I would publicly aid and comfort my Jewish brothers in Germany if Hitler were alive today calling this an illegal process.”

King also reminded the students that the Union of South Africa was, in 1961, a white supremacist nation. In South Africa, racial justice was actually a crime. King expressed support for the resistance that Black-majority leaders offered against South Africa’s cruel, but legal, regime:

“If I lived in South Africa today in the midst of the white supremacy law in South Africa, I would join Chief Luthuli and others in saying, break these unjust laws.”

For, yes indeed, apartheid (which was legally required racial oppression) was enshrined in South African law. Yet, it was obviously wicked and unjust.

What Is Legal? What Is Right?   

These examples led King to a powerful but daring conclusion. He insisted that the students in his audience, who were organizing nonviolent resistance, actually represented tradition. That claim utterly conflicted with conventional attitudes. Yet, King gave his opponents a chance to ask themselves some hard questions. Would they have supported Hitler? South African apartheid was legal. But was it right? King put his opponents in difficult position. Were they prepared to defend some of the century’s most horrible laws? Were they prepared to defend oppression in the United States?

Two years later, King would write his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” That letter, which I recommend in the highest terms, laid out, in much more detail, the same historical and philosophical principles that King had already explained in “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience.” King’s speech made nonviolent resistance into a moral obligation. King tied civil disobedience to tradition, while rejecting unjust laws. And it was in this now-forgotten speech that King laid out the philosophy that guided the Civil Rights movement for years to come. 

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Related Public Speaking Posts: 

Read First Post about King's speech: 

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:” The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Mountaintop in Memphis, Tennessee: A Speech for the Ages

French President Macron Reminds the USA of Its Traditions

Rabbi Michael Z. Cahana’s Sermon about the Summer of Love: Is Love the Answer to Nazism?

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Research Note: Radicals often look for ways to tie their ideas to tradition. In his award-winning book, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America, Professor James Darsey shows how radical speakers often quote the Hebrew prophets.

Was “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience” totally neglected? No, not entirely. It was reprinted in several editions of an advanced communication textbook, Contemporary American Speeches, which was co-edited by my professor Richard L. Johannesen.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Speech, "Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience:" The Civil Rights Movement’s Philosophical Foundation

What does it mean to be good? How do we resist evil? Where should we put our faith: in goodness, or in violence? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s carefully-reasoned speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” delivered to a group of civil rights workers, laid out the Civil Rights Movement’s profound values. King’s carefully-reasoned exposition gave the movement its philosophical underpinning. Drawing on his academic background in Christian theology, South Asian philosophy, and New England transcendentalism, King did not merely guide his workers. More importantly, he called the United States to its better nature.

King did not give his speech with the overall public in mind. He delivered this speech on November 16, 1961 in Atlanta, Georgia to a student group called the Fellowship of the Concerned. He did not instruct them about movement tactics. Instead, he delved into the morality on which the movement rested. That moral foundation is King’s eternal legacy.

Although most remembered for fiery heights of eloquence like his “Mountaintop” and “I Have a Dream” speeches, King also guided his movement with deep moral arguments. In “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” King began with the idea that people are capable of great goodness. King also showed that it is never right to cooperate with evil, just as, in contrast, we should have boundless faith a future of justice. Let us look at each of those ideas in turn.


Are People Basically Good?

King’s first profound insight was that human beings are good. That insight was remarkable because the United States was, at the time, dominated by appalling racial wickedness. A few months earlier, a crowd of white people had fire-bombed a bus full of the Freedom Riders, viciously beating the men and women as they escaped.

Let us remember that, in 1961, racial discrimination was still the law of the land, particularly in the states of the former Confederacy. In my home state of Virginia, interracial marriage was still a serious crime. Not until I started my Master of Arts degree at Northern Illinois University did I attend an integrated school. (My high schools and undergraduate college enrolled only one or two token minority students.) The Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown versus the Board of Education was merely a document on paper. It made little difference to education. John Birch Society stickers plastered my middle-class neighborhood.

Many people imagine that chain gangs are a relic of the distant past, but I often witnessed this horror as an adolescent in the 1960s. There were no body cams to bring justice to the victims of police brutality. Rural areas of the Deep South were still, for all practical purposes, police states. African-Americans who went to the voting booth feared for their lives, and people who were arrested and taken to southern jails were often never seen again. Lynching continued openly as late as 1981, when the Ku Klux Klan hanged Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama. And, yet, King insisted that people are capable of great goodness. His ultimate point, his foundation, was to assume that the Civil Rights movement could appeal to kindness rather than hate. Love could replace anger. King explained it like this:

“I think this is what Jesus meant when he said, ‘love your enemies.’ I’m very happy that he didn’t say ‘like your enemies.’ because it is very difficult to like someone bombing your home; it is pretty difficult to like somebody threatening your children; it is difficult to like congressmen who spend all of their time trying to defeat civil rights. But Jesus says love them, and love is greater than like. Love is understanding, redemptive, creative, goodwill for all men. And it is this whole ethic of love which is the idea standing at the basis of the student movement.”

And he summed it up with this simple message of hope:

“There is within human nature an amazing potential for goodness.”

Are violence and hate the only ways to defeat our enemies? If so, King’s philosophy of civil disobedience comes to nothing. If we reach our opponents’ hearts, he suggested, people could hope for a better future.


Do Not Cooperate with Evil

Yet, King made another point, which was not to cooperate with evil. This principle applied to the movement’s followers, just as it applied to the racists and politicians who perpetuated evil. He did not say to “resist evil,” which we hear more often. Instead, he reached more deeply. He told his followers not to acquiesce to evil:

“It is as much a moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good. Noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as the cooperation with good.”

My late mother, who loved to read history books, often commented that people like Hitler and Stalin could only come to power if a great number of people helped them. Even more so, of course, it is so easy to go along with injustices. Martin Luther King, Jr. warned the students to avoid that temptation.

It is from that principle, that we should not cooperate with evil, that led King to the idea that not to give in to unjust laws, such as Jim Crow laws and legalized racial discrimination. While conservatives value social order above all else, King asked the students to value morality above all else.


And Have Faith in the Future

Many people, in 1961 and 2022 alike, prefer to glory in a mythical past. Instead, King offered hope for a better future. The Christian concept of “faith” can equally be translated as “trust.” Thus, King asked the students to hope, expect, and, most of all, work for, a better future:

“This movement is a movement based on faith in the future. It is a movement based on a philosophy, the possibility of the future bringing into being something real and meaningful. It is a movement based on hope.”

The message of American conservativism is, obviously enough, that we don’t need to solve our problems if we pretend we don’t have any. Yet, never mentioning his opponents’ philosophy, King’s speech did not merely ask the students to recognize the horrors that racism had brought to the United States. He also asked them to hope and work toward a better day when justice could triumph:

“With this faith in the future, with this determined struggle, we will be able to emerge from bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man, into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.”

In a later post, I’ll talk about this speech’s justification for civil disobedience. For now, however, let us remember that King’s speech showed faith in humanity’s goodness. He reminded his workers never to cooperate with evil. Still, while recognizing evil, he expressed profound faith – profound trust – that they could work toward a glorious future of just peace and human kindness. He presaged the vision that he would express two years later from the Lincoln Memorial, “With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” As the United States somewhat reluctantly celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. during this three-day holiday weekend, is his work finished? I think not. Should we still remember to deny cooperation with evil? I think yes. Do we still need to remember King’s message of love, hope, and faith? Obviously, we do.

Part of King’s genius is that he rarely bothered to refute the fallacious arguments that conservative racists made against him. Instead, he offered a powerful vision. That vision overcame whatever venom or false promises his opponents might talk about. He did not condemn his opponents; instead, he offered them a chance to reform. He did not fact-check the liars; he overwhelmed them with moral power. With the resurgence of brazen Jim Crow laws across the South, we still need his lesson today.

Peace to all.

 
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Other Posts about Martin Luther King's Speeches:

“The Law Can’t Change the Heart, but It Can Restrain the Heartless:” Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Speech about Church and the Struggle for Justice

Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Made Biblical Morality a Public Imperative

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Give Us the Ballot” Speech Drew on Uplifting Christian Concepts