January 30, 2012: Fox News Debate Moderator Decries ‘Dog Whistle’ Appeals to Race in Republican Primary Politics

Fox News commentator and analyst Juan Williams, in a column for the Washington, DC, political publication The Hill, writes of his dismay at what he believes is the racially charged rhetoric that is dominating the Republican presidential primary. Williams got into a heated exchange with Republican candidate Newt Gingrich during a recent debate in South Carolina (see January 16, 2012). But Williams is displeased with the responses of all of the candidates at the debate. “With [ethnic] solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president,” Williams writes, “the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics. The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are ‘entitlement society’—as used by Mitt Romney—and ‘poor work ethic’ and ‘food stamp president’—as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the ‘Founding Fathers’ and the ‘Constitution’ also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core ‘old-fashioned American values.’ The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking ‘amnesty’ and taking jobs from Americans. But the code sometimes breaks down.” Williams, an African-American, asked each candidate at the debate about some aspect of racially driven politics, from voter identification laws that would keep African-Americans from voting to racial discrimination in drug enforcement policies. Gingrich, he writes, was the most flagrant in appealing to racist whites with his practiced, sophisticated use of “coded appeals”—“dog whistling,” Williams says it is often called—to racist stereotypes against blacks and Hispanics. Gingrich’s rhetoric, he writes, appeals to “certain white audiences by intimating that black people are lazy, happy to live off the government, and lacking any intellect.” Instead of answering Williams’s question (referring to Gingrich’s characterization of food stamp recipients as largely African-American and too lazy to seek gainful employment), Gingrich “threw red meat to Republicans in South Carolina, a state with a long history of racial politics. He used the same rhetorical technique of the segregationist politicians of the past: rejecting the premise of the question, attacking the media, and playing to the American people’s resentment of liberal elites, minorities, and poor people.” Williams says he does not regret asking Gingrich about his characterization of welfare recipients, and writes: “I do not know anyone on food stamps who would prefer them to gainful employment.… The problem is not a lack of work ethic on the part of the poor, who are disproportionately minorities. The problem is there are few good jobs for blue-collar people with the best work ethic. Let’s have an honest debate about why this is the case and what we can do to fix it. But I regret that our political discourse has become so fragmented and combative that the point I was trying to make was obscured by pro-wrestling theatrics and post-debate spin. Poverty, unemployment, and the hopelessness that pervade minority communities are real issues that the GOP nominee, and President Obama for that matter, should address in this campaign.” [The Hill, 1/30/2012] A blogger for the liberal Daily Kos writes of Williams’s column, “You have to wonder how long Juan Williams will last at Fox News” after writing the column. [Daily Kos, 1/30/2012]