Kanye 2020 | Page 5

It’s Time to Take the “Strange” Out of “Stranger Danger” and Racist Activism

Beginning in the 1950s, “Stranger Danger” themed public service announcements and cartoons became a widely accepted method of teaching children how to stay safe. In recent years, this “Stranger Danger” campaign has come under fierce criticism because it taught children that only strangers or people who looked a certain way were threats to their safety….

Blowing the Whistle on Welfare

Ian Haney López explains dog whistle politics as a form of coded language that politicians use to trigger stereotypes in voters. He makes the important distinction that dog whistling is not about bigotry, it’s about the manipulation of bigotry. Bill Moyers offers his understanding of dog whistle politics from Lopez’s book: BILL MOYERS: What [you’re]…

Sociology by Shonda Rhimes

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Berkeley professor Ian Haney-Lopez discusses the strategy politicians use to garner white middle class votes called dog whistle politics. This tactic uses coded language about race, gender, ethnicity, religion, etc. to play on the prejudices that the white middle class has been socialized with. It is so powerful that…

Old Dog, New Tricks

“A dog whistle doesn’t sound like much to your ears or mine, but it will make the neighborhood canines come running faster than you can shout Lassie or Rin Tin Tin.” In “The Dog Whistle Politics of Race” Part I and II, Ian Haney Lopez discusses the coded racial language in a putatively “post-race” colorblind…

Politicizing Race

In part I and II of Bill Moyers and Ian Haney Lopez conversation about “dog whistle politics”, they discuss how racially motivated policies have been disguised under certain terms and phrases. Dog whistle politics are evidently used to win votes. Ian Haney Lopez explores the idea of how the language that politicians, particularly Mitt Romney…

We Don’t Know We are Racist

Lopez in the first video talks about how most racists dont know that they are being racist and have not idea what their actions imply and dictate. I think that this idea of people not knowing they are racist is in play a quite a bit on Wake Forest’s campus. This ties in to the…

Third Reconstruction Era

In the article, “A Dream Undone”, by Jim Rutenberg, he explores how issue of racial discrimination has transpired in history, starting in 1865 to present day. Rutenberg devises the argument that history is ultimately repeating itself, and we are arguably amidst a third reconstruction period. By the court ruling of Shelby County versus Holder, society…

The right to vote is fundamental and should not have become a partisan issue

One day during the October of my freshmen year at Wake Forest, I was approached by someone on Hearn Plaza who asked me if I wanted to register to vote in North Carolina. Within a five minutes I finished the form and within a few weeks I received my registration card just in time to…

Post it online and they will come

In “Convincing Evidence That States Aim to Suppress Minority Voting,” Bentele and O’Brien writes of states passing legislation regulating voting and limiting access to the polls. Republican controlled state legislatures are passing these laws to decrease minorities from disproportionately voting for Democrats. Jim Rutenberg gives a brief overview of the “50-year campaign to roll back…

I Voted, And Now I’m Gay

The readings for today illustrate the racialized voting suppression movement which has reignited in the past few years. In “A Dream Undone,” Rutenberg describes the progression from overtly racist Jim Crow tactics of poll taxes and literacy tests, to Klan intimidation and violence at polls, and ultimately to the “colorblind” thinly veiled racist policies of…