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Obama Sends Messages Whites Don't Hear

"Dog-whistle" politics lets prez court blacks without alienating whites

By Gabriel Winant, Newser User

Posted Mar 3, 2009 9:44 AM CST

(Newser) – It’s no surprise that President Obama has a strong connection with black Americans. But how did he manage to avoid being pigeonholed Jesse Jackson-style? Nia-Malika Henderson writes in Politico that Obama uses “dog-whistle politics," employing allusions, cadences—even a swagger—that resonate with black Americans but go largely unnoticed by whites.

In January Obama referred to “American dreams that are being deferred,” a Langston Hughes reference that black audiences got without a citation. Ditto for “they try to bamboozle you”—a Malcolm X reference used during the primaries. One linguist says that even his “Yes, we can!” wouldn’t work for a white pol. But Obama's hardly the first to use dog-whistle politics: "Deft practitioner" George W. Bush tapped in to the evangelical community using Biblical phrases and lines from church hymns.

[Images (3)]

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Spectators react as Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., works the crowd during a rally on the College of Charleston campus in Charleston, S.C., Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Spectators reacts to the words of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., during a rally on the College of Charleston campus in Charleston, S.C., Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Pattie H. Brew, 97, wears her "I Voted" sticker on her Obama hat at her home in Washington Monday, Nov. 17, 2008. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

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The connection that Barack Obama has to the black community and the connection George Bush has to the evangelical community began long before they began running for president.
- Ari Fleischer, former Bush spokesman

Imagine John Kerry or Hillary Clinton saying, ‘Yes, we can!’ It would have sounded phony — only in what I call a ‘black-cent’ can it sound prophetic and arousing. - John McWhorter, linguist at the Manhattan Institute

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Obama Sends Messages Whites Don't Hear