Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney Lopez
I seriously underestimated how much Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism & Wrecked the Middle Class Ian Haney Lopez would affect me. As I started reading, I expected a rehashing of contents I already knew. While there was some of that, there was also information about the history of racism in the United States that I never fully knew. I expected to read the book quickly without the need to pause and think about what I read. Instead, the book took me quite a while to read as I pondered the contents. As I read an examination of policies I'd long heard explained with twisted logic that never sounded quite right, I realized I've been mislead by half-truths and misrepresentation of facts. This particularly surprised me in regards to some historical policies that were conveniently glossed over or completely absent from my history classes. This book also answered questions for me about how people I think of as generally non-racist and who conside...