How can “dog” be considered a racial insult?
The word “dog” is not (and as far as I know, never has been) a racially-tinged epithet, although the WaPo would have you think it is:
The president of the United States had just lobbed another racially charged insult — this time calling his former top African American adviser a “dog”
Yes, Trump called Omarosa a dog. But why is this “racially charged”? And what on earth does “racially charged” mean, anyway, if it can be expanded to include a word that has no especially racial history at all? “Racially charged” has apparently become an all-purpose term that means “any insult directed at a black person that isn’t delivered by a liberal or a leftist.”
Calling a woman a “dog”—or calling any person a dog—isn’t something I’m going to defend. I think it’s juvenile and classless, but Trump is often those things. One thing it is not, however, is racist. It is a generic insult.
As best I can remember, the practice of not allowing any white person on the right to criticize any black person in any way (and in particular in a rude way) without being accused of racism began with Obama’s candidacy. Remember this one, for example, when McCain and Palin were criticized as racists for saying Obama was a socialist?:
“Socialism” is a code word for black? Bizarre. A less bizarre notion is that “racism” has now become a code word for “all criticism of Obama”—or “criticism of any black person for any reason whatsoever.”
I’ve been around a long time, and “dog” is very much an equal-opportunity pejorative. So maybe this is the WaPo’s racism? Perhaps the WaPo thinks black people are more doglike than other people? Is that not racist of the WaPo, or at least racially charged?
Eh, calling Palin a pig. I’m too lazy to look, but I don’t remember any kerfluffles over that remark. Maybe a day or two, but no big whoop.
Ah, I remember the good old days when presidents literally ate dogs and it didn’t seem to matter much. To some people.
It is so obvious that this is supremely racist…because…Narrative. It fits the Dem/Prog Narrative. Next.
Trump was actually calling her a “bitch” without using that forbidden “sexist” term.
Of course dog is racist. He should have used cur.
The use of the term “dog” to describe someone may be leveled at 1, their manifest moral character, 2, their intrinsic moral worth, or 3, their looks.
I think when it was used by someone of the WWII generation, it referred to a certain manifest kind of treacherous, conscienceless and self-serving behavior. In fact, as the idea lost its power over time, a version of it became “You dirty dog”, an almost jocular charge which might be leveled during a friendly card game when someone unexpectedly took a trick.
The intrinsic moral worth[lessness] charge is more serious, intentionally dehumanizing, and common across cultures. As for instance when Muslim’s casually referred to dhimmis as dogs.
And of course there is the crude brutal and callow, if not always consciously malicious, use of the term to refer to a physically unattractive female.
My guess is that Trump meant it in the way it was used in the first case, before it lost most of its power. You can imagine Cagney saying something like that in ’38, before it became a more jokey phrase in 1961.
Am at all I certain he used it this way? No, not really.
Ben Shapiro had a funny bit on his podcast last week where he went through the litany of instances of Trump calling people a “dog.” He’s been using “dog” as an insult against people of all races, creeds, colors and political persuasions for years. For proof all you need to do is peruse his twitter timeline. This is just another instance of the left attempting to silence the right by throwing around baseless accusations of racism. There is a lot not to like about Trump, but one of the things I absolutely LOVE about this administration is that it fights back against this BS. The poor progs… they must realize these tactics will never work again. It must really suck to be a prog these days.
Remember the Mike Wallace interview with Morgan Freeman? Wallace asked Freeman about Black History Month and went on to ask how we were to get rid of racism. Freeman said, ‘Stop talking about it. Don’t call me a black man, I’m simply a man. Don’t talk about it and it’ll go away.’ WaPo may be afraid racism will go away if they stop talking about it, especially the charge that Trump is racist.
I agree that Trump is not racist.
Classless, crass, name-caller in chief yes. But the Clinton’s name-called also. And many times they name called through surrogates like that snake married to – ugh, I can’t remember either of their names but he referred to Monica Lewinsky as trailer park trash, etc.
Twitter is a platform for content just like the Sunday talk shows, interviews, hot-mic moments, etc and therefore this is not the first president to be crass.
Muslims despise dogs and calling someone a dog in those countries is, yes, quite an insult.
When everyone is racist, no one is. When everything is racist, nothing is.
I usually agree with about 95% of The entries here, and I love this blog. But not today.
I don’t think Trump is a racist. I think he’s smart and more than that, a force of nature, and he will probably rank as one of the more significant Presidents. But I also think he’s flawed.
I watched Schindler’s List the other night. I’ve also been watching the German TV series “Babylon Berlin.” I’m drawn to works that explore political leaders within the context of Nazism’s raw ideological racism. I see many similaritities between what we are starting to experience in American culture today and pre WWII Weimar Germany: the growing polarization of the left and right and the open, encouraged hostility between the polarized political leadership including a growing institutionalized support for harassment and violence. Along with that, the absolute lack of any significant leadership in the center to expose the two growing extremes and offer an alternative. The Never Trumpers are a joke.
I see Trump as just another piece of the dynamic above as we move towards political and cultural decline. I’m not speaking of economic decline. I support his policies, including on immigration. I agree with the left that we need compassion, but not at the expense of turning towards national socialism, so I voted for Trump to stop the left on these issues. But in terms of a moral national cultural ‘conscience’ that speaks for ‘the good’ of a culture nationally, Trump is just another step towards the loss of that, and we are experiencing the gradual consequesnces of what the loss of that will eventually mean, unless we are eventually led by a plolitical class and a President, who not only have the force of will to lead as Trump does, but also the conscience and the basic rudimentary self control to know when to keep their mouth shut.
And that doesn’t mean stop fighting or reacting. It just means, get a bigger vision that includes both compassion and hard truth. I believe those two things exist side by side in leaders throughout history who know something about human nature and how to wield it, in themselves, as well as, in others. As much as I support Trump over the growing postmodern secularization of the left, he doesn’t have what we need to turn back from the slow and gradual destructive path we are on culturally and politically. Every day we have more evidence of that.
I don’t know if this is still the case, but when I was teaching school in the ’90s, blacks used “dog” as a very common form of address, and not in a pejorative way. “Hey dog, what’s happening?”
I didn’t see this with whites or Hispanics.
Though Trump wasn’t using “dog” to address her, but to talk about her.
Chris: Because obeying our rules of conduct, while the opponent does not, has worked so well for us conservatives.
Yes, I too wish that sometimes, on certain topics, Trump would keep his mouth shut. But the horse is out of the barn on that whole “conscience and self-control” you long for, and it’s not Trump that opened the door. We live in a broken world in which it took a Trump to stand up to the relentless violence, hate and intolerance of the current-day left in the West. Blame them. Until they grow up, we don’t get have nice things, like classy statesmen.
The only rule that matters anymore is that physical violence must not start with us.
Phillipa’s comment shows where I would like to be. When I first started working for the welfare dept in Philly after college (1968),I had lots of colleagues of different races and different backgrounds. It was great because you could talk about your own personal experiences without being put in a racial group. I learned a lot, including how not to judge people you didn’t know. Now we can’t talk to one another.
It wasn’t because of Trump called Omarosa a Dog that the MSM is using that to accusing him of racism. It is the act of insulting a black person itself that they claim constitutes racism so debating rather the term Dog is a racial charged insult is frivolous.
News flash! Contemporary liberal discourse is 90% malicious humbug.
And now for some equal time:
https://www.amazon.com/Dog-My-Co-Pilot-Writers-Friendship-ebook/dp/B001RLBX3Y
“It is the act of insulting a black person itself that they claim constitutes racism” as Dave (and others) said.
And yet, when it goes the other way — when a black conservative is insulted by a white leftist, somehow that never produces a liberal, um, dog-pile on the offender.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/20/cnns_paris_dennard_enrages_fmr_ciafbi_official_phil_mudd_everyone_in_dc_knows_security_clearance_.html
“Former CIA and FBI official Phil Mudd (now a CNN counterterror analyst) debates CNN in-house Trump supporter Paris Dennard about the revocation of John Brennan’s security clearance. When Dennard suggested that it is an open secret in D.C. that people who have high-level security clearance get higher-paying consulting jobs (fact check: true), Mudd yelled so loudly that he caused the microphone to reverberate and crackle.
…
“Everybody in Washington, D.C. knows — if you don’t want to be honest about it, that’s on you, but if you have a security clearance and you keep it, you get more money,” Dennard said after Mudd asked: “Who are you talking about? Are you talking General Hayden?”
…
Dennard also said: “You get more money as a consultant for having the security clearance. Stop acting like that doesn’t happen.”
“We’re done. We’re done. GET OUT!!!” Mudd yelled. ”
* * *
This is not Dennard’s first encounter with the racist left.
http://diverseeducation.com/article/99913/
“Toward the end of the [2016] election cycle, Dennard joined TMCF’s communication department, where he has used his media connection to become the voice of Black colleges.
Despite his work at TMCF, when he is speaking as a political commentator, advancing the causes of the Trump administration, Dennard said that he is certain to point out that he is voicing his own personal views and not those of his TMCF.
“When I appear, I’m not appearing on behalf of TMCF,” he said. “I’m appearing as a GOP political commentator who comments and gives analysis about politics and political opinion,” said Dennard.
During one of his most recent appearances on CNN, Lemon abruptly cut Dennard off and ended the show after Dennard continued to insist that mainstream media organizations were promoting “fake news stories.” ”
* * *
He seems to have been an outstanding young man from the beginning of his career.
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/trump-supporter-lands-role-with-hbcu-advocacy-group/504380/
“If Dennard seems like an unlikely person for TMCF to tap, perhaps his background offers some clarity. Raised by a single mother in Phoenix, with “good mentors” and a grandfather he admires deeply, young Dennard attended Brophy College Preparatory, an all-boys Jesuit high school. A friend there brought him to a convention of young Republicans, and encouraged him to run for a leadership position. Not even sure that he was a Republican, he obliged, won, and was presented with a series of questions, after which he says he was told, “You’re a Republican.” He didn’t know, he said, that it was “taboo” for a black person to claim such an allegiance.
A 17-year-old Dennard address the convention. (screenshot / CSPAN)
His family wasn’t overtly political, but they were civically minded, “fairly conservative,” and Christian, Dennard said, and he liked the party’s ideals. He would go on to deliver, at age 17, a remarkably poised and confident speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention, with vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney sitting in the audience. “We are a group of young people that have been inspired by this party and our Republican leaders to commit ourselves to causes greater than our own self interests,” he told the ebullient crowd.”
Cue some more #WalkAway videos, but we need to get someone to start a #WalkToward campaign as well — unfortunately, I can’t recommend the current Republican party as a destination, until they actually decide that their core principles are in line with Constitutional Conservatism rather than democratic socialism-lite.
Video from Remy via PowerLine — the goal is outrage, substance is irrelevant.
https://youtu.be/3Wc50kdHjTI
Remy has a new video out, taking it out on CNN: People are outraged!
Expat, the public tone these days is to separate so the media would have us believe we don’t like each other. Boil it down to co-workers and neighbors and the media’s picture isn’t accurate. We rub along well enough with the people we know. It’s the media defining terms that’s the problem.
Donald Trump said it, so it’s racist. Ickso fatso. — The Left
It doesn’t matter what he says. And it didn’t matter who the Republican candidate would have been. Cruz would have gotten tarred with the “racist” label as much as Trump. Trump might be capable of bringing additional ire on himself since he is such a bigmouth, but in the end, there wouldn’t have been much difference.
Does this nonsense even carry weight with anyone any more? I guess with the rage-aholics on the Left, but does anyone even slightly grounded in reality not tune this constant drumbeat out?
The ‘standard’ is simple; any term that can be construed to be racist IS racist IF uttered by a white about a non-white.
Hypocrisy, double standards, logically nonsensical arguments are all standards that lack validity when offered by anyone not on the Left.
“does anyone even slightly grounded in reality not tune this constant drumbeat out?” ConceptJunkie
Half of America voted for Hillary Clinton…
The first time I heard about the Black use of the word “dog” was in the movie Training Day. “My Dog” is how Denzel Washington addresses his good friend — who he later kills.
Exactly, Geoffrey B — inquiring about whether Barak Obama was eligible to be President because he may have been born in Kenya* is racist, but inquiring whether Mitt Romney was eligible to be President because he was born in Mexico, John McCain because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone, and Barry Goldwater, because he was born in Arizona before it became a state, is not racist.
* I always feel compelled to point out, whenever “birtherism” is discussed, that the “Obama born in Kenya” meme was started by Obama’s (or his publisher’s) publicist in the publicity for his first book. Which brings it back to Obama himself. Anyone who has written a book knows that publishers don’t send out people to dig up facts for a blurb, they have the author send in a short bio him(or her)self. You can take it to the bank that Barry wrote that himself.
KyndllG: Good words. I agree 100% with your first statement, that conservatives playing by the rules while the left plays by cynical, power-driven, situational ethics has not worked out well for conservatives. True. Another reason I voted for Trump.
But here’s the problem. My understanding of Trump defeating 16 other Republican candidates was because he was the first Republican candidate to say, I’ll do and say whatever it takes to win. He was the first postmodern Republican candidate. My understanding of Trump’s stunning victory was that by Election Day, anyone paying attention or with decent common sense knew that Trump would go to lower levels, say whatever dispicable thing was necessary, and outgutter a candidate who, in my opinion, is the most Michiavellian, dishonest, cynical, power driven gutter candidate ever with horrible taste in pantsuits. Trump beat her by showing that if necessary, he would go lower.
Now, what I understood this meant was first, Trump could win, which I supported. But secondly, and much more problematic for me, and I would argue problematic for anyone with a moral worldview, is the question, can a candidate or President live by Trump’s worldview and keep some form of morality? And can anyone supporting him, or a system that is now based on power as the highest value, can you keep your own moral integrity. Can you dance with the devil and keep your soul?
What I understood happened with Trump’s win, is that now, both parties are governed by a postmodern, secular ethic. One of them is secular-socialist, and the other secular-capitalist, but both are ammoral in terms of power. If winning is at stake, if power is the prize, morality is secondary for either party.
My opinion, if that’s the only ethical option available, and I believe for most Americans on both sides of the aisle now, (this is a gross simplification) but I believe it’s the only option available, and to play in Washington, or to support the political process now in place on a serious level, you have to sell your soul. I don’t believe that was the case for either party before Obama, but after Obama, it was true for Democrats. Now it’s also true for Republicans.
That doesn’t mean I stop voting, or I stop pulling for one candidate over another. It just means if I don’t have a larger political and cultural vision than beating the left (which I want to do) or keeping power (which I want to do) or America staying strong (which I want to do), it means in today’s political culture, I will lose not only my freedom, but also who I am. So while I agree with you about the rules needing to change, and they have, I don’t believe what we have now is better. And your second statement….I believe you’re very close to understanding the dilemma as I see it, both sides are now corrupt. However, if you believe one side or the other is the answer, or that Trump defeating the left will give you what you want, then I think you’re dancing with the devil. Just my thoughts.
The racism charge has been passed around so much that it no longer seems an insult…sort of like ‘Fascist’. Who cares? Particularly when those yelling these epithets are deep-dyed in racism and fascism, like the laughably named ‘Antifa’, the Brownshirts of the Democrat Party.
See also, “The Bitch Switch” by Omarosa Manigault.
Racist?
Or just a mundane accurate nonfiction title?
You be the judge!
(Yes, that is actually the title of a book written by Omarosa. A fact that I will bet you have not seen reported anywhere recently.)
The Bezos newspaper has it exactly backwards. Where I grew up as a teen in northern Florida, being a dog was an insult hurled by blacks toward whites. Many white people have long, straight hair. More dog-like than a black person’s hair. I heard the insults being used myself, so I know this to be true.
In the fifties,I remember unattractive women being referred to as “dogs”. That hasn’t been used in the fifty years at all.
In the fifties unattractive women were referred to as “dogs”. That usage has been not been used in the last fifty years at all
chris: What you wrote is very insightful and reflects my thinking lately too. In short, the Republicans can no longer beat the Democrats under the old Marquis of Queensbury type rules they always followed, up to and including Mitt Romney.
They can only win if they fight fire with fire. I realized a while ago that I can no longer see elections as anything other than an exercise in game theory. My guy during the primaries was Cruz. I was initially furious when Trump won the primary, but soon decided there was no choice but to vote for him. As we’ve discussed at length in the past year and a half, that’s turned out better than we expected, and perhaps better than we had hoped, but we got lucky.
We needed an a-hole to defeat an a-hole, and if he’s someone that makes us cringe almost as much as it makes our opponents cringe, that’s a small price to pay.
Trump is the enemy of our enemies, and he’s the best-equipped candidate to fight them in a generation. Perhaps that’s the best we can hope for these days.
In the fifties unattractive women were referred to as “dogs”. That usage has been not been used in the last fifty years at all
It was current usage in my youth, ca. 1975.
ConceptJunkie: I agree, Trump is the best we can hope for at the moment. He is the only candidate who said he would play by the Left’s ammoral rules. He has been a lot better than I expected. But still, if Jefferson was right, that you can only have democracy with a morally educated populace, then I don’t think it matters who wins anymore, in terms of where we are headed as a culture when both sides have thrown out truth for the sake of power.
What has been intriguing as I’ve watched the Babylon Berlin series about the Weimar Republic in the runup to Hitler was how both the left and the right kept moving further and further to the extremes, and the vacuum in the center was never filled until finally, 8 years later Hitler emerged from the convergence of those two extremes. My opinion is that the only hope for America keeping a Republic is that a very strong leader with vision emerges from the center and can show that the elites on both sides suck, and Trump does too. Salena Zito has an article out today that takes this line. She says that the reason Manafort and Cohen won’t effect Trump supporters is because their only choice is between, the elites on both sides that have failed them, or Trump. They don’t care what Trump does, they have no where else to go. So, many like myself hold their nose and stay with him. I think she’s right.
But the long game, unless an exceptionally gifted, and revolutionary leader emerges from the center, the long game is not going to be pretty, which is why anyone thinking that trump defeating the Left as the answer is kidding themselves. Both sides, including Trump, are playing by the new rules of mutual destruction.
Eight years before Hitler, no one saw him coming. It happened fast.
And I’m not saying Trump is Hitler or could lead to Hitler. I actually think there is a much greater chance we’ll see a new fascism come from the globalistic left that America will join so I think in ten years we could see some extraordinary things happen if something doesn’t change soon.
Chris: There are a number of dynamics going on. It always seems to me that the Left is more unified than the Right, despite what we saw with Sanders vs. Clinton. Liberals usually seem happy with the leaders they elect. Conservatives usually seem unhappy with the leaders they elect, although Trump has a serious cult of personality going on. In fact, the reasons I didn’t like him was precisely because he’s so much like Obama. He’s a narcissist who can’t stop himself from insulting people and has no filter between his brain and his mouth. Obama somehow maintained a veneer of respectability, although I think he was just as crass as Trump, he was just more subtle about it. Of course, the important difference between the two was that Trump had extensive experience running things, both in failure and success, whereas Obama never had a real job in his life (and it could be argued, still hasn’t).
But the Democrats always seem very strongly united. While the Republicans are like herding cats, so the Democrats are always much more effective in getting what they want, and of course, they have most of the institutions of society on their side: academia, education, entertainment, even religion, to a large extent (e.g., I often snark that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is a wing of the Democrat Party, minus support for abortion).
The other thing is that collectivism (i.e., socialism/communism) is winning the ideological war despite being nothing but a source for ruin and death. “The Simpsons” being prescient as always captured this perfectly when Homer won his bid to be Sanitation Commissioner of Springfield with the phrase, “Can’t someone else do it?”
Now we have half the country going by the political credo of “Can’t the government pay for it?” The utter failure of our educational system to produce citizens with even a nominal grasp of history and any critical thinking skills at all means the race to the bottom in our elections is inevitable, and probably irreversible. The fact that we haven’t had someone who can effectively communicate conservative principles half as well as Reagan in more than a generation means we are fighting a losing battle with the culture and it seems people will only come to their senses if the system explodes and we have to start over again. Trump has perhaps slowed that trend down, but I don’t think it’s possible that it can be reversed in less than a generation and without a lot of pain and suffering on the part of the average American.
Still things could be worse. There are no Clintons in the White House.