Ian Lopez

This book can be summarized as How to get middle class America to keep voting against their interests! Although this was written in 2014 , it is disturbingly prophetic in why America will succumb and keep faltering along these fractured lines .

Lopez traces how racism as metastasized over the decades – from hooded, cross burning, horse riding clans to structural racism in 60s laws like “Redlining” , “Bussing” & Jim Crow and finally using coded racial appeals how it used in contemporary political scene “Suburban House Wife” , “Super Predator” ,”Welfare queens” etc.

If you cannot link these seemingly innocuous words or phrases or why should not have anything to do with race – then you must be awaking up from a long comatose. And slicing through any vestigial remnants of logic and reasoning like scalpel in the hands of seasoned surgeon they will ensure that you will connect the dots to race.

It goes back to George Wallace back in the 60s and later by Nixon christened as the “Southern Strategy” – where racism is masked behind race neutral words, only “audible” in the subconscious of the target, a mechanism to trigger fear and hatred. This is not restricted to the GOP, politics on both sides of the aisle have used this although it was pioneered in the deep south and further sharpened in the Republican era.

It should be obvious the book is very critical of the Tea party tactics but Lopez also sites examples in the Democratic years when chances were squandered in repairing the damage done.

Although perfected here and propagated by subservient political punditry and media channels, is yet to be caught on in developing nations like India ; where it is still crude and predictable with middle class and lower strata population kept infatuated with usual theme - Hindu vs “Pick any religion” while disastrous socioeconomic and foreign policies by probably the most incompetent govt in the history of free India that have wreaked havoc and continue too as voters cannot (or will not) see beyond religious (instead of race) lines in case of India.
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