I'm using the term "dog whistle" here to mean a comment that appears to be innocuous, ambiguous, or harmless to anyone who doesn't already understand the reference, but which in fact has meaning or acts as a placeholder for a longer, well-tread narrative to people familiar with a particular subculture. In this case, the two ways it can be interpreted are spelled out pretty concisely by the first two responses here:
"The point he's making is that despite lip service by the media little has changed", which I take to mean, "Media still considers the deaths of black people to be cheap and therefore not worth reporting."
Then we have, "The point is black lives seem to matter only if taken by a white police officer", which is the dog-whistle version I was talking about. If that's the message someone is taking from the ambiguous phrase "google Chicago shootings", well, I can't think of a better illustration of the term "dog whistle".
I mean, look, if black lives matter (and they do), then all black lives matter, whether they're killed by a police officer, or whether they're killed by other blacks in inner-city violence.
We need to continue to have the conversation about police killing blacks. We also need to have a conversation about inner-city violence, and try to figure out what can be done to help. We need both. How do we have the second conversation without it being shut down as an attempt to shut down the first conversation?
> How do we have the second conversation without it being shut down as an attempt to shut down the first conversation?
The best answer I can give you is that it's subjective. I'm happy to have a good-faith conversation even (or especially!) with people I disagree with, but dropping "google Chicago shootings" into a drive-by comment isn't what I would consider to be making a good-faith argument.
(In the same way that if I asked HN about their favorite keto recipes more than likely all the replies will be about keto broadly)
The discussion above is to identify that when someone says "google Chicago shootings" what they actually are trying to do is undermine the position of someone bringing up "Black Lives Matter" in an indirect way. This specific behavior of bringing up another, new subject matter for the purpose of undermining a position, instead of stating one's criticism about the position directly, is known as a dogwhistle.
I searched about the Chicago shooting deaths, and i don't see how it makes any point for or against BLM?
And, even if BLM is selectively in what they care about. Aren't they allowed to?
I feel like i got between the fronts of for-BLM and against-BLM groupthink.
It doesn't! Any social movement, no matter how just their cause, should be willing to accept valid criticism. However, when Person A says "look at this instance of systemic racism" and someone else replies "But MLK cheated on his wife!!", that's not arguing in good faith; that's commonly known as "whataboutism". [^1]
> I searched about the Chicago shooting deaths, and i don't see how it makes any point for or against BLM?
This is what makes it a dog whistle. The words are "google Chicago shootings", and there's nothing wrong with the literal meaning of those words, but other people here clearly received the message "this point about systemic racism is invalid because BLM is a bunch of hypocrites".
If you google for the exact phrase "google Chicago shootings", including the word "google", you will find many instances of people using that phrase to make bad faith arguments criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement.
This thread is the first result for me. Not kidding. Could it be that you made it up that its a dog whistle? I'm doubting your good faith here.
Yes, seeing dog-whistles everywhere gets tedious (for all concerned) but the above is, unfortunately, a real thing. I'd be surprised to see it used with that intent on HN, though.
> There's a whole pile of twitterese phrases like this that are used to fly under moderation radar.
What rule is it breaking to tell people to "google chicago shootings"?
And my question
> How does the second statement relate to racism?
is still not answered. Is just knowing the information about the Chicago gun violence putting some folks at disadvantage? Where is the implied link here?
I understand. If you don't keep an eye on the right parts of the right sites (including, in particular, Twitter, but also others) you've probably never seen this kind of thing actually done with the intent to slyly express racist or white supremacist junk. In the right places, though, it's commonplace and only barely veiled (questions from newbies who don't "get it" draw winky-emoji, or more veiled pointers so the newbie can triangulate the real intended meaning, that kind of thing).
> What rule is it breaking to tell people to "google chicago shootings"?
It's not, that's the point. They're dodges/stand-ins for other things, including prior whistles that are recognized as breaking the rules and do get moderated. The more deniable, the better.
In some cases, there's some unfortunate overlap between actual concerns about a real issue (black-on-black violence) which one might innocently express interest in, and precisely the same issue (and, specifically, Chicago, for this issue) as a common short-hand for rejecting the importance of other issues of violence against black people (you see how useful it would be for shifting blame or implying even worse things, if one wanted to do that, right?), or a kind of conversation starter for what amounts to a recruitment script.
[EDIT] to be clear, I'm not claiming you had ill intent. I'm explaining why that phrasing and topic set off some alarm bells for some people.
I happened to catch an actual, no-bullshit white supremacist recruitment program on a fairly high-powered (like, literally—they have quite a bit of broadcast power) local AM radio station a few months back (I checked their schedule afterward, out of curiosity, and much of the rest was religious programming—go figure). By which I don't mean they were explicitly saying "come to the Knights of Columbus hall at 7:00 on Wednesday for our meetings", but they were going through this plainly carefully scripted soft-handed discussion (two-host format) and doing a lot of "just asking questions" but somehow those questions kept taking them right up to the edge—and I mean right up to the edge—of "it's the Jews and black people who are the problem", meanwhile they're dropping one phrase or historical reference after another that's unmistakably from white supremacist "thought", as in, encountered basically nowhere but there, so their listeners have a nice list of things to google that will definitely lead them further down the rabbit hole. It was unreal. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but they just kept going with that stuff, relentlessly. It was the entire thing they were doing, nothing else. It was very different from normal right-wing radio, which I hear a lot of (what can I say, I have a problem and enjoy listening to nutty crap when driving) and there was no doubt what they were up to.
There's some real WTF to be found in this country. Everyone freaking out about dog whistles is ridiculous, and those accusations are abused. But then you hear something like the above, and... yeah, it's a real thing sometimes. Very strange place.
Here are my Google search results:
As another data point, I've been hearing variations of that phrase online or in person for ages from my racist family and (former) friends.
It's a discussion killer and a thought ender, and I think HN would do well to ban accusations of dog-whistles. It never heightens the dialog, it only drags it down.