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I’ve become increasingly skeptical that a badly fragmented culture has any way of conducting productive conversations about implicit racism (“dog whistles,” “tropes”)—or implicit messaging of any kind, for that matter.
I certainly do think there is such a thing as implicit messaging, including implicit racism and anti-Semitism. It’s just that for two people to both see an implied message, they have to share a common cultural inheritance.
If you don’t share a common cultural inheritance, then what one person sees as implicit racism or anti-Semitism will look to someone else like paranoia, over-reaction, victimhood-mongering, and witch hunting.
This is why I’ve been saying that the familiar responses to what Jews have traditionally considered anti-Semitism may be becoming irrelevant. When someone thinks you’re being paranoid and over-reacting, it doesn’t help to keep talking about anti-Semitism.
It doesn’t get you justice. It only hurts your credibility. And in public life, your credibility is actually an important asset that is worth thinking about and protecting.
In a fragmented culture, where common traditions no longer exist, there is a goal of developing a common language between mutually suspicious groups.
But that common language is going to have to be built from scratch based on what each group sees as its most basic interests.
What will not work is to make a list of every “trope” and “dog whistle” you can think of, and insist that all others in society just adopt your view that banishing them is everyone’s fundamental interest.
That can’t work anymore, even if it once did work. What’s needed may be new foundations for social cohesion and mutual respect. We can’t just assume that the old foundations are still in place. Because they aren’t.
