Over the course of the presidential campaign the Republicans and their traditional media enablers have been trotting out various code words to describe Barack Obama. Most of them have been recycled from past campaigns, like flip-flopper or elitist. But in the case of Barack Obama, a new and particularly interesting one has appeared -- exotic.
That's right, Barack Obama is exotic. To most of us the use of that term seems a little incongruous, and it doesn't come across as one of the Republican Smear Machine's better efforts.
That's because we're not hearing the Republican dog whistle. And not just any dog whistle, this one is a hard core racist dog whistle of the vilest kind that dates back all the way to the antebellum south.
When most of us think of the word exotic we associate it with things like jaguar, or orchids, or French cuisine, or those dancers down at that seedy club on the other side of town. But to find out what the Republicans have in mind all we have to do is consult Mr. Webster:
exotic
- introduced from another country: not native to the place where found
- archaic: foreign, alien
- strikingly, excitingly, or mysteriously different or unusual
Now that makes a little more sense. Barack Obama seems somehow foreign (he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia), he's excitingly, mysteriously different (he's not like us regular Americans, and we don't really know what he stands for). So the word exotic actually fits the Republican story line pretty well, but to most of us it doesn't seem that racist. That's because we don't hear the racist dog whistle.
In hard-core American southern racist socitey the word exotic applied to a young, vigorous black man can mean only one thing -- mandingo. The term mandingo (derived from the name of the Mandinka people of West Africa) is the racist term for a certain kind of stereotypical young African American male. The mandingo is strong, angry, wild, and dangerous. Proper young white women are at risk of falling victim to the mandingo's primitive sexuality.
This shows the mandingo stereotype in all of its racist glory:
So what might appear to be another ordinary Republican smear turns out to be a dog whistle message connecting Barack Obama to one of the most vile and disgusting stereotypes from America's dark racial history.