Words Can Hurt

Ferguson. The public utterance of the word holds vastly differing meanings to differing segments of the American populace; without saying another word, images are evoked in the private mind of perhaps every cultural literate in our society. This project is a survey that investigates how the art of coded language has evolved during the presidency of Barack Obama. Building upon the historicity of others, such as Ian Haney-Lopez in his Dog Whistle Politics, I transform the theory from its political science application to the broader culture as a whole by doing targeted research into a recent event: The rising racial unrest in that town following the killing of Michael Brown, the 18 year old unarmed black adolescent, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Examination and analysis of this incident will provide evidentiary proof of how racially coded language has been used to promote culturally divisive ideologies by key figures in the Ferguson incident, including direct testimony from Officer Wilson. The language will be examined for its influence upon the various audiences that are affected by it, including those local, racial, occupational and national. The qualitative and quantitative study provides the opportunity to examine on a micro level the evolution of racial discourse during the historic presidency of Barack Obama. The project findings show how race and racism remain fundamental to the American zeitgeist. It goes on to conclude that an examination of this event, and reactions to it, may offer an opportunity to further explore the United States’ race question