"The war is still raging. And [Gene Nichol]'s still fighting." --John Grisham North Carolina has, since 2013, undergone a greater political sea change than any other state. For the first time, seven years ago, state government became completely captured by a radicalized and aggressive Republican leadership determined to produce the most ultra-conservative political regime in the nation. In a remarkably brief time span, Republican lawmakers have moved successfully toward that goal. TheNew York Times refers to the project as "North Carolina's pioneering work in bigotry." Other states have begun to follow what they expressly deemed the "North Carolina playbook." Indecent Assembly lays out in detail, and with no small dose of passion, the agenda, purposes, impacts, and transgressions of the Republican North Carolina General Assembly since it came to dominate life in the Tar Heel State. Nichol outlines, without holding punches, the stoutest war waged against people of color and low-income citizens seen in America for a half-century. All-white Republican caucuses, dominating both houses of the General Assembly, have behaved essentially like a White People's Party, without the nomenclature. Bold steps have also been taken to diminish the equal dignity of women and an internationally famed crusade against LGBTQ+ Tar Heels has capped off what has become a state-based battle against the Fourteenth Amendment. But the Republican General Assembly has not stopped with substantive legal changes. It has attacked the fundaments of American constitutional government. In 2019, the state of North Carolina, in short, is involved in a brutal battle for its own decency. Ifthe contest is lost here, other states will likely abandon defining cornerstones of American liberty and equality as well. North Carolina today is not presented with the mere give and take of normal politics. It struggles over its meaning as a commonwealth and its future as a democracy.

Campaigning for president in 1980, Ronald Reagan told stories of Cadillac-driving'welfare queens'and'strapping young bucks'buying T-bone steaks with food stamps. In trumpeting these tales of welfare run amok, Reagan never needed to mention race, because he was blowing a dog whistle: sending a message about racial minorities inaudible on one level, but clearly heard on another. In doing so, he tapped into a long political tradition that started with George Wallace and Richard Nixon, and is more relevant than ever in the age of the Tea Party and the first black president. In Dog Whistle Politics, Ian Haney L��pez offers a sweeping account of how politicians and plutocrats deploy veiled racial appeals to persuade white voters to support policies that favor the extremely rich yet threaten their own interests. Dog whistle appeals generate middle-class enthusiasm for political candidates who promise to crack down on crime, curb undocumented immigration, and protect the heartland against Islamic infiltration, but ultimately vote to slash taxes for the rich, give corporations regulatory control over industry and financial markets, and aggressively curtail social services. White voters, convinced by powerful interests that minorities are their true enemies, fail to see the connection between the political agendas they support and the surging wealth inequality that takes an increasing toll on their lives. The tactic continues at full force, with the Republican Party using racial provocations to drum up enthusiasm for weakening unions and public pensions, defunding public schools, and opposing health care reform. Rejecting any simple story of malevolent and obvious racism, Haney L��pez links as never before the two central themes that dominate American politics today: the decline of the middle class and the Republican Party's increasing reliance on white voters. Dog Whistle Politics will generate a lively and much-needed debate about how racial politics has destabilized the American middle class-white and nonwhite members alike.