Why is mentioning “food stamps” or “Chicago” a racist dog-whistle? Because conservatives made it one.

Conservatives have a problem with history. It’s not just that their preferred rhetorical appeals harken back to a Golden Age that only existed on the television shows they watched while their mothers or their maids slaved away in the kitchen—though that’s clearly problematic—nor is it just that they rely on a cursory examination of ill-worded search results to construct their devastating critiques of the evils of everything to their left to hilarious effect. So it’s not just that their fake history is a projected concoction or that their understanding of actual history is wanting that I take issue with: it’s that their understanding of their own history is facile they can’t tell the forest from the seas.

Case in point: the oblivious guffawing about “food stamps” or “Chicago” being metonyms for racism in conservative circles. That this seems as obvious a gambit to liberals as mentioning black people and swimming pools is beside the point: they’re crying “No foul!” so it needs doing. (Sigh.) To establish the metonymic “credentials” of “Chicago” I could go back to the anti-labor sentiment that prevailed during the time of the Haymarket Riot or the anti-immigrant sentiment that prevailed two decades later or the anti-machine politics sentiment that prevailed during the reign of Daley the First or the anti-left and anti-anti-war sentiment that prevailed during and after the 1968 Democratic National Convention but I won’t. To do any more then note in passing that Chicago’s always functioned as a convenient punching bag for conservatives would a waste of time.

Because there’s a particular moment in the history of conservative metonymy that bears mentioning in the light of the “unbelievable” or “outrageous” claim that associating President Obama with “food stamps” or “Chicago” might constitute a “subtle” form of racism supposedly only detectable by liberals. But before we get there we need to perform a simple Google search for “food stamp president” and quick scan of the results. Conservatives are clearly trying to create an association between President Obama and food stamps. It doesn’t matter that the majority of food stamp recipients are white because conservatives aren’t building a factual argument—they’re making a rhetorical appeal. The very fact that movement conservatives embraced the image of President Food Stamps indicates the success of the appeal. Why would liberals claim that there’s a racial component to that appeal? Is it, as conservatives argue, simply because the President is half-black and any policy or entitlement linked to him is speciously yoked to his color?

Of course not. Only a person pig-ignorant of recent history would make such a claim. So here’s where we stand:

1. The President hails from Chicago’s South Side.
2. Conservatives have successfully branded Obama President Food Stamps.

Where’s the racism? How about we ask the Most Blessed Saint of the Modern Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, who said the following of a woman from the South Side of Chicago during the 1976 campaign:

She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000.

Not only did Saint Ronald invent the myth of the “welfare queen” with this remark, by doing so through the image of a woman from the South Side of Chicago he explicitly made it a racial issue because the South Side is 95 percent African-American. I grant that Saint Ronald could’ve done everyone a favor and summoned this mythical woman from the dark depths of a Harlem or a Compton or any other area that even the most ignorant contemporary conservative knows is overbrimming with black folk. But he didn’t. He chose the South Side, which in 1976 still brought to mind images of noted rabble-rouser Martin Luther King, Jr. marching in support of public housing. To whose minds were and are those images brought? The largest block of voters in the Republican Party: old white people.

These old white people just happen to be the same who pine for the Golden Era when Saint Ronald ruled the land. When they claim that the linking President Obama to food stamps or Chicago isn’t racially coded they’re either age-addled or lying. They remember Saint Ronald and are still moved by references to his rhetorical appeals. That they deny knowledge of how the unadulterated appeals themselves worked points to either dementia or dishonesty. So let’s add this up one more time for them:

1. The President hails from Chicago’s South Side.
2. Chicago’s South Side is 95 percent African-American.
3. Saint Ronald linked the South Side to food stamps.
4. Conservatives have successfully branded Obama President Food Stamps.

What do you get? I get a rhetorical situation in which conservatives can negatively signal Obama’s blackness to their core constituency of old white people in two interrelated ways that can both be directly traced back to Saint Ronald. Meaning that not only is Obama’s blackness connected to food stamps and Chicago via an established rhetorical appeal, that appeal bears the authorizing imprimatur of the Most Blessed Saint of the Republican Party. The only way contemporary conservatives can credibly claim that there’s no racial component to mentioning Chicago or food stamps would be to disown Saint Ronald. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon.