Coming to terms with race—the four-letter word in American politics—has often been the sole purview of scholars who study oppressed groups. Its potential to quash productive conversation and rational debate has led to the truism that in order to successfully navigate the political sphere, one should avoid discussions of race. Think about the Democratic Party’s efforts to downplay its close association with racial minorities, when candidates of color engage in deracialized politics to get elected, and when we elected the first black president. Daniel Gillion’s Governing with Words challenges existing notions that race and the discussion of race are siloed among the people who are most vulnerable to the negative consequences of America’s ascriptive hierarchy, while everyone else refrains from discussing race. To assess the level of race talk taking place among politicians, Gillion amasses an impressive data set that codes presidential remarks from 1955 to 2012 and congressional records from 1995 to 2012. He finds that there is a tremendous amount of discussion of race in American politics when you expand the definition of such discussion beyond explicit mentions of race to include discussions of issues and policies that invoke racial thinking and associations.

Ultimately, this is a book about the power of words to shape political discourse and public policy. We all instinctively know that words are important, but it can be difficult to apprehend causal mechanisms that explain their impact. Gillion does the work of clarifying this process around words related to race and provides a model for how to do it with other issues or policies. It is particularly helpful for those of us who study contentious topics that politicians engage through indirect discussions and dog whistles. Regardless of what party or personality is in power, all branches of government attempt to shape popular political narratives in ways that mobilize public support for their decisions. If maintaining public support for governmental institutions is the foundation of democracy, then how is support engendered among the people? The short answer is: words. Political figures, through their speeches and remarks, provide the intellectual ingredients that citizens use to make choices. In Gillion’s assessment, “discursive governance lays the foundation for deliberative democracy” (p. 25). The staggering number of speeches that are coded for analysis in Governing with Words provides a unique opportunity to draw definitive lines between politicians’ words and the impact that those words have on public opinion, institutional cooperation in Congress, and policymaking.

One of the first and most important findings in Gillion’s work is discovering how often politicians are actually talking about race. Despite conventional wisdom that politicians avoid discussing race because of the potential for controversy and alienation of voters (particularly white voters), the author finds that American politicians are engaged in continuous discussions of race across time and party. With the exception of Lyndon Johnson’s efforts to push through Civil Rights legislation, there were few public discussions of race prior to 1975. However, each president since has increasingly engaged in racial discussions, with a peak during the Clinton years and a precipitous drop-off in the Obama administration. Gillion asserts, “Not only has the first black president had fewer discussions overall that revolve around race, but at each step in time he has often lagged behind his Democratic predecessors” (p. 49).

In his historic bid to be the first black president, Obama used familiar campaign strategies employed by other black politicians that minimize discussions of race in order to appeal to a larger cross section of voters. All black politicians have a clear understanding that white voters are less inclined to support their electoral bids when the candidate talks about racial issues. Paradoxically, the need for black candidates to de-emphasize race and the resulting decrease in public racial discourse creates a more difficult environment for advocating policies that reduce racial hostility and inequality than when politicians speak about race in a negative light. In Gillion’s estimation, discussions of race, regardless of content, increase opportunities for progressive racial policies. More discussion opens the field of possibilities.

What do we make of Gillion’s finding that the first black president spoke less about race than his predecessors? As a black politics scholar, I find this a bitter pill to swallow. If Obama’s blackness foreclosed his ability to talk about race in meaningful ways, and not talking about race makes it less likely that racial issues will be addressed, how do we deal with black voters’ desire to have descriptive and substantive representation in the same way that white male voters have enjoyed for centuries? Unsurprisingly, blacks were positively influenced by Obama’s discussions of race. Gillion is instructive in helping us understand how Barack Obama’s decision not to directly confront racial issues failed to inoculate him from public attitudes about race, but was nevertheless impactful through a counterintuitive process. For instance, experimental analysis demonstrates that talking more about race did not change whether or not individuals approved or disapproved of Obama’s performance, but the justifications used by his opponents varied greatly depending on whether they received the experimental “treatment” crediting Obama with more race talk. Those who were less aware of Obama’s discussions of race used a broad range of reasons for their disapproval. Those who were made more aware, via the experimental treatment, used the vitriolic explanation that Obama was “race baiting and a racist” (p. 71). If Obama refrained from talking about race to prevent alienating voters, these experiments suggest that the effort might have been for naught.

Beyond influences on individual opinion, Gillion takes up the question of whether members of Congress who make racial statements and sponsor minority bills are able to create networks in support of particular policies through cosponsorship and floor speeches. He finds that legislators who are more outspoken about race are more likely to attract support in the form of cosponsorship for their bills. Ultimately, legislators who make racial statements are “centrally connected in policy networks related to minority bills” (p. 119). In majority-minority districts, members are rewarded or punished at the polls depending on the position they take. But speeches are not votes or bill passage. Gillion finds that there is often a disconnect between the more liberal positions legislators that take in speeches and the more conservative positions in their voting. Additionally, polarization in Congress has narrowed the number of potential political surrogates needed to generate majority support for race-related bills. In particular, there are fewer options for Republican surrogates who are willing to support minority bills. This serves to create a more hostile environment for bill passage and for decreased minority support for the Republican Party.

The author asserts that valence is less important than the presence of race talk. However, while it is true that in order to deal with race-specific problems you have to talk about race, race talk can also be of a nature that foments racial hostility. Watching politicians offer messages that undermine a group’s citizenship rights, promote racist stereotypes, and legitimize racist viewpoints are both difficult for minorities and emboldening to racists. The flip side to Gillion’s discussion of how discursive governance impacts support for minority-related policies is the fact that it may be having a similar impact on support for racially hostile policies.

Is there a balance between the kinds of policies derived from racially hostile discussions and more progressive racial positions? How does Gillion account for potential increases in hate crimes, employment discrimination, and unsafe work environments and other activities that make the lived experiences of minorities more difficult? Is there a correlation between attitudes related to perceived discrimination or hate crime fluctuation and the kind of racial discussions presidents and legislators engage in? This is the potential fallout of racist or racially hostile discourse offered by the people elected to represent the nation. Gillion is right that words are more than “marginal gestures” and that they have an impact on deliberative democracy; however, words are also the impetus for actions. Given the amount of information collected for this data set, can it tell us something about public action and not just opinion? The increasing belligerence of antiminority rhetoric in the Trump era demands that we also consider the actions provoked by the substantive content of words.

By far, the most difficult aspect of the Obama presidency has been the way it has demonstrated the constraints of black presidents to talk about race and promote policies that are race specific. Surely, Obama made choices about how much and in what way he would discuss race, but those calculations were based on conventional wisdom and a rational assessment of American racial politics. In some ways, his choices were well supported by the outsize reaction of white voters anytime he ventured into racial waters. Why white voters are so opposed to any racial advocacy by black candidates is an urgent area of analysis for political scientists. Their reticence to hear any racial commentary by black candidates and to read those comments as hostile to their interests creates a dynamic that forces blacks to weigh their desire for a black president (descriptive representation) against their desire for a president who will publicly advocate for racially progressive policies (substantive representation). It is a false choice that narrows African Americans’ experience as democratic citizens. In an inclusive democracy there should be times when black people are able to get both without white voters panicking.

With the expectation that there will be more black presidents and presidents from other communities of color, knowing more about the motivations that underlie these beliefs is necessary. Gillion gives us some pathways forward and counters conventional wisdom by suggesting that all presidents and federal politicians should be talking explicitly about race because frequent racial discussions create a fertile environment for policies that can potentially ameliorate racial inequality. This can and should also include presidents who come from minority communities.