Same question as the post above. Is there any possible set of words in the English language to use to refer to a place that we all agree exists – I can point to several such areas on a map – but not be accused of being a racist?
Sure. You can call it the “inner city” – as in “the best burger I ever had was in inner city LA” or “my dad grew up in inner city Chicago”.
But (as an example) “inner city people have a culture of laziness”? That can be reasonably interpreted to be a racist statement.
If you think Ryan had no intention of invoking race, then you have to wonder why he limited his comments about the personal characteristics of those in trouble to the “inner city”. Are economic problems and the resulting social problems limited to those areas, or are they widespread? He claimed the latter in his so-called apology, by mentioning the lack of jobs in “rural areas”.
So what innocent reason is left for him to have specified “inner city” originally? At some point you have to conclude what the evidence tells you. That point was reached the moment he grabbed the whistle.
I would also like to make a comment about euphemisms.
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language also allows us to have foolish thoughts.
Lame.
That’s not polite. We should say, “Crippled.”
Years pass, and “crippled” is not polite. We should say "handicapped.’
Years pass. “Handicpaped,” is insensitive. We should say “disabled.”
Years pass. “Disabled,” implies the individual is not able. We should say “differently abled.”
Years pass. “Differently abled,” is out. "Physically challenged,’ is in.
And at some point in the future, describing a person as “physically challenged,” will be crass and insulting.
Because these attempts all amount to the same thing: we’re describing an unpleasant reality, and some of us humans appear to believe that we can soften or change that reality by describing it differently.
If “inner city” is a code word for black, it’s because poverty and African heritage are somewhat intertwined in the United States. But that does not mandate that all poverty is found in the black community, nor that all blacks are poor. There are inner city areas that are white. Locust Point, in Baltimore, is a fair example.
And of course, when I say “black,” I mean African-American. Like Charlize Theron.
OK, I mean “people of color.” As distinct from “colored people.” The latter is highly primitive and offensive. The former is highly sensitive and socially conscious.
I trust my point is clear. The fear of the term “inner city,” as a racial subsonic signal deserves to be recognized as foolish. I know that euphemisms take on meanings, but I argue that the lemming-like following of this trend is even more ill-advised than the creation of new euphemisms to venerate for their short lives until they, too, turn ugly in our estimation.
“Inner city” refers to a description of the inner city. Period.
Are there common sociological forces at work that plague people (of whatever skin color) who reside in the inner city?
I say there are.
How should I discuss this without being accused of wearing a white hood?
Possibly.
By not saying things about them that can be reasonably interpreted as racist. Don’t say they are lazy, or have a culture of laziness. Don’t say they are content with mooching. It’s probably best not to make any moral judgments about large groups of strangers in any case.
I’m not much on Bill Maher, but he did get off a good onelast night, and on just this topic.
Apparently our First Lady is a Klansman. Whoda thunkit?
Regards,
Shodan
You’d have a point, except for the fact that Michelle didn’t say inner city people are lazy, or that they’re moochers, or that they have a culture of laziness, plus the fact that saying something that might be reasonably be interpreted as racist does not necessarily make one a “Klansman” (or even necessarily a racist).
So actually, you have no point here.
‘Inner city’ or ‘central city’ or whatever will do just fine.
But when ‘inner city’ is combined with a call “to help teach people” who live there “good discipline, good character” as if they are more deficient in these things than other Americans are - well, ever since whites fled the cities for the 'burbs in the decades following WWII, everyone’s known what races we’re talking about when we talk about people there. You’re saying that poor blacks are that way because they don’t have good discipline or good character.
Funny how nobody ever says that about the rural poor, who (aside from certain parts of the South) are largely white.
A few weeks ago, Martin Longman had some trenchant remarks in the Washington Monthly blog about work and inner-city blacks:
[QUOTE=Martin Longman]
First, [Ryan] went too far and argued that there are “generations of [black/Latino] men not even thinking about working.” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how ghetto economics work. In 2004, I was a community organizer for ACORN/Project Vote working out of an office in predominantly black North Philadelphia. My job was to hire, train, and deploy (mainly) young adults from that blighted and crime-ridden community to do voter registration and Get Out the Vote drives in suburban Montgomery County. When I put an advertisement in the paper, I was completely deluged with people looking for work. My challenge was to try to find the people who would stick with it and succeed, but I had to turn most applicants away. The hunger for work was overwhelming.
I discovered over time that nearly everyone had a way of making money, despite the fact that they were officially unemployed. I learned about a shadow economy that encompassed more than a mere black market. There were the legitimate under-the-table jobs that aren’t accounted for in government statistics and are taken on day-to-day: unloading trucks, working as a construction laborer. There were the semi-legitimate jobs: using your car as an unlicensed taxi. There were the hustles: making DVD’s of movies with a camcorder, selling fake auto-tags for inspection and registration. There were other non-violent criminal enterprises, like selling stolen t-shirts and the like. Ironically, I found that the people who were the best at getting people to register to vote were the people who set their alarm clocks for early in the morning so that they could go out and work their hustle and make some money. They worked extremely hard, and when given something legitimate to do, they excelled. The reason these people came to me in droves for a low-paying job is because they craved the legitimacy of socially-approved work. Their community was absolutely starved for that kind of work.
[snip]
Paul Ryan has a cartoonish view of the people who live in our inner cities, in part, because he doesn’t know them. Because he doesn’t know them, he doesn’t understand what they need. He’s right that they need jobs and would benefit from more mentors, but their work ethic is just fine. They work hard. What they need is legitimate work and access to the education and job-training that is required for legitimate work.
And that gets to the second thing wrong with Ryan’s remarks. His prescriptions won’t create jobs in our ghettos. If anything, by pulling a huge amount of capital out of our ghettos, he’ll increase the poverty rate and make it harder for people to pool enough money to take a step up.
[/QUOTE]
Or even that they’re inner city residents. Here’s Maher’s version, and I won’t even bother to find if it’s an accurate quote:
Kids these days, with their rock and roll and their transistor radios, no respect for their elders …
Where, Shodan, do you see any reference to these “young people’s” problems being due to race? Or even more prevalent among one race than another?
Actually I do have a point, which is that the alacrity with which you backflip is deeply amusing. You know as well as I do that the statement would be roundly condemned as racist if it came from a Republican. As it is, you are eager to overlook it, dismiss it, or change the subject, because it came from Michelle Obama.
Which is why these kind of discussions are good for nothing except cheap laughs at liberal hypocrisies. If the statements are false, why don’t you condemn them equally? If they are true, why try to obfuscate them away with false accusations?
Regards,
Shodan
Since you’ve already read my mind, what’s the point of a discussion?
Or could you be wrong, and you actually don’t know my thoughts? Could it be that those quotes actually are different? Do you always have all the answers already without discussion, or just on issues of “liberal hypocrisy”?
It must be very comforting to always know one’s political opponents are hypocrites and liars. Unfortunately, my time in the Navy (among other experiences) demonstrated to me that most people, of all backgrounds and political persuasions, actually have good reasons for their political beliefs, so I must toil on with the knowledge that I’m disagreeing with mostly decent people with whom we just, mostly, have different understandings and assumptions of how the world works.
Wrong. Again, where do you see racial content in it (it’s arguably age-ist, though, granted)? Explain, please. Try *fighting *what you see as ignorance, instead of just empty ritual denunciations, okay? The laughter you hear might start to subside a bit.
Black people are the only people who sit around all day dreaming of being rappers, duh.
I mean, you don’t think he made a racist assumption about a statement in order to interpret it as being intended as a racist statement in order to try to score a point about liberal hypocrisy while being oblivious to the irony of his statement, do you? Given the user’s posting history, I just can’t see how this could be a lame stretch of an attempt at a partisan Gotcha-ya. Just seems implausible.
No, I suspect he copied-‘n’-pasted an entry from some site that *said *Maher showed the libs their hypocrisy etc., without actually reading it first.
But he can explain it for himself.
That’s not fair. I’m not defending Ryan against a charge of moralizing – that, indeed, is what he was doing.
But you are not entitled to conflate moralizing with racism.
And I agree with this statement.
But it does not not appear to me that you’re extending this courtesy to Mr. Ryan.
As a side note, this thread began with the accusation that Ryan made up (or stole) a story. That accusation was debunked, but i notice that the OP has never acknowledged his error, nor has there been any great call to do so.
Why is that, do you think?
Moralizing is not always racism. But I think it’s usually unwise, as it was in this case. It may or may not have also been a racist statement (note that I’m not saying Ryan is a racist), but it’s reasonable to interpret it as such. Ryan has certainly failed to persuade me that it was definitely not meant in a racist way.