I suspect this might get a bit contentious, but it’s a contentious issue.
I also suspect that there will be a bunch of Candidate vs. Candidate sniping — not welcome or interesting.
I frankly don’t care whether Candidate A or Candidate B had a better sound bite, or made a verbal gaffe, or was able to twist a phrase to get better media agit-prop material.
What I do care about is reality, honesty, up-front addressing of serious problems, and ways to get our dialogue to a place where we can begin to understand each other… so that we can ultimately start to solve long-standing problems.
There are three long-standing problems that, frankly, intertwine and interweave in such intimate ways that we cannot realistically separate them: Racism, Sexism, and Class.
These “big three” mutually feed off of one another in this country, and have for centuries. They support and reinforce each other, continually driving wedges between communities and into communities, continually depriving those communities of the agency, power, voice, and strength that is needed to bring about true social/economic change.
The irritating presence of Sanders in this campaign has repeatedly thrown these issues into the spotlight in ways that have both helped and harmed the candidate himself — but as I said, I really don’t care about what impact this or that soundbite has on Sanders… I care about the actual content, quality, and baseline facts surrounding this discussion.
The word “ghetto” and the association of Race, Poverty, and Physical/Social/Economic isolation with that word is being used as a bludgeon against a candidate, with no attention paid to some pretty basic, and very well-researched realities.
Those realities are painful, and are getting worse.
You may not like the word "Ghetto" but what else are you gonna call it?
Since 2000, the depth of poverty, the concentration of that poverty, and the racial component of that poverty has been getting worse, more extreme, and more severe in almost every measurable way, in almost every medium to large city in the United States.
Physically identifiable ethnic minorities concentrated in constrained urban areas are Ghettos.
You may not “like” the term. You may associate the term with racially charged epithets, or with vapid 1970’s and 1980’s tv shows, or with (not so) outdated 1970’s protest songs, or with violent imagery and graphic content of 1980’s and 1990’s Rap…
But the history of the word, its origin, and its application to the situation as it is developing today are all in line with the data and facts and trends we can measure.
The fact that an old, lefty Jew coming from the cultural and ethnic minority that first experienced “Ghettoization” as far back as the Plague Years in Europe, and as recently as the 1940’s… used the word to describe what is happening to our cities: Detroit, Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, Philly, DC, and many more may present some with the opportunity to criticize and get offended.
Well, you should be offended.
It is offensive that after the African American ghettoes of 1880s through the 1970’s finally started to see some progressive changes under the concerted onslaught of Civil Rights activists, protests, politicians, riots and rebellions, strikes… We're now reversing any gains, via the use of "redlining" and other sub-rosa, nudge-nudge wink-wink under the table behavior.
It is offensive that progress achieved is being rolled back.
It is offensive that this is occurring without any “official” or explicit segregationist laws on the books, but rather as a result of concerted, elite-enabled white flight, balkanization, and infrastructure starvation because of changes to the tax code, tax structure, or city/county governance. Regardless of how it is happening, it is happening fast, and is Exacerbating accelerating gaps in wealth, employment, access, and outcome in very clear race-based ways.
Perhaps you were offended that an old white man said something that made you feel bad.
Maybe we should all feel bad that his words had more raw truth in them than any of us would care to admit.
So maybe he’s got a tin ear and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket… but he’s singing the right song.
Maybe Moses won’t reach the promised land because he struck the rock with his stick and took credit for the water that came forth…
...but isn’t it about time that we heard some tunes that we don’t like to hear, and understood that things that offend us are sometimes the most important things to pay attention to?
