2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumRegarding Bernie's comments on "African-Americans" and "Ghettos"
I'm black and male, and I am not offended by Bernie Sanders' comments.
To suggest that many areas within large cities primarily inhabited by black Americans are not classified as "ghettos" and to not suggest that the mainstream has equated "ghetto" to mean "black" or "inner city" or made those terms interchangeable is just laughable. Even liberals do it (even black liberals), though it's used more of as an adjective instead of a noun.
What's getting lost in yet another spin on these words is why these communities are the way they are, and its primarily as a result of lack of opportunity and poverty.
Can we focus on why these communities are the way they are, instead of focusing on whether or not Bernie's words are offensive? Frankly, I find people having to barely scrape by in poverty in the richest country in the world to be more insulting that someone aligning the word "ghetto" with "black," "African-American," or "inner-city."
... but if we were to have that conversation, then we'd have to start talking about the root causes of poverty -- job loss, discrimination, lack of opportunity, outsourcing, deindustrialization, welfare reform, crime legislation, etc.. Frankly, I'm more concerned about why ghettos are the way they are instead of being offended. However, that would require discussion on horrible trade deals, repealing Glass-Steagall, etc. etc.
This paternalistic "you should be offended" spin and politicization of this by the Clinton campaign is downright disgusting. You'd think that just eight years ago she wasn't mudslinging with the Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan crap.
Seriously, can we have the real discussion?
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MisterP
(23,730 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Historically, in Europe the "undesirable group" was Jewish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto#Etymology
If either candidate is qualified to talk about ghettos, it is Bernie Sanders.
Even though I worked in a homeless shelter for years mostly helping black, homeless men, I cannot pretend to understand the suffering of African-Americans, but when Bernie talks about ghettos, he is making a cultural reference to an experience common to the history of African-Americans in our country and to Jewish people in Europe, possibly including his father's family some of whom died in the Holocaust.
The more I read the comments about this, the more disgusted I am with the ignorance of Americans about the history of the Holocaust and Europe.
Are we destined to repeat that history out of pure ignorance and self-satisfaction?
6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. But before they were slaughtered and starved, many of them were forced too live in ghettos.
The reason that Hillary and her fans are attacking Bernie on this is because Bernie is so much closer because of his background having grown up the child of Jewish refugees in a big city. I don't think his area was referred to as a ghetto, but the term is derived from the Jewish experience.
Lots of African-Americans don't live in ghettos. Neither does Bernie. But the ghetto experience of African-Americans is more recent than that of slavery.
The experience of the ghetto is a common part of the historical identity of African-Americans as it is of Bernie.
This attacking Bernie for using that term is a Rovian tactic, hitting him where he has a strength.
Hillary has utterly no ethnic or other basis for understanding the historical African-American experience in America. Doesn't mean she doesn't have empathy.
But attacking Bernie on this point is low in my opinion now that I understand what is being said in the attacks.
It is basically an ethnic slur against Bernie for being Jewish. Shame on those perpetrating this. Jewish people and Hispanic people are probably the most likely Americans to understand the African-American experience if their history is any guide.
This will sound strange to African-Americans, but if the Irish knew more about their history, they would also be able to understand more about he experience of African-Americans. But since the skin of Irish people is white, many of them don't realize what discrimination and exploitation their ancestors suffered.
I'm not equating the experiences of the Irish to those of African-Americans, but if the Irish knew what their ancestors suffered, they would be much more sympathetic to the problems of racial injustice that African-Americans suffer.
YCHDT
(962 posts)poor and to continue speaking of blacks in the context of mostly poverty only solidifies what people think about his one track mind on issues.
It smacks on the 80s thinking at the most and Sanders should have ENOUGH people around him who have experienced America's black experience to help him with stuff like this.
In context the 2016 primaries
it's tone deaf
Renaissance Man
(669 posts)We're more concerned about "tone-deafness" and "optics" instead of being concerned about the candidates' actual record. Bernie Sanders can be tone-deaf until the cows come home. His record compared to Hillary Clinton's on black impoverishment is impeccable. They're literally polar opposites.
YCHDT
(962 posts)... experience will be minimized if he became president.
I read what he said around 2014 about certain issues not being important and in his mind it sounds like they're not, he's can't relate to them and that's his fault.
He's a sitting senator, not a guy from Chicago with a small mostly black district to look over.
His record compared to Hillary Clinton's on black impoverishment is impeccable. They're literally polar opposites.
His record of building a relationship in PoC communities is horrible and one of the reasons why he's doing so bad among them. I don't see how it can be progressive to win mostly white males... that's nearly opposite of his message
Renaissance Man
(669 posts)How?
By lobbying for welfare reform (driving more children into extreme poverty), federal three strikes laws, harsher sentencing, repealing finance laws (Glass-Steagall) that led to nearly 1/2 of black wealth being wiped out in the Great Recession, and trade deals that decimated working poor communities?
... but all the Clinton's have to do is show up in black churches, play the sax on Arsenio Hall, and say that they know John Lewis and fundraise for the CBC, and everything's A-OK?
Bullshit. If that's building a relationship, then I'd hate to see what you'd call burning bridges.
YCHDT
(962 posts)... niggerized like Cornell West did and being there BEFORE needed votes, however imperfectly, to know how to talk with people.
That's just for starters
Renaissance Man
(669 posts)Hillary attended Donald Trump's wedding, before she called African-American voters her firewall. So, there's that. So much for the guilt by association, "palling around with" commentary.
F*ck knowing "how to talk" to me. Talk is cheap. I'm more interested in knowing what you've done to and/or for me and my community. Hillary Clinton's record with black people is ABYSMAL, as FAR AS POLICY IS CONCERNED.
YCHDT
(962 posts)...derogative at all.
I've not heard her do such and neither had Donald Trump at the time, his inner racist has just come out for all to see.
I disagree on the last sentence, its mixed at worst but to say its overall abysmal dismissed her decades of work in places like SC.
Decades, Sanders shows up ... insults the first black president then tells black people they should vote for him.
Still trying to find out how all that is supposed to work
Renaissance Man
(669 posts)Well, she's referred to black children as super predators, before. There's that.
She also mentioned her support among "Americans, hard-working Americans, white Americans," in the 2008 primary. We know what the racial implication is there.
... and that's not even mentioning the other race-baiting crap that she did in the 2008 primary.
So, whatever work she did in SC, she pretty much negated that in 2008. She's making it even worse, now, feigning concern.
Ned_Devine
(3,146 posts)There's a very good chance it's just someone signing up to parrot Hillary talking points and get us all defensive. Don't buy into it
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)lol
Ned_Devine
(3,146 posts)This place is reaching critical mass as far as tension is concerned though. I've been here since 2004 and I don't ever remember it being like this.
the stakes have never been higher.
I think the reason for that is the loss of unity established and enjoyed during the Bush years, which was slowly eroded during the BHO years, leaving her in "not again" territory for many of us.
That Bernie brings so much of what so many have been missing and thirsting for isn't helpful either
Ned_Devine
(3,146 posts)I mean, the thing that made it easy for people who may have been opposed to Barack in 2008 to get on board with his candidacy when the time came, was that he is a likable person. He's very welcoming and appealing. I've never seen that trait in Hillary or any of her supporters. Everything seems like scorched earth politics with them. Even in 2008 it was that way.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)lol
As a long time Clinton critic, it was an easy "lesser of two evils" choice for me. I agree a 100% on the personability factor too, but the hurdle was never high because of the plastic person nature of HC, imo anyway.
I think a lot of that scorched earth and associated stuff has its origins in their at least subliminal if not otherwise, awareness of the flaws in their candidate as they relate to the ND dems we'd like to see the party populated and those like HC replaced with. Like with their rightwing cousins, they can't win on the merits so they are compelled to rely on tactics that are designed for and certainly intended to be used as avoidance measures. "Bernie told me to sit down and shut-up" if I might be so bold as to correctly describe and convey the most recent character assault Bernie....
They can't win without a reliance on and use of dishonesty in whatever forms current conditions demand and will plausibly allow.
I've only been here participating since pre-election 2012 as I recall, and the very first thing I noticed as a BHO critic, was how much they are like the rightwingers on DI and elsewhere in the aforementioned ways. It really has nothing to do with ideology, but rather a discarding of personal ethics in defense of that ideology that I don't see out of us old hippy types around here.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Americans in his Chicago community.
Sanders showed up decades ago.
The discussions about racism on DU are often insulting to all white Americans who suffered, some dying, some working for years, to fight and end racism.
Bernie was fighting against racism when Hillary was supporting Goldwater.
I'm on the side of African-Americans. But to attack Sanders as being against African-Americans is a Rovian technique.
Sanders has always been for African-Americans.
What insulting nonsense.
I rarely join in any discussion on race because they are usually aimed to blame every white person alive for the racism of some whites. If white people talked about African-Americans the way that some African-Americans talk about white people, we would call it racism. If African-Amercans talked about white people the way that some white people talk about African-Americans, we would call it racism.
51% of young black Americans are unemployed. That is a fact.
Ferguson, Mo. Is it a ghetto?
Areas of Los Angeles like Compton and South-Central. They have been ghettos. Are they still today?
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)then you are so divorced from political knowledge as to make your screeds absolutely unworthy of reading.
It's clear that you will twist your own perceptions to a startling degree just to justify support of the conservative candidate.
/ignore.
YCHDT
(962 posts)840high
(17,196 posts)"heel them in"?
Ned_Devine
(3,146 posts)There's a very good chance it's just someone signing up to parrot Hillary talking points and get us all defensive. Don't buy into it
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Obvious troll is obvious. 
Ned_Devine
(3,146 posts)stupidicus
(2,570 posts)over the dishonest slickster running from a love of criminal justice/welfare reform past
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)if you know the origin of the word, you will realize he was talking about a Jewish Ghetto. The term is still in use. in places like Mexico City.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Jewish people in Europe that they think that the word "ghetto" was inappropriately used by Sanders.
It is very likely that Sanders' own father lived in a Jewish ghetto growing up in Poland. I do not say that as a fact, but Jewish people in some European countries suffered terribly from the discrimination of the society around them.
To question Bernie's use of the term is what betrays ignorance about Bernie's background, about the Holocaust, about the discrimination against Jewish people in Europe and Africa for hundreds and hundreds of years.
The reaction on this issue among Hillary supporters is very interesting to me. It betrays an ignorance of the history of the Jewish people if not a prejudice against Jewish people.
Very interesting.
This is not to say that a white person can know what it is to be African-American any more than an African-American can know what it is to be white.
But the origins of the word ghetto is something every schoolchild in this country should learn and understand.
A Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews in the diaspora. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were often the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding authorities. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or neighborhood is Di yiddishe gas (Yiddish: די ייִדדישע גאַס ), or "The Jewish street". Many European and Middle Eastern cities once had a historical Jewish quarter.
Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because Jews were viewed as alien due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Christian environment.[citation needed] As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities.[7] The character of ghettos has varied through times.
In some cases, the ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a relatively affluent population (for instance the Jewish ghetto in Venice). In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos (as that of Rome), had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto#Etymology
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)I hate to think that, alas...
nc4bo
(17,651 posts)Throd
(7,208 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)thanks
farleftlib
(2,125 posts)The haters will be along to tell you you're wrong but the substance of his message gets shoved aside while people play the "Bernie has a POC problem" card.
Glad to K & R.
PeaceNikki
(27,985 posts)Not a "card".
KingFlorez
(12,689 posts)To say that white people don't know what it's like to be poor or to live in the ghetto is factually inaccurate. It wasn't so much it was offensive, it was just ignorant.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)The term refers in my understanding to any area in which poor people of any specific ethnicity, religion or race live because they cannot for either social, economic or legal reasons live elsewhere.
There is a historical meaning to the word ghetto.
To people of my generation (retired) it seems to have an entirely different connotation than it does to young African-Americans.
Here is Wikipedia's definition:
A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.[1] The term was originally used in Venice to describe the part of the city to which Jews were restricted and segregated.
. . . .
A Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews in the diaspora. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were often the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding authorities. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or neighborhood is Di yiddishe gas (Yiddish: די ייִדדישע גאַס ), or "The Jewish street". Many European and Middle Eastern cities once had a historical Jewish quarter.
Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because Jews were viewed as alien due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Christian environment.[citation needed] As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities.[7] The character of ghettos has varied through times.
In some cases, the ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a relatively affluent population (for instance the Jewish ghetto in Venice). In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos (as that of Rome), had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system.
. . . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto#Etymology
Redlining and language in deeds and legal documents allowed white people to exclude African-Americans and others from certain white communities in many, perhaps most parts of America. That limited where people who belonged to minorities could live. And those areas tended to be more crowded and less desirable areas.
That's where the word comes from.
So ghetto was not originally a word referring to African-American communities. That is a relatively new use for the word. The article on Wikipedia is long and very interesting. Ghettos have existed even in Northern Ireland.
Worth a read. It's segregation in housing according to race, religion, ethnicity, etc.
islandmkl
(5,275 posts)you DO understand the definition of ghetto, don't you?
to equate the circumstances is 'factually inaccurate' on your part...but you know that , don't you?
KingFlorez
(12,689 posts)It's your boy that screwed up, not me. Ghetto is just one way of referring to an extremely poor, dilapidated area. There are extremely impoverished and jobless areas in 90% white areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)This is a ghetto
This is a Temple inside a historic Ghetto, in Budhapest
Here, Prague
Oh this is Istambul's
This is Warsawa (Warsaw for you Americans)
This is Chicago, last time I checked that was in the US, but maybe not
And then there is that word in that image
http://files1.kyozou.com/Picture.aspx?width=300&height=300&id=19878545
Then there is that word in ROME
Oh my, look at this
And of course this is from the New York Ghetto
Hmm, strange isn't it?
And here another early photo from New York
See the ignorance is quite astounding and it is willful. Look, we would like you to respect our past as well. Do NOT try to take that history, and to deny the use of that word to a man who lost his European branch to the Holocaust is vile. There, I said it.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)a much longer response and say it is the whole.
First, here is Hillary's response with poor black children in the "ghetto"
He said, no, I don’t get cabs in Washington, D.C. This was 20 years ago. Because he was humiliated by the fact that cabdrivers would go past him because he was black. I couldn’t believe, you know, you just sit there and you say, this man did not take a cab 20 years ago in Washington, D.C. Tell you another story, I was with young people active in the Black Lives Matter movement. A young lady comes up to me and she says, you don’t understand what police do in certain black communities. You don’t understand the degree to which we are terrorized, and I’m not just talking about the horrible shootings that we have seen, which have got to end and we’ve got to hold police officers accountable, I’m just talking about every day activities where police officers are bullying people.
So to answer your question, I would say, and I think it’s similar to what the secretary said, when you’re white, you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car.
And I believe that as a nation in the year 2016, we must be firm in making it clear. We will end institutional racism and reform a broken criminal justice system.
femmedem
(8,201 posts)I'm currently reading a 1995 book, American Apartheid, and the word ghetto is used in its historical context, including the redlining and other policies which led to black Americans being forcibly crowded into certain neighborhoods after the Great Migration.
I didn't know until I started reading this book that rents within these American ghettos were higher than rents where whites lived just blocks away, because black Americans' need for housing was so great.
It's a shame that the word ghetto gradually came to reflect badly on the people most adversely effected by segregationist policies, rather than on the people who benefited.
I am white, btw.
azurnoir
(45,850 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)amborin
(16,631 posts)Gwhittey
(1,377 posts)How many African American owned corporations(majority stock holders) did Hillary take money from? If there where a bunch then we can all say She will do what she can to help out African Americans who own those corporations.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)No race is really a majority any more. Still, we tend to have ghettos of Hispanics as well as ghettos of African-Americans. I live in what was not so many years ago a mostly Hispanic (by that I mean Spanish-speaking, not sure it is the right term) area that is being "gentrified." which is code for white people moving in.
At the same time I notice that a lot of African-Americans are moving in.
But ghettos most definitely exist. For many years, the Skid Row area of Los Angeles was mostly a ghetto for homeless African-Americans.
The term comes from the name for the areas in Europe in which Jewish people lived. They were traps in which ethnic, religious or racial minorities lived in what was often substandard housing.
Describes the African-American areas of some, maybe many or even all American cities to a tee in my opinion.
Let's hope that is changing.
I would like to know what African-Americans think about this because it is another issue on which my perception as a white person could be way off. It's just not my experience.
And these are my perhaps uninformed opinions.
I know Skid Row in Los Angeles as it was some years ago very, very well so I am not just talking off my head about that.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)WWII Warsaw is another example.
GreatGazoo
(3,937 posts)Surrounded by walls that they built with their own hands and under strict and violent guard, the Jews of Warsaw were cut off from the outside world. Within the ghetto their lives oscillated in the desperate struggle between survival and death from disease or starvation. The living conditions were unbearable, and the ghetto was extremely overcrowded. On average, between six to seven people lived in one room and the daily food rations were the equivalent of one-tenth of the required minimum daily calorie intake. Economic activity in the ghetto was minimal and generally illegal, smuggling of food being the most prevalent of such activity. Those individuals who were active in these illegal acts or had other savings were generally able to survive longer in the ghetto.
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/about/03/warsaw.asp
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)EndElectoral
(4,213 posts)
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)Too bad it's not a genuine agenda of racial justice. 
840high
(17,196 posts)mikehiggins
(5,614 posts)attacks on Sanders? Time will tell.
ZX86
(1,428 posts)People get so distracted by issues concerning race, gender, sexuality, and religion for reasons that are easy to understand but we should never lose sight of the big picture. IT'S ABOUT THE MONEY! Slavers did not buy expensive ships, hire crews, and sail half way around the world to torture and hate on Black people. It was done to screw White Americans out of wages for their labor. Women are not paid less because men hate estrogen. It's to screw them out of their wages. Third world sweatshops do not exist because corporations hate Asians. It's to screw developed nation's workers out of fair wages. It's about the money. It's always about the money.
Racism, sexism, and virtually every other ism is rooted in greed. There's a reason they say "Money is the root of all evil". When we argue among ourselves we are making the oligarchs job that much easier. Fighting over crumbs while they take the lions share. Problems of racism and sexism are tools used to distract us from the core issue. We will never solve our serious social issues until economic issues are addressed. As long as people are hungry, homeless, poor, and uneducated we will suffer all manner of social ills.
This is why I support Bernie. He understands that income inequality should be a top priority if we are to solve all our other problems. If you want to know why things are the way they are...follow the money.
onecaliberal
(32,826 posts)
Number23
(24,544 posts)it means to be poor."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/03/07/daily-202-five-reasons-bernie-sanders-lost-last-night-s-democratic-debate/56dcf1e6981b92a22d730a5d/?postshare=7531457366511895&tid=ss_tw-bottom
And you have the nerve to take issue with the many, MANY people -- including many decent, principled Sanders supporters, including Ben Jealous -- who think his comments reflect incredibly poorly on him?
You'll have tons of friends in GDP in no time with stuff like this. TONS.
raging moderate
(4,297 posts)Last edited Wed Mar 30, 2016, 06:38 PM - Edit history (2)
The morning that news broke about Black Lives Matter taking over Bernie's rally and giving speeches instead of him, I heard them talking and thought, oh, they just didn't hear his recent speeches. And maybe that was true. Do you remember how Bernie just let them talk? That was in support of their message. It just so happened that I had clicked on a link to hear Bernie's speeches and had noted with relief that he was mentioning Sandra Bland and other Black people who had recently died through police brutality. He was already doing that; he has done that in many speeches.
When Bernie Sanders and I were young, long ago, there came a time, I think in the late sixties, when Black people essentially told us white people to get out of their way and stand back, we were not really helping, we should just let them handle it. I am not talking about just news items I read; actual Black people on my SIUC college campus actually said this to me and other white people there.
That is all we are trying to do, just stand back and let Black people run their own movement. I believe Gandhi said the same thing at one point. White people can unintentionally ruin things. That is why Bernie Sanders stood there silently, I think. We are on your side, Black people; we just don't want to take over or dominate the discussion. As Bernie said in the debate, we really can't know, and we realize that.
Hillary Clinton at first was chiming in with White Lives Matter. What Hillary has done right is to learn how to identify the leaders of Black organizations and reach out to form coalitions with them. This is something she has learned how to do through bitter experience. I remember how she tried to get National Health Insurance passed back in the nineties. She and her group spent months traveling around the country talking to various focus groups of doctors, nurses, union workers, insurance workers. Then the national news media kept giving air time to Republicons trumpeting that Hillary had not bothered to talk to anybody outside her group before writing her proposal. I was genuinely puzzled at the time, given the news clips I had seen with her and her cohorts in conference at different places. Make no mistake, progressives, this lady really tried to get health insurance passed. I remember the Republicons going after her viciously in that hearing, and I remember her spirited answers. I thought at the time, this lady likes to fight. And win. And she is not afraid to take on the big boys. Maybe she can win this for all of us! But she lost. The liars won.
Finally, years later, I realized what the Republicons had meant: she hadn't come around wooing THEM or asking THEM what THEY WANTED, or finding out how to assuage the fears of lost profit from THEIR FRIENDS in the private sector. I believe that she has spent the past decades learning how to do just that. And how to play the system. And how to build coalitions of leaders and industry magnates and Wall Street CEOs. I suspect that she may have compromised her principles more than she knows. And I suspect that, as an upper-middle-class Goldwater Republican, she had more than a few smirky ideas about Black people and poor people. That is why I support Bernie Sanders. But I will never forget that she has also made some efforts to work for social justice.
You guys, neither one of these people is a demon, or a fool. Either one would be a thousand times better than one of the Republicons in that White House.
raging moderate
(4,297 posts)That was all part of the sixties/seventies hippie idea that sprang from the Black people telling us to but out of their affairs. We white kids decided that we should work on ourselves and learn to be less dependent on the military/industrial complex that had us hornswoggled into indirectly supporting the oppression of poor people of all kinds. All over the country, hippies tried to get back into rural landscapes and learn how to do basic skills such as carpentry, gardening, canning, and sewing. The whole idea was to develop sustainable ways of living that would let us carry our own weight in the world. That is probably why Bernie went to Vermont. It was not the Black people he was trying to get away from.