As many viewers watched the presidential debates this past weekend, we couldn’t help but notice Donald Trump’s constant mention of African Americans living in the “inner city.” We all know the stereotype—black folks live in the ghetto, the hood, and are packed into the poorest concrete jungle of any city. As I heard Trump repeatedly use the term, “inner city,” I couldn’t help but to think about all of my friends and what the view probably looks like out of their kitchen window. Do all of my “African Americans” live in war zones?
I jokingly posted a status update on Facebook asking all of my “African Americans” to mark themselves safe so that I know they are okay out there in the inner city. Many of my friends laughed about this and played along. But overwhelmingly, they all named their communities—Mitchellville, MD; Westchester County, NY; State College, PA; Gainesville, Fl. These aren’t your typical images of the “inner city.” And beyond that, even those who actually live in major cities like Philadelphia and Washington, DC laughed because the view out of their kitchen window is far from a war zone. Black folks can live in safe, loving, and aesthetically beautiful communities even in places like Washington DC. The African American community has a very diverse lived experience.
Of course the real issue here is the pervasive labeling and association of African American people with all things bad—poverty, crime, danger, and hopelessness. I don’t mean to imply here that there aren’t African American community members living in real struggle—being suffocated by oppression. But that is the life experience of most impoverished people in the United States, regardless of race. Seeking to address the problems faced by the disenfranchised is important politics. Making the assumption that the masses of one race all have the same life experience is dangerous politics. And let’s be honest, a commercial developer’s answer to fixing the so-called “inner city” will probably transform it into a place where the current residents can’t even afford to live.
This type of thinking is a gross generalization and honestly just plain ignorant. But dealing with this type of negative labeling and association isn’t new to African American citizens. Historically, we have quite literally been around the block—seeking out warm home spaces and being greeted with just that—a racially abandoned desert. Anywhere, a group of African American families live is deemed a bad investment. It becomes a ghetto not because of economics but because of social perception. This social phenomenon was the focus of the 2015 Washington Post article, “The American Dream Shatters in Prince Georges County.” When African Americans move in, others move out. It is downright insulting that my neighborhood becomes a ghetto simply because I am there.
What makes many of us chuckle about Donald Trump’s comments is that he is a bit behind in his use of racist code. Fifteen years ago the code for a black neighborhood was “inner city.” Folks use different language these days. Even now as city is trendy and downtown is the rave, “urban” is now code for the bad parts of town or the areas on the verge of gentrification. This type of oppressive geographic labeling is not new to any historically disenfranchised group of people. In the 1950’s, the poor black neighborhoods in any major city were known as the “Black Bottoms.” These were the communities with no view, difficult access out, and where scores of African Americans were packed onto the worst land in the city.
They lived there because that’s what they could afford. They lived there because segregation didn’t allow much else. Many still live there because that’s what economic oppression looks like. The philosophical “Black Bottom” is not just a part of history it is very much a part of our current social norm. In 2005, the Black Bottom was the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. I share this to acknowledge that the intersecting powers of economic and racial oppression are real. But as deficient and difficult as life might be, an economically challenged community is still not a hopeless place. There still exists hard working, good hearted, and God-fearing folks in some of the most disenfranchised neighborhoods of any city. Sometimes even those that live in a low-income community and who desperately want to have more in life, might still be offended by their community experience being associated with the worst America has to offer. It’s still their home.
Beyond this language being insulting, it is dangerous when we begin to broadly associate “African American” with terms like “inner city.” What often happens is that society stops viewing the ghetto as a place where folks live and instead begin to use it to describe who folks are. Who hasn’t heard someone refer to another person as being “ghetto?” Many of us have watched on television, in our schools, and sometimes in our own homes as someone’s behavior is labeled ghetto, ratchet, or hood. This is the dangerous way that the N word evolved. A word that was literally meant to describe color “Negro,” morphed into a negative indictment of a race of people. It transformed from Negro into nigger and developed a meaning related to ignorance and inferiority. This evolution of codes—black bottoms, inner city, urban-is following along the same path.
Over the past 20 years, I have lived in many places: Laurel, Maryland; State College, PA; Ewa Beach, Hawaii. My kitchen window has always looked out onto beautiful land. None of my communities could have been described as “inner city.” But, as a black woman in America, regardless of the kind of neighborhood in which I live, I still have many social challenges that I want my country to address. As a professor, my work specifically focuses on the social and cultural experiences of the African American community. From this work, I know that every racial community is complex. Many people who don’t live in the perceived dead-lands that many politicians like Trump talk about in speeches; still experience inequity, oppression, racism, sexism, and homophobia. To shrink your understanding of the African American community into one pervasive stereotype, shows me that you do not have the capacity to truly work on the issues that I face as a middle class American or that my cousin faces as a working class citizen. The issues affecting the African American community aren’t simply about where we live. For many of us, critical politics concern how black folks in any socio-economic class are allowed to access and experience life in the United States.