It's been 43 years since Marvin Gaye wrote, recording, produced and released his seminal "What's Going On" album on Motown Records featuring the hit single "Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)". There was no question, no doubt, exactly what he was talking about on that song.
Inflation, no chance
To increase finance
Bills pile up, sky high
Send that boy off to die
Oh, make me wanna holler
The way they do my life
Make me wanna holler
The way they do my life, oh baby
Crime is increasing
Trigger happy policing
Panic is spreading
God knows where, where we're heading
It was powerful. It was even a bit dangerous, compared to Berry Gordy Jr's vision of Motown as a label that helped take people's care and worries away rather than face them directly. It had
Resonance, so much so that I even recorded my own version of it a couple years ago for a Kickstarter Project.
People who live in the Inner City, know what it is to live in the Inner City. They know what that means. There is practically
no way that anyone who was born in the late 60's or 70's doesn't know what and who the phrase references. So when Republican Rep. Paul Ryan - who was born
just one year before the song was released - stated at CPAC that Men in the "Inner City" were lazy and didn't want to experience the "Culture of Work". Most people knew exactly what he meant, particularly Black People - and this week when Paul Ryan decided he needed
schlep on down to the Inner City to explain
he didn't mean, what he clearly meant - the Black Constituents of Racine Wisconsin
Were. Not. Having. It.
http://thinkprogress.org/...
RACINE, Wisconsin — If you could pinpoint the moment when Paul Ryan lost control of his message on Wednesday, it was when he began explaining to an African American constituent why his recent comments about lazy “inner city” men actually had nothing to do with race.
“You said what you meant,” Alfonso Gardner, a 61-year-old African American man from Racine, told Ryan at a town hall meeting. “[Inner city is] a code word for black.”
Ryan remained defiant though. “There is nothing whatsoever about race in my comments at all,” he said. He admonished Gardner for drawing a connection between his “inner city” remarks and race. “I think when we throw these charges around, it should be based on something.”
But frankly his comments come of even more worse when you look at them in greater context. Particular when he referenced the work of Charles Murray who has stated that Black people are genetically inferior mentally.
“That’s this tailspin or spiral that we’re looking at in our communities,” he told Bennett. “Your buddy Charles Murray or Bob Putnam over at Harvard, those guys have written books on this.”
“Which is, we have got this tailspin of culture in our inner cities in particular of men not working, and just generations of men not even thinking about working and learning the value and culture of work,” Ryan opined. “So, there’s a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.
And what, for example, does Charles Murray tells us on this subject from his book
The Bell Curve?
“The professional consensus is that the United States has experienced dysgenic pressures throughout either most of the century (the optimists) or all of the century (the pessimists). Women of all races and ethnic groups follow this pattern in similar fashion. There is some evidence that blacks and Latinos are experiencing even more severe dysgenic pressures than whites, which could lead to further divergence between whites and other groups in future generations.”
—The Bell Curve, 1994
Perhaps if you don't want people to get the "wrong idea" you don't bring people who say things like this, from "Deeper into the Brian", into the conversation as
validation for your position.
“Try to imagine a … presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, ‘One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy.’ You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. [Ed. Apparently, now, Yes it CAN!] And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.”
"Born Lazy", eh? All right now that we've cleared that up. But still Ryan, starting when his comments first began to spark a backlash, tried to paper over the obvious.
“This isn’t a race based comment it’s a breakdown of families, it’s rural poverty in rural areas, and talking about where poverty exists — there are no jobs and we have a breakdown of the family. This has nothing to do with race,” he insisted.
So, ok, in the "Inner City" - it's a lack of the "culture of work", but in the rural communities it's a lack "jobs"? Does anyone else see a big huge difference here? Why isn't there a lack of the "Culture of Work" in rural communities exactly? Where are all the free-range easy-to-get "Jobs" in the "Inner City" supposed to be hiding exactly?
Sorry, but Ryan's comments simply don't pass the smell test, which is something that Mr. Gardner and Ryan's other Racine constituents were well aware of.
ThinkProgress spoke with Gardner after the town hall to get his reaction. He said Ryan’s trying to have it both ways, saying different things to different people. “He’s out here shucking and jiving,” Gardner said. “He’s been in Congress eight terms and just now talking about poverty?
Yeah, that. The sad part is that people like Ryan, who's been spewing
deluded self-aggrandizing Ayn Randian Bullshit for decades, probably doesn't even realize how completely
full of shit he sounds. He probably thinks, he said "nothing wrong" and he's just being 'ganged-up on" by people who want to make his comments into "something they're not".
But they are what they are, even if he refuses to admit or understand it.
Vyan
5:03 PM PT: H/t to Comments on the definition of "dysegenic" just in case there was any remaining doubt as to Murray's full meaning.
Definition of DYSGENIC
1
: tending to promote survival of or reproduction by less well-adapted individuals (as the weak or diseased) especially at the expense of well-adapted individuals (as the strong or healthy) 2
: biologically defective or deficient
"Biologically Deficient" - and since Murray specifically applied to poor black and latinos, his meaning is clear. "Racially Inferior".
That's pretty hard to duck, hide and run from.