What Does Paul Ryan Really Mean by the Phrase “Inner City”? Google Ngram Offers a Clue

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David Sirota, Pandodaily

Code words are politicians’ stock in trade. As Republican strategist Lee Atwater famously admitted, that’s especially true when it comes to racially coded rhetoric about economics. Terms like “welfare queen” are obvious examples and the word “culture” when specifically invoked in discussions of urban poverty can be as well. Sometimes this kind of rhetoric is carefully coded, other times it isn’t.

But what about the term “inner city”? Is that the same kind of dog whistle bigotry that attempts to equate African American heritage with laziness and self-inflicted economic failure?

This is the question raised yesterday by US Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) – and Google seems to offer some relevant data in response.

Here’s the Huffington Post on what Ryan said:

“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 or learning the value and the culture of work,” the Wisconsin Republican said on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio show. “There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.”

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) called Ryan’s remark “deeply offensive.”

“My colleague Congressman Ryan’s comments about ‘inner city’ poverty are a thinly veiled racial attack and cannot be tolerated,” Lee said in an email to reporters. “Let’s be clear, when Mr. Ryan says ‘inner city,’ when he says ‘culture,’ these are simply code words for what he really means: ‘black.’”

Let’s set aside the fact that Ryan offers no actual proof of his assertion and let’s also set aside the fact that Ryan ignores that deindustrialization (brought on, in part, by Ryan-supported trade policies) has helped hollow out the job base in many cities. Let’s stick instead to the question raised about whether his use of the term “inner city” is racial.

As Atwater’s aforementioned comments suggest and as multiple examples prove, there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that the Republican Party deliberately uses this kind of coded language to evoke racial animosity against minority constituencies. And when it comes to the phrase “inner city,” Google Ngram provides some additional contextual information suggesting that yes, the term is a key part of the political language of racial backlash.

Here is a graph from Ngram showing the use of the term “inner city” in over 5 million books digitized by the company since 1800:

Ngram isn’t a comprehensive tool for evaluating language, but it does provide a rough snapshot of the larger vernacular being used in particular time periods. In this case, it seems the term “inner city” essentially wasn’t used for the first century and a half of American history and then became popular in the mid-1960s. And it didn’t just gradually become popular — it abruptly and suddenly became popular in a very specific time period.

Anything ring a bell about that particular time period? Right, exactly – the term basically only started being used in the lead up to and immediate aftermath of the civil rights movement’s legislative successes. That is to say, the term only became a part of the vernacular at precisely the moment the conservative political backlash to the civil rights movement came into vogue.

Does this prove the term is always being used in a bigoted or negative way? Absolutely not. But the term’s history does seem to at least buttress assertions that it comes with racial connotations. It also buttresses assertions that when it is specifically white conservative politicians that are using the term, they are doing so in a way that invokes those connotations. And as political scientist Tom Schaller suggests, it’s a good bet that’s deliberate when the very same politicians invoking “culture” to explain “inner city” poverty are not using the same explanation for rising rural poverty.

[Harpa Timsah 13,258]

What about Nixon and "small government"? That still exists today...

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Well give it another 25 years with gentrification living in the inner city will be "chic"

"OMG Becky she's sooo suburb"

Anyway...Lee Atwater was a despicable #######. Paul Ryan, like most White Neo-Cons are descendants of his Southern Strategy.

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "N****r" n****r, n****r." By 1968 you can't say "n****r" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N****r, n****r" - Lee Atwater

Now they use words like THUG

That's why I tell young people to study and learn history. That way they can't pull nothing over your head. When these conservatives open their mouths they are saying the same thing their pappy and grand pappy said - same meaning, different words. We know how the game is played.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Jinx614

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

"OMG Becky she's sooo suburb"

OMG, the memories...

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Well give it another 25 years with gentrification living in the inner city will be "chic"

"OMG Becky she's sooo suburb"

Anyway...Lee Atwater was a despicable #######. Paul Ryan, like most White Neo-Cons are descendants of his Southern Strategy.

"You start out in 1954 by saying, "N****r" n****r, n****r." By 1968 you can't say "n****r" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "N****r, n****r" - Lee Atwater

Now they use words like THUG

That's why I tell young people to study and learn history. That way they can't pull nothing over your head. When these conservatives open their mouths they are saying the same thing their pappy and grand pappy said - same meaning, different words. We know how the game is played.

I thought it was interesting how the author pointed out the context of it as well - Ryan talks about problems of 'inner city' poverty while strangely quiet about the growing problem of rural poverty. In his own home state, rural poverty is a problem, but instead he chose to talk about 'inner city' poverty. Very interesting.

Here's a report about his own state: (Here's some advice Ryan - how about addressing the very real problem of poverty in your own home state and the very real reasons why it exists?)

Rural poverty is hidden and growing

What does poverty in rural Wisconsin look like?

Katherine Curtis: One thing that makes rural poverty particularly interesting is that it’s actually hard to see. Often, when considering urban poverty, neighborhoods with boarded windows, litter and graffiti, or other symbols of disorganization and economic hardship come to mind. Poverty in urban places tends to be clustered and visible. In contrast, rural poverty is “hidden” in the sense that impoverished people and households are not spatially clustered. The rural poor live near the financially secure or, in especially sparsely settled communities, they tend to be isolated from other people. The rural poor are often out of view.

How serious is the problem of rural poverty in Wisconsin? Has it increased in recent years?

Curtis: For the state as a whole, poverty grew from 8.7 percent in 2000 to 13.2 percent for the period covering 2006 to 2010, marking a nearly 52 percent increase in poverty. At the same time, poverty increased in rural counties in Wisconsin. In 2000, the average poverty rate for rural counties was 9.6 percent. For the 2006–2010 period, poverty had grown to 12.6 percent. Poverty increased similarly in the state’s urban counties (7.2 percent in 2000 and 10.1 percent in 2006–2010). However, the level of poverty was consistently lower among urban counties compared to rural counties.

Can you please define rural poverty for us?

Leann Tigges: The poverty level in the United States is around $11,000 a year for a single person. You add about $4,000 per person to that to determine the level for different-size families. So for a family of three: about $19,000. If you make more than that, you’re not considered “poor” and if you make less than that, you are. That’s true whether you’re in a high cost of living area or a low cost of living area.

Many people think that people in rural areas actually need much less than urban people in terms of income, but a lot of things besides housing take more of a rural family’s budget. Transportation costs can be higher, utility costs can be higher. So lots of things that rural families need are more expensive. If you just adjusted poverty for cost of living, which would mainly be housing, you wouldn’t capture that rural–urban difference.

Tell us a little bit about what contributes to rural poverty.

Curtis: One of the biggest issues in rural communities is economic development. Some of the main drivers in Wisconsin are actually underemployment and unemployment. When we look at the distribution of poverty across the state and different counties, we notice that it tends to be clustered in the northern part of the state, where there is less economic development. Specifically, we think about forest-related industry as well as the agricultural industry or extractive industries in general. When we have a community that might be solely dependent on a particular type of industry, if anything happens to that industry, whether it’s due to local reasons or, more likely, national or even global industrial reasons, then that community is susceptible to contractions.

Single female-headed households are another factor commonly associated with poverty, and we also see it in Wisconsin. Recent census data show that the proportion of single-father households also is increasing, and at a faster rate than single-mother households. Household structure is a factor in poverty because it identifies the number of potential earners. When you have one adult earner, by simple math, you can understand that that household is going to be making less than a dual-earner household.

http://news.cals.wisc.edu/2013/06/03/qa-rural-poverty-is-hidden-and-growing/

Edited March 14, 2014 by Porterhouse