Was Paul Ryan's remark inarticulate or racist?

[Anonymous]

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that his remarks on men not valuing work in the inner city were "inarticulate" and had nothing to do with race.

"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," Ryan said. "There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."

[Anonymous]

Bill Cosby pretty much says the same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that his remarks on men not valuing work in the inner city were "inarticulate" and had nothing to do with race.

"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," Ryan said. "There is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."

They were both. I can't believe he is considered a thought leader.

[Anonymous]

From my experience, Ryan is telling the truth.

[Anonymous]

Both.

First of all, he's wrong in assuming that the issue is confined to the inner city when, in fact, the majority of people below the poverty level are NOT in inner cities.

So in that sense it is racist, and quite ignorant in being selective in an uninformed way.

Not "inarticulate" because I think he said what he meant. But what he meant was informed by ignorance, and the code word / subtext is clear even though/if there is a nugget of truth in it. It's half-truth at best, and even so, selectively misleading in a way that panders to his constituency.

He really is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person sounds like.

[Anonymous]

Neither.

[Anonymous]

he's obviously lying when he says it had nothing to do with race (go look up Lee Atwater in you need any background on that) but he's also ignorant.

[Anonymous]

He obviously hasn't been to rural Appalachia if he thinks this problem is confined to inner cities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From my experience, Ryan is telling the truth.

I'm sure you have a ton of experience in the inner city.

[Anonymous]

When the GOP says "inner city," they mean "black."

It's racist.

[Anonymous]

So, the GOP is not allowed to discuss the problems in the inner city? Wow. And, for the record, I am familiar with the inner city.

[Anonymous]

I have a ton of experience in the inner city, lived in the area and worked for the largest public employer in NE DC and a few others and I can tell you he is 100 %accurate.

It might not be what people want to hear but I have seen it and had to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a ton of experience in the inner city, lived in the area and worked for the largest public employer in NE DC and a few others and I can tell you he is 100 %accurate.

It might not be what people want to hear but I have seen it and had to deal with it.

Even so, it is, however, less than half the story (re cultures and cycles of poverty), therefore by his selective inclusion (exclusion), it has a definite racist tinge to it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a ton of experience in the inner city, lived in the area and worked for the largest public employer in NE DC and a few others and I can tell you he is 100 %accurate.

It might not be what people want to hear but I have seen it and had to deal with it.

Even so, it is, however, less than half the story (re cultures and cycles of poverty), therefore by his selective inclusion (exclusion), it has a definite racist tinge to it.

did you know that not all inner cityiesre black? many white people live there is well, did he mention black people? Latinos?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So, the GOP is not allowed to discuss the problems in the inner city? Wow. And, for the record, I am familiar with the inner city.

The problem is that so many conservatives have used it as a code word to attack black people, that they have ruined the discussion for all conservatives. As a group, any comment you make about the inner city is going to be viewed with suspicion, and that suspicion has a pretty long basis in fact. If conservatives really want to address the problems of the inner cities, they have to build up credibility.

Did Paul Ryan say something racist? Maybe not, but he fell victim to his own stereotypes about inner cities, whatever those may be, and this is how you can see it. He quoted a study that specifically stated that "urbanity" did not explain its principal findings. Yet he uses it in a comment where he says "We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular". So he actually read a study that said it is not an urban phenomenon, but drew the opposite lesson from it. Why? Because the image that he's fed by Republicans is that poverty and all of its social ills is an inner city phenomenon. And that's just not true.

Today, 30% of non-hispanic white babies are born out of wedlock. Given the number of white people in America, that means there are far more so-called "fatherless" white children being born than blacks. And as a point of comparison, when in the 60's D. P. Moynihan declared black out of wedlock births a social crisis, do you know what that rate was? 25%. So apparently there is a crisis in white out-of-wedlock births, and you would never know it from what the conservative politicians are saying.