This shit has got to stop

Anonus · 2014-08-16 05:40:50

"Urban" should not mean "black people"

Obā-san · 2014-08-16 05:46:42

when i was at the gym the other day i was listening to two people talk, a woman in her mid 20s and a man in his mid 40s, both african-american and they were talking about the word "swole", which the older man referred to as "urban slang" that all the young people were more up on than he was and im not sure where i'm going with this anecdote exactly?

i ended up getting roped into the conversation and we ended up debating how swole should be spelled

Obā-san · 2014-08-16 05:48:55

and then we talked about fitness goals

Obā-san · 2014-08-16 05:49:08

can't remember the exact details

Imipolex G · 2014-08-16 12:40:40

first I've heard of "swole"

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-16 17:06:07

Well, yeah, there's urban black American culture and slang and just being black and American. The problem is that "urban" as a buzzword originated as a way of avoiding the term "black" and making "black radio" more palatable to groups like Clear Channel, and that's kind of racist and skeevy.

Not all media by and for black people is urban black media, but the buzzword conflates them.

Anonus · 2014-08-16 17:08:19

I just have this feeling that "urban" derives from "inner city"...

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-16 17:08:57

When I hear "urban" I think of dense cities with tall buildings.

Tell anyone who uses "urban" as synonymous with "black" that they've got their associations wrong.

Bee · 2014-08-16 17:11:43

Yeah, same. I usually think more of the uptown business districts.

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-16 17:12:00

^^^ Exactly. That's the implication. And a lot of popular black American culture originated in the inner cities. But that is most certainly not the totality of the black experience in the US.

(Note: I am using "black" here because "African-American" is a lot narrower and more complicated in meaning than a lot of people think it is. It's not the best term, but it works, so I'm using it.)

^ I think Rittenhouse Square, ironically...

Anonus · 2014-08-16 17:12:13

I meant in this context. It seems like some sort of nasty dog-whistle.

^and what he said

Klinotaxis · 2014-08-16 17:29:23

I think of big buildings because I played more SimCity than I watched the news.

On the other hand, my dad is an 'inner city' schoolteacher and whaddya know, racial and socioeconomic stratification out the wazoo.

Previous Calica · 2014-08-16 17:32:51

Anonus said:
I meant in this context. It seems like some sort of nasty dog-whistle.

^and what he said

I'm pretty sure that using "urban" to mean "black" is almost entirely dog-whistle, yeah

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-16 17:42:52

Anonus said:
I meant in this context. It seems like some sort of nasty dog-whistle.

^and what he said

This sounds about right.

now to take offense to that and make "exurban" a synonym for rich white-flight folks with three-car garages and boring gated communities who tell city-dwellers to fuck off and stop taking their tax money

Sredni Vashtar · 2014-08-16 17:47:51

glennmagusharvey said:
now to take offense to that and make "exurban" a synonym for rich white-flight folks with three-car garages and boring gated communities who tell city-dwellers to fuck off and stop taking their tax money

I am surrounded by developments full of these people.

Ironically, as the developments grew, the percentage of Democrats actually increased. But the people that brought them here and the people that first occupied them are a different story. Seriously, these are the people that wouldn't let their kids go to Norristown or Philadelphia because they might meet a black person.

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-16 18:16:22

In their defense, and to be fair, that's not the thought process -- just a side effect of it. They likely see places like that as places where there's a high crime rate. Such areas tend to be relatively poor, and also demographically contain more minorities (usually blacks and/or hispanics) -- the latter for multiple reasons, among them being cheaper rent and thus easier access for the poor. Criminals arrested and whose mugshots are shown on TV generally tend more likely to be minorities, in part because such areas tend to be have a greater concentration of minorities.

So you end up going from a correlation of high minority population, crime rate, and poverty to a mental association between minorities (especially blacks, though hispanics aren't immune to this), high crime, and poverty. And here's where the problems start -- as people begin presuming (sometimes even unconsciously) that, say, a bunch of black boys loafing around on a street corner looks more inherently suspicious than a bunch of white boys loafing around on a street corner, for example. And then the problem explodes when people act according to these presumptions.

The same presumptions make some white (and sometimes even some minority) people feel hesitant about, say, black families moving into the neighborhood. Interestingly, I think that if you have an honest, open conversation about stuff like this, people will reveal that they hold such beliefs but are not particularly comfortable with them either -- but when push comes to shove or when peer pressure happens, they're more likely to make use of them on impulse.

The irony about white flight and the formation of crime-ridden inner cities? If the rich people hadn't left, those poverty-stricken areas wouldn't be the what they are today.

Salix Babylonika · 2014-08-16 18:19:19

I am really uncomfortable referring to poor areas as "boils".

glennmagusharvey · 2014-08-16 18:35:01

Sorry. I had trouble finding a fitting word to put there, and I wasn't sure whether that was appropriate. I've edited my post.

This shit has got to stop

Comments

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories