"Black" vs. "Inner-City"

I recently read an article about Sunday night’s presidential debate. The article was focused around Trump’s use of the phrase “inner-cities” as synonymous with “African Americans.” Politics aside, the article discusses how detrimental it is to use this phrasing to mean all black people as it implies that all black people are low-income, living in bad conditions in public housing, and struggling in a harsh environment. The author, Zeba Blay, writes, “This is most certainly a reality for many black people, and it should be addressed, but it is by no means the only reality” (Blay).

            While Trump is certainly eligible for criticism, I would argue that majority of people also use this same language to discuss African Americans. We have a problem with stereotyping, and one major label we put on black Americans is the rough and tough urban life. Due to the current state of race and systematic injustice in our society, it’s important that we note these problems with language and the harmful impact it has. We see this by our over-generalization of life as an African American, therefore hindering the non-black understanding of the black experience.

            The article continues, “Every time Trump invokes this image of “the inner city,” he’s misdirecting an important conversation and subtlety placing the blame of the state of black America on black people, instead of the system that’s set up to disenfranchise so many” (Blay). By over-generalizing black America and continuing the narrative of all African Americans to be poor (and what often means lazy, stupid, incapable, etc.) we are proving that we have made little to know progress on our understandings of each other. The continuation of misusing this phrase, and failing to acknowledge that this is not the reality of all African Americans (but that it can also include every other race), we are continuing the narrative set forth during enslavement. This kind of language ignores the role of white America in the marginalization of African Americans. By using “inner-city” to signify “black” we perpetuate the stereotypes that began with Thomas Jefferson—that African Americans are lacking in mental capacity, which has turned into the modern day stereotype of blacks as lazy, jobless, and living off welfare. I agree with Blay that in order to move forward we must hold ourselves accountable for the system we’ve created and enforced so as not to place the blame on those suffering from it.