PCG's Use of Racially Coded Words: Inner-City, Thug and Ghetto

The Pan-African Flag

Hostile attitudes are strange things. You can tell someone not to use certain words but unless he or she chooses to change his or her attitude the derogatory attitude will merely express itself elsewhere. This includes language.

Take racial prejudice against African Americans for instance. Over time American society has learned not to use certain words and phrases in order to be respectful and polite towards African Americans. But some people, even though they stopped using certain words and phrases, have not learned to change their hearts. They still view African Americans as "not one of us" and allow stereotypes to influence how they view African Americans. So the racist prejudice and stereotyped thinking shifts elsewhere among those people and, among other things, this affects how they use originally innocuous words. 

According to the following article (7 Phrases Everyone Needs to Stop Using to Describe Black People) here are seven phrases that are used as often derogatory code words to mean African Americans.

• Thug

• Inner city

• Ghetto

• Oreo

• Uppity

• You people

• Shady/Sketchy 

How true is this?

What about the word "thug"? Do PCG's writers use that word to describe African Americans? Is this true with "inner-city" and "ghetto"?

In this post we shall only discuss the first three racially coded words as the last four do not appear to be used in such a sense within PCG's writings.

Also quotations featuring people outside of PCG using these terms are not discussed. This is PCG's leaders and what they say.

"Inner-city"

The use of the phrase "inner-city" by PCG's writers is particularly fascinating. Within PCG's writings "inner-city" is always used to describe a hostile, scary place. "Inner-city" is often associated with violence, crime, criminal gangs and deprivation. Less often it is associated with illicit drug use, slothful behavior and lack of education. Sometimes it is even made explicit that "inner-city" refers to African Americans or minorities.

Drug interdiction specialists are now concerned over the increased use of heroin in this country. But heroin is not just being used by some burned-out musician or some inner-city junkie. It is reaching into all economic levels and age groups in America. Heroin can now be found in our backyards and in our houses! In this arena the special-forces soldier becomes meaningless. We must learn how to protect our families and ourselves. We must face the drug problem head on and at home. (Dennis Leap, Heroin at Your House?, June 1998.)

Mario Puzo’s Godfather series, made into film by Francis Ford Coppola, has become one of the most-read and watched series about the mafia. West Side Story was a very popular Broadway show. One of the most favorite westerns that embellished gang life was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This movie, far from the truth, glorified the lives of the two thieves. In the ’90s, it has been trendy to feature movies about black, inner-city gangs. Movies like Colors and New Jack City made gang life look exciting and thrilling. Several of these movies even used actual gang members as actors. (Dennis Leap, Why Dick and Jane Join Gangs, February 1999.)

The quote above discussing "black, inner-city gangs" is particularly revealing. "Inner-city" is a code word for African American.

And it is simple to understand why. Look at the world and what do we see? Chaos! There is war, strife and violence in parts of Asia, Africa, South America, Central America, Ireland and the Middle East. Inner city tensions fuel crime in Britain, Europe and North America. Violence, sickness, disease, inequality, poverty, filth, squalor, degeneration, suffering, economic uncertainty, interpersonal conflicts, a gnawing sense of helplessness—these infest all nations and billions of people to one degree or another. Added to this is the fear factor of a world living under threat of the modern terrorist.  (Eric Anderson and Brad MacDonald, Manage Your Stress—Substance Free, February 2004.)

Such scenarios frighten medical authorities because they are not mere science fiction. With the tremendous intercontinental air and sea traffic of our age, plus the crumbling infrastructures of metropolitan inner cities and increasing numbers of fleeing international refugees, such diseases could be spread around the world very quickly. In today’s global society, an outbreak could be on the other side of the world within 24 hours. (Fred Dattolo, Disease Pandemics Are Coming, March-April 2005.)

In this climate of increasing want and desperation—as in New Orleans—the layers of social order will begin to erode, particularly “in the midst of the city.” Inner-city criminality will begin to spread—not merely within a single city, but from city to city.  ...
At a moment in the near future, the U.S. economy is in a slump. The dollar is shedding its value. Factories are shutting down. The number of homeless and hopeless grows in the cities. Shipping grinds to a halt as companies close and energy prices climb.
The inner-city poor are hit hardest. Charity efforts are unable to meet demands. Lines form at grocery stores for dwindling supplies of food at rising prices. Some, desperate for sustenance, resort to crime.
Racial tensions and resentment against the government escalate. Police officers are trapped between restoring order and being indicted for discrimination. As more people are victimized, both by economic depression and rising crime, emotions boil over. (Joel Hilliker, Urban Anarchy, November 2005.)

Chile’s newly elected president, Michelle Bachelet, gained the ire of the student protestors by failing to mention their cause during her presidential address the day following their occupation of the inner city building in Santiago. Perhaps to make up for this, Bachelet went public on June 5 to express sympathy with the students’ frustrations and to condemn the swift response of the police in their actions to limit damage and maximize arrests during the wild student demonstrations. (Ron Fraser, Chilean Students Riot, June 9, 2006.)

Bible prophecy tells us Mr. Hutchinson’s “great concern” is valid. To learn about the horrific racial tensions and inner-city violence that are prophesied to explode in American cities in the time just ahead—and, more importantly, how to avoid being victimized by this violence—request a free copy of our book Ezekiel: The End-Time Prophet. (Racial Hate in L.A. Just a Microcosm, January 22, 2007.)

Brutality has been accepted as a black patch on the tapestry of human existence—and not just for soldiers on bloody battlefields, inner-city gangs or hospital emergency rooms. (Brad MacDonald, Surviving Our Loveless World, October 2007.)

Minority women feel that the feminist movement has failed to solve their problems with inner city life—no jobs and poverty. (Dennis Leap, Recapture Value in True Womanhood, December 5, 2007.)

This is particularly revealing. We see that "inner-city life" is associated with "[m]inority women". Inner-city is a euphemism for non-whites which includes African Americans.

White flight is a term coined in the United States in the 1960s to describe the creation of inner-city ghettos. (Muslims Create “No Go” Areas in Britain, January 16, 2008.)

Imagine that the U.S. economy continues to slump. The dollar is shedding its value. Factories are shutting down. The number of homeless and hopeless grows in the cities. Shipping grinds to a halt as companies close and energy prices climb.
The inner-city poor are hit hardest. Charity efforts are unable to meet demands. Lines form at grocery stores for dwindling supplies of food at rising prices. Some, desperate for sustenance, resort to crime.
Racial tensions and resentment against the government escalate. Police officers are trapped between restoring order and being indicted for discrimination. As more people are victimized, both by economic depression and rising crime, emotions boil over. (Joel Hilliker, Are You Watching the Food Riots?, June-July 2008.)

This isn’t even addressing the cultural and psychological impact the shift away from the land has had on the mindset of Western societies. You’ve probably heard about inner-city children not knowing milk comes from cows, or seen the reality shows where trendy city-slickers head to the farm to educate their naive, living-life-behind-the-eight-ball counterparts. Often, farmers are seen as fools living a primitive lifestyle. (Brad MacDonald, What We Lost When We Sold the Farm, September 2008.)

Historically African Americans were denigrated as lacking education and not knowing how to read. The fact that African Americans were forced to endure racial discrimination unfortunately contributed to that racist stereotype which was used to humiliate and put down African Americans in a terrible cycle of oppression.

The problem is, this one example is but the tip of an iceberg, below which floats a huge, deeply entrenched, perverse way of life that has become endemic to American society. It’s a disease that has penetrated from the mansions of Beverly Hills to the trailer parks and ultimately the cardboard boxes and filthy dens of the street people of inner cities. (Ron Fraser, America The Corrupt, November-December 2009.)

And so we see Ron Fraser associating the "inner-city" with homelessness.

And if you have ever visited a Department of Motor Vehicles office in an inner city, you know that efficiency and service is not high on the priority list. (Robert Morley, America's Rome Moment, June 6, 2010.)

In this climate of increasing want and desperation, the time will come that social order will begin to erode, particularly “in the midst of the city.” Inner-city criminality will begin to spread—not merely within a single city, but from city to city. (Joel Hilliker, Will Your Local Policeman Lose His Job?, September 15, 2010.)

As if the stabilizing force of family isn’t being rocked enough. Out-of-wedlock births and single-parent households, once associated with inner-city poor, are now common among the rural white working class as well. In the nation’s capital, more than half of family households are run by single parents. In one area of Washington, only a quarter of homes contain a functioning marriage; of the remaining homes, nearly 9 in 10 are run by women. (Joel Hilliker, It’s Hard to Watch Your Country Die, March 2011.)

I am reminded of the massive Santee Education Complex built in South Los Angeles in 2005 in order to help disadvantaged inner-city students. (Robert Morley, Willingly Ignorant of the Danger, May 10, 2011.)

Stated another way. The end result is a nationwide culture becoming more like inner-city Detroit, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and so on. (Robert Morley, One in Five Workmen Missing in Action, May 11, 2011.)

In a brave and shocking speech at last year’s Conservative Party Conference, deputy head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh denounced the current skills deficit. She was utterly exasperated by her experience of trying to educate teenagers in one of London’s inner-city state schools and felt she had a duty to speak out about a system that is rendering young people unemployable... (Graig Millar, UK’s Lost Generation—Lost by Educationalists, May 25, 2011.)

Philadelphia is under a curfew due to inner-city violence. (Robert Morley, London Riots Will Engulf America, August 16, 2011.)

Then again, imagine the inevitable violence if America continues to cede its southern border, inner cities and leafy neighborhoods to Mexico’s drug lords. (Brad MacDonald, Beheading Mexico, May-June 2012.)

After a series of attacks in Chicago by almost exclusively black mobs mostly on white individuals, the city’s superintendent of police stepped up and bravely addressed the racial aspect of the violence. How? By blaming the inner-city violence on some kind of racist conspiracy: specifically, “federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers across this country that are killing our black and brown children.” What? In front of a cheering audience, he called these laws “government-sponsored racism,” comparable to segregation and slavery. (Joel Hilliker, Ignoring the Race Riots Won’t Make Them Disappear, July 25, 2012.)

In this particularly inflammatory (and factually flawed) passage "inner-city violence" is associated with "a series of attacks in Chicago by almost exclusively black mobs mostly on white individuals". Once again we see "inner-city" associated with African Americans and violence.

(The above article as well as evidence that it is based on a flawed source that mistakenly presents events in an incorrect light may be seen in a previous post.)

Many of America’s inner cities are boiling over with racial tension. Hooligans and criminals are quick to exploit the chaos. ... Race riots are coming to America. Many of its inner cities are already seething, ready to explode. (Daryle Hochstetler, Riots—Coming to a City Near You, August 14, 2014.)

Once again the "inner cities" are associated with violence.

Not all cities are seeing an increase in violent crime. But several other big cities, especially those whose inner city populations have had particularly confrontational relationships with police, are experiencing similar increased violence. (Joel Hilliker, ‘We’re Ready for War’, August 12, 2015.)

"Thug"

Below are examples of PCG's writers using the word "thug". Indeed at times it seems to be used to describe African Americans. 

According to a Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) publication Chief Concerns: A Gathering Storm—Violent Crime in America, police chiefs from across the nation cite a basket of reasons for the spike in crime. Those reasons include America’s culture of violence, a lower valuation on human life, and a thug mentality glamorized by pop culture. Some blamed the reduction of police staffing and funding levels, while others said the American justice system shares part of the blame with its revolving door that is constantly releasing violent criminals back onto American streets. (8,701,578 Crimes Committed in Major U.S. Cities, June 7, 2007.)

The Institute for Public Policy Research found that a major reason for Britain’s thug generation was the collapse of British family life. British youngsters spend more time with other teens than their counterparts, indicating that they learn how to live from other teens rather than from their parents. (British Teens Out of Control, June 30, 2007.)

Law enforcement officials recognize they are dealing not only with dangerous trends but also with dangerous attitudes. Many indict pop culture as glamorizing violence and thug life, particularly “gangsta” rap music. Violent, criminal lyrics, gangster-style clothing and shirts with street slang phrases are popular even with suburban and rural youths and young adults, and are aggravating crime rates and their viciousness. (Phillip Nice, The End of American Crime, August-September 2007.)

American youth are still gorging themselves on heinous video games, including the latest release of “Grand Theft Auto,” which hits stores Tuesday and includes intense violence, blood, partial nudity, strong language, strong sexual content and use of drugs and alcohol. All this, in addition to the basic premise that you are a street thug trying to make a career in crime for yourself. The Rockstar-developed game is rated “M” for “Mature,” and retailers can only sell it to customers 17 and older. It’s no surprise then, that Grand Theft Auto is one of the most-played games for boys 12 to 14—and for girls of the same age! (The Weekend Web, April 27, 2008.)

When one white policeman kills a black thug who was trying to kill him in Ferguson, Missouri, the president creates a furor. (Gerald Flurry, The Roots of America’s Dangerous Turn Left, January 2016.)

Another participant in the campus protests, Reuben Faloughi, told the Associated Press that he felt “liberated” by Wolfe resigning. He also participated in a “die-in” protest in memory of Michael Brown. “That was the first time I got involved in activism,” he said. “I never felt that unity before, that kind of energy. It was very empowering, and it planted the seeds that students can challenge things.”
Michael Brown was a thug who tried to kill a policeman. People still use the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative from Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri—even though it has been proven to be a complete lie. The St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department exonerated the officer who killed Brown. Investigations proved that he was justified in everything he did; he shot a man who was going to kill him! Even the attorney general admitted that. If you want to save your nation, you’d better have somebody stop the criminals, one way or the other! But people keep believing whatever they want to believe. (Gerald Flurry, The Deadly Path of Higher Education, February 2016.)

(Incidentally Flurry is in error about Michael Brown. The police officer who fatally shot him six times was not exonerated. A grand jury is not supposed to exonerate as it is merely supposed to agree with the prosecutor that a case should proceed with further investigation. It is not the role of a grand jury to decide if one is guilty or not, but to decide if a case should be investigated further. There is no defense in a grand jury. The fact that a grand jury chose not to prosecute is very irregular as they are not designed to do that.)

"Ghetto"

The ghetto is rarely used within PCG's writings. But it does occur it is clearly used to describe a nasty place. A place that is undesirable. The few times the word "ghetto" is used it is never presented in a good sense.

And the choices that determine the difference between a thriving community and a ghetto—made day after day by thousands or even millions of individuals—are an outgrowth of something far less concrete: the character of those people. The most perfectly engineered of surroundings, when inhabited by people of low character, still make for a botch of a city. ...
Imagine quality city life being affordable. Imagine a city providing enough stable, decent jobs that unemployment is next to nil, and everyone enjoys affluence. ... Imagine a city devoid of run-down, impoverished slums and ghettos. (Joel Hilliker, The Cities of the Future, October 2007.)

In another instance it is insinuated that in times past pornography came from "the ghetto" and that it was accessible mainly from "the hardscrabble, no-go zones of the city."

Pornography used to be more difficult to get to—confined to the other side of the tracks, hiding in the hardscrabble, no-go zones of the city. The shame used to be prohibitive. (Joel Hilliker, Keep the Ghetto Out of Your Bedroom, September 2009.)

"Ghetto" is not used in a positive sense in PCG's writings as is seen above.

And so this list of quotes comes to an end.

***

It is unfortunate that PCG's leaders have allowed themselves to view African Americans in a simplistic and stereotyped manner. They do a disservice to their readers by promoting stereotyped thinking about African Americans. They need to learn to treat African Americans as equals instead of retaining stereotyped thinking that contaminates how they view African Americans.

Closely related to this kind of stereotyped thinking is PCG's false prophecy of "race war".

PCG needs to stop denigrating African Americans. PCG needs to repent of such attitudes.