ArcaMax

Did Sen. Bernie Sanders really say that white people "don't know what it's like to be poor?" Well, yes, he said it, but he didn't mean it, which only shows how quickly serious presidential debates can turn pretty goofy.

In context, the Vermont Democrat's "ghetto gaffe," as some headline writes quickly branded it, came during Sunday's Democratic presidential debate in Flint, Mich.

Responding to a question from CNN's Don Lemon about what "racial blind spots" the candidates had, Sanders said, "When you're white, you don't know what it's like to be living in a ghetto. You don't know what it's like to be poor. You don't know what it's like to be hassled when you walk down the street or you get dragged out of a car."

With that, Sanders accidentally landed in the ever-shifting sands of political correctness. That's an etiquette that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump loves to flout but it still means something to liberals, among whom the comment touched off a blizzard of ridicule in social media.

Sanders tried to clarify his remarks the next day with an obligatory "Beg your pardon...."

"What I meant to say is when you talk about ghettos traditionally, what you're talking about is African-American communities," Sanders told a gaggle of reporters.

"I think many white people are not aware of the kinds of pressures and the kind of police oppression that sometimes takes place within the African-American community."

That's ironic, I thought, since "ghetto" originally referred, I am told, to the part of Venice to which Jews were restricted and segregated -- centuries before the word was applied in the 1960s to socially and economically segregated African-American communities.

But our language around race is filled with ironies. "Ghetto" has fallen out of fashion, except as a put-down of somebody's taste or behavior ("That's so ghetto"). Sanders' revival of its earlier meaning brought to mind Elvis Presley's 1969 hit, "In the Ghetto." ("On a cold and gray Chicago mornin' a poor little baby child is born in the ghetto...."), along with the thought that perhaps Bernie needs to update his record collection.

But more seriously, Sanders comments touched a nerve with a number of African-Americans with its implication that most black people are poor and that white people aren't.

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(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.