Paul Ryan: My Comments About Inner City Culture Were ‘Inarticulate’

Representative Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) poverty tour hit a snag yesterday when his comments on “this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular,” drew criticism for being racist.

ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky called out the comments on Wednesday, noting that Ryan also cited Charles Murray, “a conservative social scientist who believes African-Americans are, as a population, less intelligent than whites due to genetic differences.”

On Thursday, Ryan termed his wording “inarticulate,” but defended his overall message:

After reading the transcript of yesterday morning’s interview, it is clear that I was inarticulate about the point I was trying to make. I was not implicating the culture of one community—but of society as a whole. We have allowed our society to isolate or quarantine the poor rather than integrate people into our communities. The predictable result has been multi-generational poverty and little opportunity. I also believe the government’s response has inadvertently created a poverty trap that builds barriers to work. A stable, good-paying job is the best bridge out of poverty.

The walk-back comes only a few days after Ryan had to take to Facebook to express “regret” for “failing to verify” a story he told at CPAC that was revealed to have been heavily manipulated, and a week after several economists took exception to his characterization of their research in his anti-poverty report.

[h/t National Review / ThinkProgress]
[Image via Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com]

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