Too true

From the inestimal India Uncut blog:

Yesterday I read Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day, in which he describes his years as an embedded sociologist in the Black Kings, a Chicago gang. In the excerpt below, he describes his first meeting with the ganglord JT:
He took the questionnaire from my hand, barely glanced at it, then handed it back. Everything he did, every move he made, was deliberate and forceful. I read him the same question that I had read the others. He didn’t laugh, but he smiled. How does it feel to be black and poor?
“I’m not black,” he answered, looking around at the others knowingly.
“Well, then, how does it feel to be African American and poor?” I tried to sound apologetic, worried that I had offended him.
“I’m not African-American either. I’m a nigger.”
Now I didn’t know what to say. I certainly didn’t feel comfortable asking him how it felt to be a nigger. He took back my questionnaire and looked over it more carefully. He turned the pages, reading the questions to himself. He appeared disappointed, though I sensed that his disappointment wasn’t aimed at me.
”Niggers are the ones who live in this building,” he said at last. ”African Americans live in the suburbs. African Americans wear ties to work. Niggers can’t find no work.”
He looked at a few more pages of the questionnaire. “You ain’t going to learn shit with this thing.”

Rico says this is a truism that cannot be easily spoken of in this country...