Inter­net pun­dits made hay today over a clip released by Buz­zFeed that shows a ​“testy” Repub­li­can vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Paul Ryan abort­ing an inter­view seg­ment with Michigan’s ABC12 News. The Ryan cam­paign sought to short-cir­cuit the crit­i­cism by say­ing Ryan made an appro­pri­ate response to a ​“weird ques­tion” by the local ABC reporter.

Ryan volunteered the phrase "inner cities" out of nowhere, except his own preconceptions about the link between violent crime and inner cities—i.e. where poor blacks and Latinos live.

But what Paul Ryan said before that ter­mi­na­tion makes weird look like a virtue. Ryan’s com­ments about solv­ing inner-city prob­lems were unabashed­ly racist.

Asked if ​“this coun­try has a gun prob­lem,” Ryan imme­di­ate­ly retort­ed: ​“This coun­try has a crime problem.”

The answer is a text­book ​“piv­ot”– a tech­nique can­di­dates use to slip by the actu­al ques­tion in order to choose a con­trolled response that is on message.

But in expand­ing on his piv­ot, Ryan jumped mouth first into a bri­ar patch of racist stereo­types. After say­ing the Unit­ed States has ​“good, strong gun laws” that just need bet­ter enforce­ment, Ryan defined the source of vio­lent crime prob­lem and offered his solution:

But the best thing to help pre­vent vio­lent crime in the inner cities is to bring oppor­tu­ni­ty in the inner cities, is to help peo­ple get out of pover­ty in the inner cities, is to help teach peo­ple good dis­ci­pline, good char­ac­ter. That is civ­il soci­ety. That’s what char­i­ties, and civic groups, and church­es do to help one anoth­er make sure that they can real­ize the val­ue in one another.

Nobody calls Park Avenue, Hyde Park or Rodeo Dri­ve the ​“inner city.” And even though Sarah Jes­si­ca Park­er and Don­ald Trump live in urban cen­ters, no one refers to her West Vil­lage brown­stone or his gild­ed pent­house as inner-city digs.

​“Inner city” is code for impov­er­ished black and Lati­no urban neigh­bor­hoods; inner city is a euphemism for ghetto.

Nor did any­one ask Ryan about inner cities in the inter­view seg­ment post­ed on Buz­zFeed. Ryan vol­un­teered the phrase out of nowhere, except his own pre­con­cep­tions about the link between vio­lent crime and inner cities — i.e. where poor blacks and Lati­nos live. He pro­posed alle­vi­at­ing their pover­ty and pre­vent­ing crime by help­ing teach inner-city peo­ple good dis­ci­pline and char­ac­ter. For, accord­ing to Ryan, that is what con­sti­tutes ​“civ­il soci­ety.” As for the roles of edu­ca­tion, health care, jobs, vet­er­ans’ ben­e­fits, child care and decent food? Shucks, the ​“best thing” is to just leave it to char­i­ties, civic groups and church­es to teach those inner city peo­ple to con­trol their urges.

Until then, hide the white wom­en­folk and the good sil­ver from the inner-city denizens, who lack the ​“dis­ci­pline” to resist vio­lent crimes or the ​“good char­ac­ter” to get out of poverty.

Oh, I’m sor­ry. Were we talk­ing about the gun problem?