The Cincinnati Beacon
Nick Spencer’s Urban Pioneers: A Movement In Racism
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Posted by The Dean of Cincinnati
A few weeks ago, after yet another crushing defeat in his bid for City Council, Nick Spencer returned to the blogosphere by resurrecting his former domain: nickspencer.blogspot.com. Several of his posts have dealt with the whining propaganda that can typically be associated with a misdirected movement known as “Urban Pioneers.”
 I’ve been considering that monicker—“Urban Pioneers”—ever since Spencer’s crybaby post entitled ”Do They Really Want Us?”
I started thinking about the word “pioneer,” and what specifically it means. Consider the following relevant definitions, cited from the Oxford English Dictionary Online:
1. Mil. One of a body of foot-soldiers who march with or in advance of an army or regiment, having spades, pickaxes, etc. to dig trenches, repair roads, and perform other labours in clearing and preparing the way for the main body.
3. fig. a. One who goes before to prepare or open up the way for others to follow; one who begins, or takes part in beginning, some enterprise, course of action, etc.; an original investigator, explorer, or worker, in any department of knowledge or activity; an originator, initiator (of some action, scheme, etc.); a forerunner (in such action, etc.).
Hopefully, the problem with the concept is immediately obvious: there were already people in Over-The-Rhine when people like Nick Spencer started to colonize! Like the early American pioneers who “cleared the way” by destroying Native Americans and stealing their land so white civilization could build on their graves, so too does the Urban Pioneer movement seem hellbent on doing the same to center-city blacks.
What does it mean if we think of Urban Pioneers as people who are “clearing the way,” as the word itself denotes? What are they clearing? For whom are they clearing it?
How can Urban Pioneers “take part in a beginning” in a place where something is already happening?
The old American stories mythologized the Wild West into something savage. When the people who were already there were reduced to “savages,” it became easier in the collective American consciousness to do whatever was necessary to clear them out of the way. We called it “Manifest Destiny.” We thought we were on a mission from God.
And it certainly looks like Nick Spencer and his Urban Pioneers are cut from the same cloth as their historical predecessors. But what really makes me sick is their desire to become mythologized in the same way.
Human beings are human beings (even if they are poor and/or black), and no person should be treated as some kind of bothersome obstacle for the actualization of a later arriver’s enterprise.
|