Semantics

I was at the gas station last week, and offhandedly commented that the locality was now akin to a Corporate Ghetto.

Based on the reaction, you'da thought I had smacked-down Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Jessie Jackson with one fell blow.

While perhaps an unfortunate reference to use, ghettos are not exclusively black, but generally overcrowded, disagreeable places where citizens have no say in their daily life.

I consider the ravening, uncontrolled and unplanned foreign development of the area, coupled with the total elimination of most small business in favor of the Corporate BORG, to be a totally unwelcome change from the low population density small town that it has consumed - Therefore a Corporate Ghetto. I have moved numerous times over the past 20 years to avoid just such places, not because of racial makeup, but due to the overcrowding, traffic, and poor service rendered by BigBox stores and developers which pillage every square foot of land in the name of avarice.

That this ambiguity over semantics resulted in such a startling reaction, especially considering that I have no power or influence one way or the other, speaks volumes on the current state of racial mistrust.

Ah, well - give it another hundred years or so...