“When Seaside was affordable it looked like a slum.”
“Seaside is a ghetto.”
Those are words that have appeared in public conversations surrounding Seaside politics during this election season.
They deserve our attention.
Not because political candidates or their supporters should be protected from criticism. Quite the opposite. Elections should include vigorous debate about housing, affordability, public safety, economic development, infrastructure and the direction of our city.
But there is a difference between criticizing conditions in a community and characterizing the community itself.
And sometimes that distinction can tell us something about the language being used in political discourse.
What is a dog whistle?
In politics, a “dog whistle” generally refers to language that appears ordinary or neutral on the surface but may communicate an additional, more charged message to a particular audience.
The phrase comes from the literal dog whistle—a sound operating at a frequency humans cannot hear, but dogs can.
Political dog whistles work differently, of course, but the analogy is useful. The words do not necessarily say explicitly what some listeners may hear implicitly.
That is also what makes the subject complicated.
Not every offensive comment is a dog whistle. Not every criticism involving race, class, crime or neighborhoods is coded language. And we should be careful about claiming to know another person's intentions based on a single sentence.
Context matters.
History matters.
Patterns matter.
And the words we choose matter.
Seaside has a history that cannot be separated from this conversation
Seaside has long occupied a unique place on the Monterey Peninsula.
Its history is deeply connected to Fort Ord and to the military families who made this community their home. Following the integration of the U.S. Army in 1948, with Fort Ord becoming the Army's first fully integrated base, Seaside developed into an unusually diverse Central Coast community. African American families became an important part of the city's cultural, economic and political life, alongside Latino, Filipino, Asian, military and working-class families. The City itself describes Seaside as having developed into a community of ethnic and racial diversity and, during the civil-rights era, a model of political inclusion.
But there is another part of that history.
Historical material published by the City documents that people of color faced housing restrictions elsewhere on the Peninsula and that many found housing and opportunities to purchase property in Seaside. The same historical record describes Seaside's longstanding reputation as a poorer, working-class community populated by immigrants and people of color.
I know something about that history personally. When my parents arrived here in 1959, they encountered housing discrimination firsthand. My mother wanted to purchase a home in Pacific Grove, but during that era, real estate agents commonly engaged in a practice known as “racial steering,” directing minority families—including military families like mine—toward certain communities. My parents were steered toward Seaside.
That isn't something I learned from a history book. It is part of my family's history.
And that history matters when we consider the language used to describe this city today.
Words like slum and ghetto do not necessarily arrive without historical baggage. The word ghetto is a good example. Historically, it referred to areas where members of particular racial, ethnic or religious groups were segregated or confined, often because laws, discrimination or social barriers restricted where they could live. Over time, the word took on broader—and often derogatory—associations with poverty, crime and urban decay.
Today, ghetto is frequently tossed around as shorthand for anything someone considers rundown, undesirable or lower-class. That casual usage obscures the word's history and, more importantly, the people historically associated with it.
That is why context matters. When the word is used to characterize a community like Seaside—with its history as a place where minority families were able to establish homes when discriminatory practices restricted their choices elsewhere on the Peninsula—it carries implications that deserve more scrutiny than simply dismissing it as an insult.
There are photographs that tell part of that history, too.
One from 1956 shows the corner of Fremont Boulevard and Broadway Avenue, along Seaside's main commercial corridor, packed with people watching the city's annual Fourth of July parade. The Del Rey Theatre anchors the intersection as families line the streets.
This was an era when housing and everyday life in Seaside were considerably more affordable.
It was also the Seaside that would become home to families like mine.
Years later, I marched down those same streets as a child and a baton twirler in what became the Parade of Champions.
So, when I hear the assertion that “when Seaside was affordable it looked like a slum,” I don't just hear a political talking point. I compare those words with the history I know, the community I experienced and the historical record.
And I think we should ask exactly what—and whom—the word “slum” is intended to describe.
Criticizing conditions is different from labeling a community
There is nothing inappropriate about discussing Seaside's challenges.
If streets and infrastructure need attention, document it.
If crime is a concern, provide the data.
If city government makes poor decisions, identify those decisions and hold elected officials accountable.
Those are legitimate subjects for political debate.
But calling Seaside a “slum” or a “ghetto” is not simply an unflattering way of describing the city I know. It is a characterization I do not recognize as an accurate description of Seaside—past or present.
Seaside has always had its challenges, just as every community does. But a working-class community is not synonymous with a slum. Affordable housing is not synonymous with a ghetto. And a community with a large population of people of color should never be casually characterized as either.
That is precisely why the language deserves examination.
When descriptions such as “slum” and “ghetto” are repeatedly attached to a historically diverse, working-class community, we should ask what those words are actually describing. Are they describing documented physical conditions? Or are they expressing something about the people who lived there?
That question becomes especially important when history tells us that many of those residents were in Seaside because discriminatory housing practices limited where minority families could live and purchase homes elsewhere on the Monterey Peninsula.
Listen to what political language asks you to picture
One of the most important lessons from my years studying journalism at the University of Southern California is that words create images.
That is why language is so powerful.
When someone describes a community as a “slum,” what image are we being invited to see?
When someone repeatedly calls a diverse city a “ghetto,” what associations accompany that word?
Who are we supposed to picture?
What period of the city's history is being described?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who is included in that picture—and who is excluded?
Those are fair questions.
They are especially fair in a city whose identity has been shaped by working-class families, military families, African Americans, Latinos, immigrants and others who did not always have equal access to housing and opportunity elsewhere on the Monterey Peninsula.
Dog whistles depend on deniability
This is what makes coded political language so difficult to discuss.
Someone can always respond:
That's not what I meant.
And perhaps it wasn't.
We should leave room for that possibility.
But political communication cannot be evaluated solely by what a speaker later says was intended. We can also examine context, repetition, history and the meaning audiences reasonably take from the words.
That doesn't require us to accuse everyone who uses an unfortunate phrase of harboring prejudice.
It requires us to listen more carefully.
Election season is exactly when we should listen carefully
Campaigns are about more than platforms, endorsements and who has the most yard signs.
They are also about narratives.
Every campaign tells voters a story:
This is what your community is.
This is what went wrong.
These are the people responsible.
This is what we need to reclaim, restore or change.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those arguments. Challenging the status quo is an essential part of democracy.
I believe Seaside needs leaders who know and understand our true history—and who are willing to challenge and push back against attempts to mischaracterize our community or distort its history.
But voters should pay attention to how those arguments are constructed.
When criticism moves from policies to neighborhoods, from neighborhoods to communities, and from communities to descriptions historically associated with race or class, we should be willing to ask what message is actually being communicated.
Not every uncomfortable phrase is a dog whistle.
But neither should we pretend dog-whistle politics disappeared simply because explicit language became less socially acceptable.
Sometimes the message is found in what isn't said.
Sometimes it is found in what everyone is expected to understand without anyone having to say it.
And sometimes the most important thing we can do as voters is simply recognize the language when we hear it.
Words matter. Context matters. History matters.
And during an election, we should be listening to all three.
Fremont Street at Broadway Avenue, Seaside, 1956. Crowds line Seaside's main commercial corridor for the annual Fourth of July parade, which later became the Parade of Champions.
Courtesy of Vintage Images from the Monterey Peninsula.
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