They stole the phrase “broken windows” too.
It used to mean something simpler and more benign. It used to mean simply that if you left a house or a building with a broken window, it would attract vandals to break more windows, and in a cascading effect the whole neighborhood would decline.
It was not a criticism of minorities or classes… it was essentially pro-urban beautification. It was an encouragement for neighborhoods to form block clubs to report damaged street signs so the city would repair them, for cities to help people keep up neighborhoods, to provide grants for new facades, etc., and especially for cities to maintain their own properties… for cities to mow the lawns of, fix the windows of, and secure the doors of those houses and abandoned factories that the city had taken possession of due to back taxes, instead of letting them rot as rust belt cities too often do.
That’s the biggest thing - it was a call for cities to SERVE disadvantaged neighborhoods and for cities to be responsible for their own properties to prevent downsliding and creating urban blight.
And these racists turned that effect and that phrase into yet another reason to oppress, another reason to enrich police unions and politicians, another reason to enrich private prisons.