In Brooklyn it's of significance that Geraldine Ferraro is from Queens, because old-time Brooklynites know that Queens of the period in which Ferraro came of age was, here and there, verboten for people of color.
In fact Ferraro as a Congressperson back in her heyday in the 1980s represented parts of Queens identified with Archie Bunkerism, fear and loathing of immigrants, disgust at the idea that blacks might be moving into a house down the block.
Let's first of all be clear that Archie Bunker was not Carroll O'Connor, the late actor who was in real life a deeply sensitive person with a social conscience.
But the Bunker character that O'Connor played - Queens working class man dragged kicking and screaming into post Civil Rights America - was one that could be seen and heard all across the borough of Queens in decades past, especially the communities that were represented by Geraldine Ferraro.
Time magazine said of Ferraro two decades ago that she "has been on a very fast track ever since she went to Washington in 1979 as a new Congresswoman from Archie Bunker's district."
So it is no surprise that Ferraro has taken the Clinton-Obama contest into the racial gutter where she seems so comfortable, saying that Obama has come as far as he has in this campaign because he is African American.
In fact, as tolerant as Hillary Clinton has been of race-baiting mouthings by her surrogates - not least among them her husband - she was not about to let this one sail on freely.
And so Ferraro, indeed, stepped down from her position in the Clinton campaign . . . but her comments will live on, much as the memory of one Archie Bunker does.
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