Dictionary.com defines the word as:
1. a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships.
2. (formerly, in most European countries) a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live.
3. a section predominantly inhabited by Jews.
4. any mode of living, working, etc., that results from stereotyping or biased treatment:
job ghettos for women; ghettos for the elderly.
Who do you think of when you hear or say the word "ghetto"??
Do you automatically think of uncultured, poorly educated, loud, black people from low-income neighborhoods??
Do you automatically think of the ghettos where Jews were forced to live in European countries?
Do you automatically think of the ghettos Irish and European immigrants lived in when they first arrived in the US?
When you think of poor whites in this country do you automatically label them as "trashy"??
What's the difference between ghetto and trashy?
It has been beyond bizarre to watch the way the word ghetto has morphed into an acceptable tag to label a certain class of black people. It's troubling to see how it has exploded into a favored pop culture term in light of its self-hating, negative racial overtones. I can't help but also think of how some blacks -- particularly among the young who idolize their rapper heroes -- boast that they've "reclaimed" the hateful word "nigger", as well.
Every time I hear a black person call another black person the n-word a part of me feels like the world has been turned upon its head. EVERY TIME I hear that word I can’t help but remember the disturbing reality that when my father was about 8 yrs old he accompanied his older cousins and uncles to cut down the body of a cousin from a tree in the woods where he had been hung by the klan. “NIGGERS DIE” had been carved deep into his chest with a knife and his body had been mutilated. That experience combined with all the other racism he endured during jim crow and segregation had a profound effect him. He grew into a very angry, bitter, abusive man. That word will NEVER be ok with me. EVER. So many people are forgetting history. It’s troubling that we’re living in a time where people — especially the young — are losing sight of what our elders went through during the furnace of jim crow and the civil rights movement and whose shoulders we're standing upon right now. I think the last straw for me was when I was riding a bus to work here in San Francisco and a large group of Asian kids got on going to school, dressed in their finest rap/hip-hop attire, and began rapidly spitting out the n-word at each other and an urban patois of poor speech and grammar. I don’t think that’s quite the “dream” of equality civil rights fighters like Dr. King, Odetta, Malcolm X and Dr. Dorothy Height hoped for.
I have a number of white friends all over the country who have kids in city/urban schools where some of their peers are from low-income and poor households. It's been extremely sobering and painful to listen to some of them throw around the word ghetto as they negatively refer to the more "troubled" students (many who happen to be black and/or Latino), families and neighborhoods some of these kids are from (often in front of their own kids' ever-listening ears). A number of them are blissfully ignorant with the way they only use "ghetto" to label lower income, uneducated, uncultured blacks and "trashy" to label lower income, uneducated, uncultured whites. Some are very uncomfortable when they're called on it. Others displayed a kind of hubris and quiet bigotry that knocked me on my ass (and damaged the friendship). Whenever I hear them or anyone else, for that matter, using these words I always strive to remind them that poor EQUALS poor, no matter what race/ethnicity, etc.
Some people may think this is such a petty issue, but it's not. That old "sticks and stones" adage doesn't hold a lot of water for many people in the times we're living in. Children are sponges and they soak up so much of what they hear and model from the behavior of the elders and peers around them. There are still so many hidden Americas of color, within the US, and the majority of white people still have no clue about them (and many, unfortunately, just don't care to learn) -- black America...American Indian America...Latino America, Korean American, Asian Indian America, etc. There is still a major battle for equality, dignity and civil rights going on, and there a lot of folks who have given up on the "dream".
If you don't quite get what I'm trying to say, consider the fact that there are still scores of low-income communities of color where children and teens don't receive the same kinds of encouragement and support, even as their poor white counterparts. There are damaging messages that continue to be thrown around that plant the wrong seeds in young black, Latino and American Indian minds and so much of it is steeped in negative self-esteem and the fact that misery often loves company, such as:
-- If you speak proper English and good grammar you're trying to "talk white" and be
something you're not.
-- If you actually like to go to school everyday, look forward to reading/studying/learning
new things and give a damn about your GPA you're trying to be "stuck up" and better than
the people in your family or neighborhood peer group who look down upon and actively
discourage these aspirations.
-- Striving to be middle class/working class is a negative, "bougie" idea
(pronounced boo-gee as in bourgeois) and, again, means you're striving to be something
you shouldn't and, of course, means you're ashamed of being black.
True enough, we live in an age where the shifting sands of semantics and linguistics turn and evolve quicker than we can all keep up with. "Bad" no longer means bad, as a negative connotation. "Sick" no longer only means sick, as a term of ill health or even maladaptive behavior. But there are some words which hold such hate and weighty dysfunction, we should all be careful and mindful about how they are used. If you're a parent of any color, across all socio-economic groups, etc. teach your kids about the true origins and meanings of words like nigger, ghetto and other racist/sexist/xenophobic epithets. Help plant the seeds of how dangerous it is to judge an entire class of people based on the actions of a troubled number among the many -- especially who/what is depicted in the mainstream media. Are there poor whites who speak in extremely poor English and broken grammar, speak loudly in public, flunked out of their schools, got knocked-up at 14, have children by 4 different fathers, got addicted to crack and meth, fathered 7 kids by 7 different mothers, have a deep love for malt liquor and hot sauce...and live on welfare?? Absolutely. Are American whites judged as an entire race based on these variables?? Absolutely NOT. There is so much work that still needs to be done towards equality and understanding. Each and every one of us have a part to play.
