How America Normalized Racism: Ghetto
I hate the word Ghetto. I absolutely detest its use, what it is used for and what it stands for. Its used way to often to describe a area, an item, a building but more specifically,a area of land in your neighborhood. Its a word that over the course of 500+ years that has evolved uglier and uglier.
But to really understand the meaning of the word, you gotta go back. Way back to 1516. In Venice, Italy, mostly ran by Christians started shuffling ita jewish residents into a area known as New Ghetto, in which the word ghetto derived from a venitian verb gettare meaning 'pour or to cast'. This was the earliest links of the word that specifically aimed towards Jewish people. Even though as the years gone by and the freedom of religious persecution for Jewish people still continued to be fought, the word stuck around and even traveled to the United States and more common, the ghettoes of New York.
In World War II, nazis forced concentration camps and imprisoned jewish people and for those lucky enough to avoid the concentration camps, were forced into 'ghettos'in which they starved, dehydrated and died.
Around 1934, apart of 'The New Deal' America was practicing a horrific real estate law known as 'redlining'. A practice in which due to segregation and Jim Crow laws disqualified african americans from living in white suburban neighborhoods and forcing them to live in urban housing projects, mostly older, less maintained properties.
For example. In Orlando, examples of the effects of redlining still exists as Division St was a literal street marker for areas that were redlined for segregation purposes. Areas such as Washington Shores, Parramore and Pine Hills was packed with a heavy black population.
In 1965, Kenneth Clark wrote Dark Ghetto, which described the effects of redlining. Most areas seemed bleak. lost and abandoned. Because of this book and its ties to redlining, the association of ghetto and jews quickly shifted to ghetto and black.
These matters quickly exaggerated the matter due to many reasons, one being Elvis Presley's 'In The Ghetto' which depicted black households in Chicago from a outside white perspective.
Within 20 years, the word was embraced by black culture as a word used to describe hard life as a black man, yet empowerment of their roots. But this was short lived.
As of 10 years, it still is associated with black culture yet, is used as a verb to describe 'less than perfect ideals'.
In 2010, a common practice for white communities to have was a gathering known as 'ghetto parties' where they would appropriate black culture, sometimes usage of black face, with black parphenalia.
Knowing that ghetto is associated with the worst areas that created death, despair, frustration, unequality and racism for both Jews and Blacks, people will often continue to use this word without the knowledge that this word is associated with the most disgusting and diabolical times of racist America.
So next time you visit a store and you dont really understand how to describe it, think twice about the words you say.