BlackListed! Magazine

The winning shot at the game last night was ghetto. That outfit is so ghetto. Did you know she grew up in the ghetto? Don’t make me get ghetto in here.

The word ghetto has become one of the most ambiguous terms in the English language, but its true meaning has evolved over time and location.

The term ghetto was first used to describe a gated part of Venice where Jews were forced to live beginning in 1516, and it was used to describe such Jewish containments until the fall of Nazi Germany. The term became popular in American culture after World War II when it was used to describe poor, overcrowded and almost completely racially homogenous urban neighborhoods.

Langston Hughes wrote about ghettos in New York during the Harlem Renaissance in his work “Negro Ghetto.” In the book, Hughes states that Harlem is “what’s inside.”

During the 1920s, much was going on inside areas now deemed ghettos. Contrary to the current derelict state of some buildings, ghettos were thriving areas of black businesses and well-kept homes, where black professionals lived alongside the poor.

The term became increasingly negative in the 1980s when the black community was hit with three obstacles: gangs, crack cocaine and AIDS. Unlaced white Reeboks could get you killed if your pair was coveted or you stepped on someone else’s. Women were either strung out on drugs or kicking the habit. And woe to those caught with a blue hat on when someone wearing red was nearby, regardless of the fact that the victim may not have any gang affiliation.

Granted, there were many working mothers and fathers trying to make a better life for their children, but that role was almost completely ignored until hip-hop decided to take over the term and make it into something positive. Rappers like Jay-Z and Diddy recount how hard their mothers worked to make a better life for them. Parents who sacrificed for her children weren’t uncommon in these areas and still isn’t.

The term has become more and more desensitized since its introduction into American culture. The ghetto that Langston Hughes spoke of isn’t even a place anymore, it’s an adjective. Instead of black enterprise and growth, ghetto stands for a flashy car and the length of acrylic fingernails.

As ambiguous as the term may currently be, it stands for something in the black community. In residential terms, ghetto may refer to decrepit buildings, rampant with crime, drugs and violence, but it has always been a place of struggle. Even in the time of Langston Hughes, the residents were struggling to make a place for themselves in a world that seemed to hate them for the color of their skin.

The hope that the ghetto once stood for is moving further and further into hopelessness. With every wrong action done in the ghetto and misplaced use of the word comes despair. The ghetto is not what those black entrepreneurs hoped it would be, and it’s not making a lot of progress toward that dream.
    
Just like civil rights activists did in the 1960s with the slogan “Black is beautiful,” which put a positive connotation on the skin color that segregationists hated so much, a similar movement may salvage the image of the ghetto. The ghetto is not just a place, it’s the past, present and future of many black Americans; a symbol of their ongoing struggle to find themselves in America.

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