Black people can't be Ghetto
First off,
the use of the word ghetto has become synonymous with urban areas. Ghetto has
become almost exclusive to Black people in this country. This is erroneous and biased to say the least. Black people are not ghetto, nor did Black folks make the community a ghetto, it was the ghetto when Black folks got there.
We all know the story of how Africans were brought to this country to work on plantations. During the industrial revolution, many Freedmen migrated from southern rural areas into
urban areas of the United States. Many
of them moved into northern cities that were heavily populated. These cities were also segregated. There were many divisions among European
ethnic groups. During this time in American history the social construct of
whiteness had not been fully established. This means that there was more tribalism among European Americans. They did not see themselves as one unique group there was much infighting among them. There was tension between the Polish
and the Italian, the German and the French, the British and the Irish so on and
so forth.
As we stated earlier the migration of former slaves into
urban communities found them unable to find places to live due to housing laws.
This is when the Jewish families began renting their old homes to the new Black
population. They became the landlords of the modern era. Many of those families
remain the landlords in African American communities today. Ghetto is a Jewish
word let them have it back.