Black People can't be GHETTO

                  

                   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.

The Jewish people had been severely oppressed in Germany and had been segregated in that society. sources click here The areas of town that the Jewish people were given to live in were called the Ghettos. So,

 

when they immigrated to this country they were relegated to their own area of town as segregation would dictate. Not only did they bring their own language to the communities, they brought the name as well: you guessed it they called it the Ghetto.

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.