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ghetto

 
Dictionary: ghet·to   (gĕt'ō) pronunciation
n., pl., -tos, or -toes.
  1. A usually poor section of a city inhabited primarily by people of the same race, religion, or social background, often because of discrimination.
  2. An often walled quarter in a European city to which Jews were restricted beginning in the Middle Ages.
  3. Something that resembles the restriction or isolation of a city ghetto: "trapped in ethnic or pink-collar managerial job ghettoes" (Diane Weathers).

[Italian, after Ghetto, island near Venice where Jews were made to live in the 16th century.]


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Wordsmith Words: ghetto
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(GET-o)

noun
1. Part of a city, typically densely populated and run-down, inhabited by members of an ethnic group or a minority, for social, economic or legal reasons.
2. A situation or environment characterized by isolation, inferior status, bias, restriction, etc.

Etymology
From a word for a foundry, to the name of an island, to the place where Jews were forced to live, to its current sense, the word ghetto is a fascinating example of how words come to mean something entirely different as they travel through time. The word originated from Latin jacere (to throw), the root of words such as project, inject, adjective, jet. Venetian getto is the word for a foundry for artillery. As the site of such a foundry, a Venetian island was named Getto. Later when Jews were forced to live there because of persecution, the word became synonymous with cramped quarters, populated by isolated people.

Usage
"He (Vidal Sassoon) came out of a London ghetto to create the swinging hair that every woman had to have in the 60's." — Mary Tannen, Message in a Shampoo Bottle, New York Times Magazine, August 18, 2002.

"Anne Frank actually wrote two diaries... Not until she lived in the ghetto house in the closeness of her surroundings and in the locked-up condition did her themes change." — Mirjam Pressler, Take Your Childhood And Run, Bookbird (Mansfield, Ohio), Jan 1, 2001.


A part of a city, not necessarily a slum area, occupied by a minority group. The term was first used for the enforced concentration of Jews into specific residential areas in European cities from the Middle Ages, but has now spread to include other ethnic groups in unofficial ghettos, especially black minorities in the USA. Lifestyles within the ghetto differ distinctly from those of the ‘host’ population and the prejudices of the host confine the sub-group to particular locations. see redlining. Although ghettos are characterized by social disadvantage, most ghettos display a spread of socio-economic groups and the better-off may move to the affluence of the ‘gilded ghetto’. see also segregation.

Holocaust: Ghetto
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A street or city section where only Jews lived. The word ghetto was first used in Venice in 1516, as part of the phrase "Geto Nuovo," meaning "New Foundry." This referred to the closed Jewish section of the city, which had originally been the site of a foundry. During World War II the Jews of Eastern Europe were forced to leave their homes and move to ghettos where they were held essentially as prisoners.

Many Jews died in the ghetto. However, there is no proof that the ghettos were originally created for the distinct purpose of killing Jews, or that as the war continued, the Nazis tried to turn the ghettos into sites at which they could carry out their plan to decimate the Jews of Europe. Nevertheless, the Germans were not troubled by the huge number of Jews dying from hunger and lack of other basics.

There is also no evidence that the Nazi leadership themselves ordered the establishment of ghettos in the exact form they eventually took. Even on September 21, 1939, when Reinhard Heydrich called for the centralization of Polish Jews into separate areas of cities and used the term ghetto, he did not mean it in the way it was ultimately carried out. Most likely, ghettos were instituted separately by local officials. Thus, each ghetto was unique in how and when it was set up, how it was sealed off from the rest of the city, and how it was governed.

The first ghetto in Poland was established in the city of Piotrkow Trybunalski in October 1939, just a month after the war broke out. Next, a ghetto was closed off in the city of Lodz on April 30, 1940. The largest ghetto in Europe, the Warsaw Ghetto, was set up in November 1940. Only four months later, in March 1941, the population of the Warsaw Ghetto reached an all-time high of 445,000. In other areas, ghettos were only instituted later on. For example, the ghettos of Silesia (in what is now southwest Poland) were established at the end of 1942 and beginning of 1943. In the parts of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans, ghettos were usually set up after some of the local Jews had been murdered. Ghettos were also constructed in Hungary, Amsterdam, and Theresienstadt.

Each ghetto was closed off and guarded in its own particular way. The Lodz Ghetto was set off from the rest of the city by a wooden fence and barbed wire. In some spots, a brick wall was also built. Guards stood on both the inside and outside of the line dividing the ghetto from the outside. The Warsaw Ghetto was surrounded by an 11-mile wall. Guards patrolled the wall and were posted at its gates. However, it was possible to smuggle food and other items into the ghetto. The Piotrkow Trybunalski Ghetto did not have a fence or guards. Poles could go in and out of the ghetto freely, and Jews were allowed to leave the ghetto. It was only locked at the end of 1941. In October of that year, Hans Frank, the head of the Generalgouvernement, ordered the execution of any Jew found outside the ghetto area without permission to be there. Furthermore, most ghettos were locked during Deportations.

Each ghetto was also governed uniquely. Because the ghetto was actually a type of city-within-a-city, the Jews were forced to run services and institutions for themselves for which they had no previous experience. In addition to running the Judenraete, which were established before the ghettos and were a separate entity, Jews in the ghetto ran postal services, police forces, and various other services that a city would normally provide. They were also compelled to distribute food rations, and arrange for housing, health care, and jobs. Sometimes, a ghetto was divided into two separate areas: one for the workers, and one for the rest of the population. Some ghettos also contained other types of Refugees besides Jews. For example, at one point, Gypsies were held in the Lodz Ghetto.

Jews living in the ghettos of the east obtained food in two different ways: from official German sources, and from the unofficial black market. Officially, the Jews were given ration cards that allowed them to buy much less than the rest of the local population. By mid-1941, in Poland, the Germans were giving out ration cards that provided only 184 calories per day---7.5 percent of the minimum daily requirement. The Germans themselves received a full ration, while the Poles received a ration of 26 percent of the daily needs. In order to supplement the pitiful rations, the Jews were forced to pay exorbitant prices for food sold on the black market. However, most of the Jews had very little money, so many starved to death. Only wealthy Jews could afford to buy on the black market. Some Jews who worked in German factories received food on the job.

In some cases, the Germans used different names to refer to the areas in which they forced the Jews to live. Mostly, they used the common term, ghetto. However, sometimes they called those areas "Judischer Wohnbezirk," meaning Jewish residential sections.

Soon after the "final solution" began, the Germans began to eliminate the ghettos. The first ghettos were liquidated in the spring of 1942. The last Polish ghetto to be destroyed, Lodz, was emptied in the summer of 1944. Most of the Jews taken from the ghettos were deported to extermination camps where they were murdered. Only a small number were taken to concentration camps and forced labor camps near the end of the war. Almost all of the Jews of Eastern Europe had been forced to leave their homes for the ghettos of their cities and towns. By the end of the war, however, not one Eastern European ghetto was left in existence. In Hungary, where the last ghettos were established in 1944, most existed for only a few weeks pending the deportation of the Jews to auschwitz. In January 1945 when Pest was being conquered by Soviet forces, the budapest Ghetto became the only ghetto to be liberated.


Formerly, a street or quarter of a city set apart as a legally enforced residential area for Jews. Forced segregation of Jews spread throughout Europe in the 14th – 15th centuries. Ghettos were customarily enclosed with walls and gates and kept locked at night and during Christian festivals. Since outward expansion was usually impossible, most ghettos grew upward; congestion, fire hazards, and unsanitary conditions often resulted. Ghettos were abolished in western Europe in the 19th century; those revived by the Nazi Party (see Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) were overcrowded holding places preliminary to extermination. More recently, the term ghetto has been applied to impoverished urban areas exclusively settled by a minority group or groups and perpetuated by economic and social pressures rather than legal and physical measures.

For more information on ghetto, visit Britannica.com.

The Religion Book: Ghetto
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Beginning with the Egyptian bondage and continuing through the Assyrian deportation, the Babylonian captivity, and the great Diaspora, Jewish people have found themselves living among Gentiles of many nationalities (See Judaism, Development of). Originating from the Latin word for "nations," "Gentile" simply means any non-Jewish person.

Frequently, especially in Europe beginning in the Middle Ages, Gentiles established Jewish-only quarters of the city called ghettos. This was not a new concept. Way back in the time of the Exodus, Jewish people were confined to the "land of Goshen" while building bricks for the Egyptians. Although the term is now used in a more generic sense, it often was the custom to wall in the Jewish ghetto at night and to completely lock it off during Christian Holy Days to prevent mixing between Christians and Jews.

Even under these harsh and demeaning circumstances, Jewish leaders attempted to run their communities according to Talmudic law, providing for the especially poor and fostering Jewish study and scholarship.

Among the most notorious ghettos were those established by the Nazis during World War II. One such ghetto was established in 1940, when the Nazis ordered all the Jews in Warsaw, Poland, to gather in a certain part of the city, then erected a ten-foot wall to seal off the area. An article published by the Public Broadcasting System describes the conditions: More than 400,000 Jews lived there, near starvation; 10 percent of the population died from disease by the end of the first year. Deportations of "non-productive" inhabitants began in 1942, and 300,000 Jews were deported that year, most of them to Treblinka death camp. In April of 1943, when the Nazis moved to liquidate the ghetto, the remaining inhabitants began their desperate, and hopeless, resistance. Shortly before his death in battle, resistance leader Mordecai Anielewicz wrote, "My life's dream has been realized. I have lived to see Jewish defense in the ghetto rally its greatness and glory."

Sources: Fisher, Mary Pat, and Lee W. Bailey. An Anthology of Living Religions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 19–May 16, 1943).” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/ holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX103.html. October 5, 2003.


 
ghetto (gĕt'ō), originally, a section of a city in which Jews lived; it has come to mean a section of a city where members of any racial group are segregated. In the early Middle Ages the segregation of Jews in separate streets or localities was voluntary. The first compulsory ghettos were in Spain and Portugal at the end of the 14th cent. The ghetto was typically walled, with gates that were closed at a certain hour each night, and all Jews had to be inside the gate at that hour or suffer penalties. The reason generally given for compulsory ghettos was that the faith of Christians would be weakened by the presence of Jews; the idea of Jewish segregation dates from the Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215. Within the ghetto the inhabitants usually had autonomy, with their own courts of law, their own culture, and their own charitable, recreational, educational, and religious institutions. Economic activities, however, were restricted, and beyond the ghetto walls Jews were required to wear badges of identification. One of the most infamous ghettos was that of Frankfurt, to which Jews were compelled to move by a city ordinance of 1460. Crowded into a narrow section, the ghetto underwent several disastrous fires. The ghetto in Venice was established in 1516 after long negotiations between the city and the Jews. In 1870 the last ghetto in Western Europe, in Rome, was abolished. In Russia the Jewish Pale continued to exist until 1917. After the 18th cent. ghettos were also to be found in some Muslim countries. During World War II the Nazis set up ghettos in many towns in E Europe from which Jews were transported to concentration camps for liquidation; the Warsaw (Poland) ghetto was a prime example. In the United States, African Americans, Chicanos, and immigrant groups have been forced to live in ghettos through economic and social forces rather than being required to do so by law. See also anti-Semitism.


History 1450-1789: Ghetto
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From their earliest days in the Diaspora, Jews chose voluntarily to live close together, reflecting a practice commonly adopted by groups dwelling in foreign lands. Their quarters, often referred to as the Jewish quarter or street, initially were almost never compulsory, and they continued to have contacts on all levels with their Christian neighbors. However, the Catholic church looked askance at such relationships, and in 1179 the Third Lateran Council stipulated that Christians should not dwell together with Jews. This vague policy statement had to be translated into legislation by the secular authorities, and only infrequently in the Middle Ages were laws enacted confining Jews to compulsory, segregated, and enclosed quarters. The few such Jewish quarters then established, such as that of Frankfurt, were never called ghettos, since that term originated in Venice and became associated with the Jews only in the sixteenth century.

The Ghetto of Venice

In 1516, as a compromise between allowing Jews to live anywhere they wished in Venice and expelling them, the Venetian government required them to dwell on the island known as the Ghetto Nuovo (the New Ghetto), which was walled up with only two gates that were locked from sunset to sunrise. Then, when in 1541 visiting Ottoman Jewish merchants complained that they did not have enough room in the ghetto, the government ordered twenty dwellings located across a small canal walled up, joined by a footbridge to the Ghetto Nuovo, and assigned to them. This area was already known as the Ghetto Vecchio (the Old Ghetto), thereby strengthening the association between Jews and the word "ghetto."

Clearly, the word "ghetto" is of Venetian rather than of Jewish origin, as sometimes conjectured. The Ghetto Vecchio had been the original site of the municipal copper foundry, called "ghetto" from the Italian verb gettare, 'to pour or to cast', while the island across from it, on which waste products had been dumped, became known as il terreno del ghetto, 'the terrain of the ghetto', and eventually the Ghetto Nuovo.

Although compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters had existed in a few places prior to 1516, since the term "ghetto" had never been applied to them before 1516, the oft-encountered statement that the first ghetto was established in Venice in 1516 is correct in a technical linguistic sense but very misleading in a wider context, while to apply the term "ghetto" to an area prior to 1516 would be anachronistic. The most precise formulation is that the compulsory segregated and enclosed Jewish quarter received the designation "ghetto" as a result of developments in Venice in 1516.

The Spread of the Ghetto

The word "ghetto" did not long remain confined to the city of Venice. In 1555, Pope Paul IV issued his restrictive bull, Cum Nimis Absurdum. Its first paragraph provided that the Jews of the Papal States were to live together on a single street, or should it not suffice, then on as many adjacent ones as necessary, with only one entrance and exit. Accordingly, the Jews of Rome were moved into a new compulsory, segregated, enclosed quarter, which apparently was first called a ghetto seven years later. Influenced by the papal example, local Italian authorities established special compulsory quarters for the Jews in most places in which they were allowed to reside. Following the Venetian nomenclature, these new residential areas were called "ghetto" in the legislation that established them.

In later years, the Venetian origin of the word "ghetto" in connection with the foundry came to be forgotten, as it was used exclusively in its secondary meaning as referring to compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarters and then in a looser sense to refer to any area densely populated by Jews, even if they had freedom of residence and lived in the same districts as Christians.

Although the segregated, compulsory, and enclosed ghettos were abolished under the influence of the ideals of the French Revolution and European liberalism (as in Venice, 1797; Frankfurt, 1811; and Rome, where the gates and walls were removed in 1848 although the Jews were basically confined to that area until the city became a part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1870), the word "ghetto" lived on as the general designation for areas densely inhabited by members of minority groups, almost always for socioeconomic reasons rather than for legal ones, as had been the case with the initial Jewish ghetto.

"Ambiguous Usage of the Word Ghetto"

It must be noted that the varied uses of the word "ghetto" have created a blurring of the Jewish historical experience, especially when employed loosely in phrases such as "the age of the ghetto," "out of the ghetto," and "ghetto mentality." Actually, the word can be used in its original sense of a compulsory, segregated, and enclosed Jewish quarter only in connection with the Jewish experience in Italy and a few places in the Germanic lands, and not at all with that in Poland-Russia. If it is to be used in its original sense in connection with Eastern Europe, then it must be asserted that the age of the ghetto arrived there only after the Nazi invasions of World War II. However, there was a basic difference: unlike ghettos of earlier days, which were designed to provide Jews with clearly defined permanent space in Christian society, twentieth-century ghettos constituted merely temporary stages on the planned road to total liquidation.

Finally, to a great extent because of the negative connotations of the word "ghetto," the nature of Jewish life in the ghetto is often misunderstood. The establishment of ghettos did not lead to the breaking off of Jewish contacts with the outside world on any level. Additionally, from the internal Jewish perspective many evaluations of the ghetto's alleged impact upon the life of the Jews and their mentality require substantial revision. In general, the decisive element determining the nature of Jewish life was not so much whether or not Jews were required to live in a ghetto, but rather the nature of the surrounding environment and whether it constituted an attractive stimulus to Jewish thought and offered a desirable supplement to traditional Jewish genres of intellectual activity. In all places, Jewish life must be examined in the context of the external environment, and developments, especially those subjectively evaluated as undesirable, should not be attributed solely to the alleged impact of the ghetto.

Bibliography

Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Translated by Anthony Oldcorn. Berkeley, 1994.

Calabi, Donatella. "Les quartiers Juifs en Italie entre 15e et 17e siècle. Quelques hypotheses de travail." Annales 52 (1997) 4: 777–797.

Ravid, Benjamin. "From Geographic Realia to Historiographical Symbol: The Odyssey of the Word Ghetto." In Essential Papers on Jewish Culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy, edited by David Ruderman, pp. 373–385. New York, 1992.

—BENJAMIN C. I. RAVID

Science Dictionary: ghettos
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Originally, areas of medieval cities in which Jews were compelled to live. Today the term usually refers to sections of American cities inhabited by the poor. (See inner city.)

Word Tutor: ghetto
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pronunciation

IN BRIEF: A section of a city occupied by a minority group who live there especially because of social, economic, or legal pressure.

pronunciation The inhabitants of the ghetto worked hard to make it as pleasant as possible.

Wikipedia: Ghetto
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Ghettos

Originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live, a ghetto is now described as a "portion of a city in which members of a minority group live; especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure." [1]

Contents

Etymology

The word "ghetto" actually comes from the word "getto" or "gheto", which means slag in Venetian, and was used in this sense in a reference to a foundry where slag was stored located on the same island as the area of Jewish confinement.[2] An alternative etymology is from Italian borghetto, diminutive of borgo ‘borough’.[3]

The corresponding German term was Judengasse (lit. Jew's Lane) known as the Jewish Quarter.

History

The term came into widespread use in Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944 where the Jews were required to live prior to their transportation to concentration and death camps.

The definition of "ghetto" still has a similar meaning, but referring to broader range of social situations, such as any poverty-stricken urban area.

A ghetto is formed in three ways:[4]

  • As ports of illegal entry for racial minorities, and immigrant racial minorities.
  • When the majority uses compulsion (typically violence, hostility, or legal barriers) to force minorities into particular areas.
  • When economic conditions make it difficult for minority members to live in non-minority areas.

Jewish ghettos

In the Jewish diaspora, a Jewish quarter is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were often the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding Christian authorities or in World War Two, the Nazis. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or neighborhood is "Di yiddishe gas" (Yiddish: די ייִדדישע גאַס ), or "The Jewish street". Many European and Middle Eastern cities once had a historical Jewish quarter and some still have it.

Jewish ghettos in Europe existed because Jews were viewed as alien due to being a cultural minority and due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities.[5] The character of ghettos has varied through times. In some cases, the ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a relatively affluent population (for instance the Jewish ghetto in Venice). In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty and during periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents had their own justice system. Around the ghetto stood walls that, during pogroms, were closed from inside to protect the community, but from the outside during Christmas, Pesach, and Easter Week to prevent the Jews from leaving during those times.

A mellah (Arabic ملاح, probably from the word ملح, Arabic for "salt") is a walled Jewish quarter of a city in Morocco, an analogue of the European ghetto. Jewish populations were confined to mellahs in Morocco beginning from the 15th century and especially since the early 19th century. In cities, a mellah was surrounded by a wall with a fortified gateway. Usually, the Jewish quarter was situated near the royal palace or the residence of the governor, in order to protect its inhabitants from recurring riots. In contrast, rural mellahs were separate villages inhabited solely by the Jews.

During World War II, ghettos in occupied Europe 1939-1944 were established by the Nazis to confine Jews and sometimes Gypsies into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe, turning them into de-facto concentration camps and death camps in the Holocaust. Though the common usage is ghetto, the Nazis most often referred to these areas in documents and signage at their entrances as Judischer Wohnbezirk or Wohngebiet der Juden (German); both translate as Jewish Quarter. These Nazi ghettos used to concentrate Jews before extermination sometimes coincided with traditional Jewish ghettos and Jewish quarters, but not always. Expediency was the key factor for the Nazis in the Final Solution. Nazi ghettos as stepping stones on the road to the extermination of European Jewry existed for varying amounts of time, usually the function of the number of Jews who remained to be killed but also because of the employment of Jews as slave labor by the Wehrmacht and other German institutions, until Heinrich Himmler's decree issued on June 21, 1943, ordering the dissolution of all ghettos in the East and their transformation into concentration camps.[6]

Post War

After World War II, many emigrated to the USA and Israel. With the cold war progressing, industry was spread across the major cities and work assignments were given out. Outcasts, gypsies and the uneducated poor were trucked as supplementary workforce and these vacant ghettos were given to them as homes. In turn, these areas became very dangerous and are still this way today. One prominent example is the Kasimir neighborhood of Krakow. Because of the problem, many private security forces exist in the city that are commonly hired for tourist groups that wish to visit such unfortunately placed landmarks.

United States

History

The Irish immigrants of the 19th century were the first ethnic group to form ethnic enclaves in America’s cities, followed by Italians and Poles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Italian and Eastern European immigrants in the early twentieth century actually were more segregated than blacks of that era.[7] Most Europeans lived like bannahs immigrants, the second or third generation families were able to relocate to better housing in the suburbs after World War II if possible.

Other ethnic ghettos were the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York, which, until the 1990s[citation needed], was predominantly Jewish, and Spanish Harlem, which was home to a large Puerto Rican community dated back to the 1930s. Little Italys across the country were predominantly Italian ghettos. Many Polish immigrants moved to sections like Pilsen of Chicago and Polish Hills of Pittsburgh, and Brighton Beach is the home of mostly Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.[citation needed]

In the United States, between the abolition of slavery and the passing of the civil rights laws of the 1960s, discriminatory mores (sometimes codified in law, or through redlining) often forced urban African Americans to live in specific neighborhoods, which became known as "ghettos."[citation needed] Since the 1980s, urban renewal projects and gentrification began to slowly replace the ghetto with upper-income neighborhoods in most US major cities.[citation needed]

Black ghettos

Urban areas in the US can often be classified as "black" or "white", with the inhabitants primarily belonging to a homogenous racial grouping.[8]. Forty years after the African-American civil rights era (1955-1968), the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which blacks and whites inhabit different neighborhoods of vastly different quality.[9][10] Cities throughout history have contained distinct ethnic districts but they have rarely been as isolated and impoverished as some of the African American neighborhoods found in U.S. cities.[7] The racial segregation found in ghettos can lead to social, economic and political tensions.

Due to segregated conditions and widespread poverty some black neighborhoods in the United States have been called "ghettos". Most of these neighborhoods are in Northeastern cities where African Americans moved during The Great Migration (1914-1950) a period when over a million[11] African Americans moved out of the rural Southern United States to escape the widespread racism of the South, to seek out employment opportunities in urban environments, and to pursue what was widely perceived to be a better life in the North.[11] In the Midwest, neighborhoods were built on high wages from manufacturing union jobs; these in-demand jobs dried up during the decline of industry and the ensuing downsizing at steel mills, auto plants, and other factories starting in the early-1970's. [7] Segregation increased most in those cities with the greatest black in-migration and then crippling economic decline, epitomized in cities like Gary, IN.[12]

In the years following World War II, many white Americans began to move away from inner cities to newer suburban communities, a process known as white flight. White flight occurred, in part, as a response to black people moving into white urban neighborhoods, and remains a significant cause in the spread of urban decay.[12][13] Discriminatory practices, especially those intended to "preserve" emerging white suburbs, restricted the ability of blacks to move from inner-cities to suburbs, even when they were economically able to afford it. In contrast to this, the same period in history marked a massive suburban expansion available primarily to whites of both wealthy and working class backgrounds, facilitated through highway construction and the availability of federally subsidized home mortgages (VA, FHA, HOLC). These made it easier for families to buy new homes in the suburbs, but not to rent apartments in cities.[14]

In response to the influx of black people from the South, banks, insurance companies, and businesses began denying or increasing the cost of services, such as banking, insurance, access to jobs,[15] access to health care,[16] or even supermarkets[17] to residents in certain, often racially determined,[18] areas. The most devastating form of redlining, and the most common use of the term, refers to mortgage discrimination. Data on house prices and attitudes toward integration suggest that in the mid-twentieth century, segregation was a product of collective actions taken by non-blacks to exclude blacks from outside neighborhoods[19]

The "Racial" Provisions of FHA Underwriting Manual of 1938, included the following guidelines which exacerbated the segregation issue:

Recommended restrictions should include provision for: prohibition of the occupancy of properties except by the race for which they are intended …Schools should be appropriate to the needs of the new community and they should not be attended in large numbers by inharmonious racial groups.[12][20]

This meant that ethnic minorities could secure mortgage loans only in certain areas, and it resulted in a large increase in the residential racial segregation and urban decay in the United States.[21] The creation of new highways in some cases divided and isolated black neighborhoods from goods and services, many times within industrial corridors. For example, Birmingham’s interstate highway system attempted to maintain the racial boundaries that had been established by the city’s 1926 racial zoning law. The construction of interstate highways through black neighborhoods in the city led to significant population loss in those neighborhoods and is associated with an increase in neighborhood racial segregation.[22] By 1990, the legal barriers enforcing segregation had been replaced by decentralized racism, where whites pay more than blacks to live in predominantly white areas.[7] Some social scientists suggest that the historical processes of suburbanization and decentralization are instances of white privilege that have contributed to contemporary patterns of environmental racism.[23]

Despite mainstream America’s use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor, culturally or racially-homogenous urban area, those living in the area often used it to signify something positive. The black ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home": a place representing authentic blackness and a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from rising above the struggle and suffering of being black in America.[24] Langston Hughes relays in the "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945): "The buildings in Harlem are brick and stone/And the streets are long and wide,/But Harlem’s much more than these alone,/Harlem is what’s inside." Playwright August Wilson used the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both of which draw upon the author’s experience growing up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto.[7]

Other ghettos

Chinatowns originated as racially segregated enclaves where most Chinese immigrants settled from the 1850s onward. Major Chinatowns emerged in Boston; Camden and Trenton, New Jersey; Chicago; Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco, California; New York City; New Orleans; Philadelphia; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; Vancouver; Toronto and other major cities. Today, most Chinese Americans no longer reside in those urban areas, but post-1970s Asian immigration from China, Southeast Asia and the Philippines have repopulated many Chinatowns. Many Little Italys, Chinatowns (or Koreatowns and Little Tokyos) and other ethnic neighbourhoods have become more middle-class in recent times, dominated by successful restaurant owners, family-owned stores and businessmen able to start up their own companies. Many have become tourist attractions in their own right.[citation needed]

In the United States, many Hispanic immigrants from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean concentrated in barrios located in cities with large Hispanic populations such as Modesto, California; New York City; Anaheim, Brawley, Chino, Coachella, El Centro, El Monte, Fresno, Huron, Indio, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Moreno Valley, National City, Oakland, Oceanside, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, and Santa Ana, California; Dallas, Houston, El Paso, and San Antonio, Texas; Allentown and Reading, Pennsylvania; Phoenix, Tucson, and Yuma, Arizona; Kansas City, Missouri; Oklahoma City; Chicago and Sterling, Illinois. Many of these cities struggled with issues of crime, drugs, youth gangs and family breakdown. However, middle-class and college-educated Hispanics moved out of barrios for other neighborhoods or the suburbs. The barrios continually thrived by the large influx of immigration from Mexico, this largely due to the explosion of the Latino population in the late 20th century. The majority of residents in these urban barrios are immigrants directly from Latin America.[citation needed]

United Kingdom

The existence of ethnic enclaves in the United Kingdom is controversial. Southall Broadway in London, where less than 12 percent of the population is white, has been cited as an example of a 'ghetto', but in reality the area is home to a number of different ethnic groups and religious groups.[25][26] Analysis of data from Census 2001 revealed that only two wards in England and Wales , both in Birmingham, had one dominant non-white ethnic group comprising more than two-thirds of the local population, but there were 20 wards where whites were a minority making up less than a third of the local population.[27][28] By 2001, two London boroughs - Newham and Brent - had 'minority majority' populations, and most parts of the city tend to have a diverse population. Since 2001, many more locations in the UK (including several London boroughs) have seen a change in ethnic makeup and numerous wards and boroughs in the country have 'minority majority' populations.

Other uses

Ghetto is used sometimes in Britain to refere to a place one wouldn't want to live, or where there are a vast majority of the underclass or lower Working class living rather than somewhere racially different.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ ghetto - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
  2. ^ http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ghetto&searchmode=none
  3. ^ The New Oxford American Dictionary, Second Edition, Erin McKean, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-517077-6
  4. ^ Ghettos: The Changing Consequences of Ethnic Isolation
  5. ^ GHETTO Kim Pearson
  6. ^ Ghetto in Flames Yitzhak Arad, pp. 436-437
  7. ^ a b c d e Ghettos: The Changing Consequences of Ethnic Isolation
  8. ^ Inequality and Segregation R Sethi, R Somanathan - Journal of Political Economy, 2004
  9. ^ SEGREGATION AND STRATIFICATION: A Biosocial Perspective Douglas S. Massey Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race (2004), 1: 7-25 Cambridge University Press
  10. ^ Inequality and Segregation Rajiv Sethi and Rohini Somanathan Journal of Political Economy, volume 112 (2004), pages 1296–1321
  11. ^ a b The Great Migration
  12. ^ a b c The Suburban Racial Dilemma: Housing and Neighborhoods By William Dennis Keating. Temple University Press. 1994. ISBN 1566391474
  13. ^ Central City White Flight: Racial and Nonracial Causes William H. Frey American Sociological Review, Vol. 44, No. 3 (Jun., 1979), pp. 425-448
  14. ^ "Racial" Provisions of FHA Underwriting Manual,
  15. ^ Racial Discrimination and Redlining in Cities
  16. ^ See: Race and health
  17. ^ In poor health: Supermarket redlining and urban nutrition, Elizabeth Eisenhauer, GeoJournal Volume 53, Number 2 / February, 2001
  18. ^ How East New York Became a Ghetto by Walter Thabit. ISBN 0814782671. Page 42.
  19. ^ The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, Jacob L. Vigdor The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 107, No. 3 (Jun., 1999), pp. 455-506
  20. ^ Federal Housing Administration, Underwriting Manual: Underwriting and Valuation Procedure Under Title II of the National Housing Act With Revisions to February, 1938 (Washington, D.C.), Part II, Section 9, Rating of Location.
  21. ^ Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States by Professor Kenneth T. Jackson ISBN 0195049837
  22. ^ From Racial Zoning to Community Empowerment: The Interstate Highway System and the African American Community in Birmingham, Alabama Charles E. Connerly Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 22, No. 2, 99-114 (2002)
  23. ^ Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California Laura Pulido Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 2000), pp. 12-40
  24. ^ Smitherman, Geneva. Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
  25. ^ We can't run away from it: white flight is here too | Anthony Browne - Times Online
  26. ^ Kerr, J., Gibson, A. and Seaborne, M. (2003) London from punk to Blair. Reaktion Books.
  27. ^ www.london.gov.uk/gla/publications/factsandfigures/dmag-briefing-2005-38.rtf
  28. ^ www.lse.ac.uk/collections/BSPS/ppt/May06_BB.ppt

Translations: Ghetto
Top

Dansk (Danish)
n. - ghetto
v. tr. - samles i ghetto

Nederlands (Dutch)
getto, achterbuurt, gescheiden gehouden groep/gebied, in een getto stoppen/houden

Français (French)
n. - ghetto
v. tr. - mettre dans des ghettos, (fig) reléguer au second plan

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ghetto, Judenviertel, Armenviertel
v. - in ein Ghetto beschränken

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (ιστ.) (εβραϊκό) γκέτο, (μτφ.) γκέτο, υποβαθμισμένη αστική περιοχή κατοικούμενη από μειονότητα

Italiano (Italian)
ghetto

Português (Portuguese)
n. - gueto (m)

Русский (Russian)
гетто

Español (Spanish)
n. - barrio bajo, barrio pobre, ghetto, judería
v. tr. - marginar

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - getto

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
犹太人区, 将...隔离在聚居区, 使集中居住

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 猶太人區
v. tr. - 將...隔離在聚居區, 使集中居住

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 유대인 강제 거주 지구, 빈민가
v. tr. - 강제 거주 지구에 넣다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ユダヤ人強制居住区域, ユダヤ人街

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) حي اليهود‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮גטו‬
v. tr. - ‮הכניס אנשים לגטו או החזיק אותם בתוכו‬


 
 

 

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