Comments on: The word is a “ghetto”

By: Steve Gower

Steve Gower — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:23:41 +0000

I think the word “ghetto” understates the conditions along Boulevard and Parkway Drive. A more realistic term would be “an area of insurgency” in need of the National Guard… For far too long, drug dealers have reigned supreme in that corridor, and legitimate civil authority is practically absent there. Instead of shipping troups to Iraq, where we are basically unwelcome, we could use them to quell the insurgency going on in communities all across America…

By: nzingasings

nzingasings — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:09:27 +0000

it is amazing all this passion over unchangeable words and definitions. the message good and informed people is to advocate HOUSING LAWS that will force the Boston based owners of a large property on Boulevard to renovate immediately or forfeit some property. a law with some guidelines and legal requirements that can not be ignored. spend some energy with this conversation. for the whole community ghetto and gentrified.

By: katie

katie — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:28:50 +0000

When I hear the word “ghetto” I immediately think of Atlanta’s police helicopter – affectionately known in my neck of the woods as “the ghetto bird”.

<3<3<3

By: wesleywhatwhat

wesleywhatwhat — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:43:01 +0000

54 responses? unreal.

anyone who has spend time on boulevard knows the place is a ghetto.

to call it anything else is to be less than accurate.

not a direction that anyone should be considering if they want to maintain a repuation for telling the truth.

By: Milo

Milo — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 01:57:23 +0000

Hey Island Girl. I like your thinking. Let’s leave this chat and go have a drink.

By: NoStandardsForYou

NoStandardsForYou — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:01:59 +0000

Scott Henry wrote, “But again, I’m less concerned with whether the word is technically accurate than whether a reader would deem its current use unnecessarily inflammatory.”

Seriously are you a reporter? What reporter sacrifices accuracy in the name of making people comfortable? Truth is now less important than blowing smoke up people’s asses by your standards.

By: Adisa

Adisa — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:31:05 +0000

Scott Henry wrote: Certainly, “ghetto” is something of a charged word and one you don’t see in newspapers much anymore, but in this case, it seemed a completely accurate description of a blighted, crime-ridden area consisting almost entirely of federally subsidized housing.–END QUOTE

When I saw the paper, I thought “‘Lawless Ghetto…’, really?” That phrase alone translates without much of a stretch to imagery of “savage negroes”, “crazy darkies”, etc. There’s really no other taste to it no matter how much mayonaise you may try to spread over it.

Scott Henry wrote: If “ghetto” has indeed become so loaded a word that most modern readers can’t get around it — that it distracts from any article in which it appears — then I admit my ignorance in making a poor word choice… –END QUOTE

It seems like that’s what happened (at least among the urbane, middle-class readership of this paper), so go ahead and admit your ignorance.

Scott Henry wrote: Is “ghetto” so derogatory that it’s off-limits? Has it become a word that only African Americans are allowed to use? Or would informally banning it from print be a form of cultural white-washing, an effective denial that the social conditions the word describes still exist in America?–END QUOTE

This passage is a cheap play and doesn’t seem like an honest attempt to inspire dialogue. Instead with words like “off-limits”, “only African Americans are allowed to us” and “banning” it appears to be crafted to tantalize readers into an anti-PC / anti-censorship / freedom-of-speech / to-hell-with-those-sensitive-negroes lather.

Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 11:33:17 +0000

Ghetto is an accurate term to use in describing a badly rundown and dangerous neighborhood primarily inhabited by blacks. I think America is moving away from political correctness. People realize that white washing the truth doesn’t change it. Blacks that want to make something of their lives quickly leave the ghetto. Those that are too lazy or lacking in motivation live their lives there and suffer the consequences.

By: IslandGirl

IslandGirl — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:43:46 +0000

As someone who knows the dictionary definition and the popular connotation of the word “ghetto”, when I saw the title I was struck less by the word and more by it’s relationship to midtown, lawless, and revival–words appearing in the title. Your use of ghetto revealed, for me at least, a troubling subtext to your article, which you perhaps were unaware of in putting it together, and your professed ignorance, I believe, is feigned for the purpose of provocation.

My initial reaction was that it was used to grab attention, which, as Milo points, out only distracts from your story. Moreover, given the prestige and desirability of Midtown (Midtown), the spread of gentrification in African-American communities (Rival), and the pejorative usage of the word ghetto in contemporary parlance(Lawless), for me, the combination of words hits at and betrays a larger more disturbing trend–the displacement of low-wealth ethnic communities by the privileged. This “lawless ghetto”, syn-tactically placed as a possessive of Midtown, is no exception to this trend.

I don’t accept the argument that you, Scott, were unaware of the social implication of “ghetto”. As a journalist, you should be aware and hence more sensitive to the communities about which you write. You should be remiss given the widespread usage of the term as an insult to poor, ethnic minorities–not only African Americans, and as a pejorative adjective used to distinguish whats in or what’s acceptable, e.g. that’s so ghetto (which could be replaced by that’s so black, so old, so cheap, or so unacceptable).

Regardless of how the dictionary defines a term, it’s the social context that adds gravity to its meaning, and that should ALSO be figured into your calculus when you make decisions about what words to use.

By: jayde21

jayde21 — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:28:59 +0000

I lived in several ghettos in several states: a dirt town in N.C. that doesn’t show up on anyones map (mostly populated by poor whites and poor blacks), the lower east side of Manhattan (mostly puerto ricans, dominicans and blacks), Brooklyn, College Park (ATL) and now south east san diego. A ghetto is a ghetto, black, white, candy striped, cut it any way you like. I don’t believe it should be off limits to anyone. When used accurately and in its truest form, it describes not a specific race, but a condition, a reality of a group of people in the thick of it.