Ghetto

A ghetto is an area where people from a specific ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion. The word historically referred to restricted housing zones where Jews were required to live; however, it now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area.

African-American ghettos in the United States

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) often forced urban African Americans to live in specific neighborhoods, which also became known as "ghettos". Due to segregation laws, in existence in many US states until the Civil Rights Movement and the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, African-Americans of all economic levels had to live in ghettos such as Bronzeville in Chicago and Harlem in New York City. 1960s civil rights laws allowed wealthier African Americans to emigrate to formerly all-white areas, the result of which was that the economic bases of many ghettos collapsed, leaving them zones of below-average wealth, poorly-maintained housing, and high crime. By the 1970's, the Robert Taylor Homes, located in Chicago's Bronzeville, was home to the poorest and third-poorest census tracts in the United States.

Related Topics:
United States - Slavery - Civil rights - 1960s - Law - African American - Segregation - Civil Rights Movement - Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Bronzeville - Chicago - Harlem - New York City - 1970 - Robert Taylor Homes

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The formation of the ghetto and the black underclass forms one of most controversial issues in sociology.

Related Topics:
Underclass - Sociology

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One of the earliest studies of the modern phenomenon of ghetto formation was Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 work The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, usually simply referred to as the Moynihan Report. The Moynihan Report pointed out that black welfare cases and unemployment were beginning to "disaggregate," that is, the number of black welfare cases were rising while unemployment was falling. The Moynihan Report also pointed out that a quarter of all black children were born to unmarried women and that the percentage was rising. The Moynihan report described the ghetto as a "tangle of pathologies" and predicted that conditions would worsen, not improve, despite the Great Society.

Related Topics:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan - Moynihan Report - Great Society

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Though it was a descriptive essay, and not a theoretical one, the Moynihan Report met howls of protest. The expression "Blaming the Victim" was coined as criticism.

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In The Promised Land, Nicholas Lemann says of the Moynihan Report.

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:Today the Moynihan Report stands as probably the most refuted document in American history (though of course its dire predictions about the poor black family all came true). . . the practical effect of the controversy over it was exactly the opposite of what Moynihan intended - all public discussions in mainstream liberal circles of issues like the state of the black family and the culture of poverty simply ceased. (177)

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For almost two decades after the Moynihan Report, there was little discussion of family conditions in the ghetto. The 1980s began to see a revival of this sociological question, as well as the development of new theories on why the ghetto emerged.

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Charles Murray argues in Losing Ground that Great Society liberalism created the hopeless poor. Murray claims that the eligibility of single women for welfare encouraged women to have babies out of wedlock, and that welfare discouraged all from working. Murray concluded his book with a call for the abolition of welfare.

Related Topics:
Charles Murray - Great Society - Liberalism

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Losing Ground has met with a broad chorus of liberal criticism. Losing Ground's opponents point out that in the 1970s, when the real amounts of welfare checks decreased, out-of-wedlock births increased. Critics also point out that illegitimacy rose just as much in low benefit states like Mississippi, where work undoubtedly paid better than welfare, as it did in high benefit states like Illinois and New York. Critics also say that Murry missed the fact that although the percentage of blacks born out of wedlock increased in the 60s and 70s, the percentage of black women having babies out of wedlock decreased.

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William Julius Wilson argues in The Truly Disadvantaged that easy access to welfare had little effect on women's decisions on childbearing. Wilson instead claims that the flight of low-skilled manufacturing jobs to the suburbs and the South left blacks economically isolated in the ghetto—the "spatial mismatch". Wilson explains the high percentage of out-of-wedlock births as due to the lack of marriageable—i.e., employed—men for mothers to marry.

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Roger Waldinger offers a third, and less well known, theory of ghetto formation: detailing a mismatch between the wages which blacks desire and the wages which low-skilled jobs actually pay. The argument mainly appears in Waldinger's book, adapted from his Harvard PhD thesis, Still the Promised City?

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In looking at New York City, Waldinger points out that new immigrants—Koreans, Pakistanis, Dominicans, etc—often do better than American-born blacks. Waldinger also notices that southern-born and Caribbean-born blacks have higher incomes than northern-born blacks. Waldinger argues that immigrant groups benefit by establishing nepotistic niches for themselves, and use niches for mutual help, something blacks have not been willing to do. Waldinger also says that even though hotels and restaurants may offer very low wages, they still outclass wages in Mexico, rural China, or Africa; thus, immigrants readily accept them. In contrast, unskilled northern-born blacks, who hope to do something better than their parents, disdain these jobs, in hope of something better, and may often wind up working outside the legitimate economy altogether. Waldinger's theory has not become as well-known as the theories of Murray or Wilson, he is also criticized for "blaming the victim."

Related Topics:
Korea - Pakistan - Dominican - Caribbean - Nepotistic - Mexico - China - Africa

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Cultural life and the ghetto

It is often said that great art is born out of suffering. So it is not necessarily a coincidence that great artists lived and still live in the ghetto. Ghettos often became known as vibrant cultural centers, for example the late 19th century Paris, or Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Artists such as Bob Marley, Ice Cube, Naughty By Nature, The Fugees, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Cab Calloway, and Tupac Shakur were born and raised in ghettos, and much of their music comes from their own suffering, experiences and life in the Ghetto or their own experiences with desegregation, eg. Bob Marley's "No Woman, No Cry", Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddamn", John Lee Hooker's "Rent Blues", Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five's "The Message", Ice Cube's "3 Strikes You In", Eminem's "8 Mile" and Calloway's "Minnie The Moocher". The 1970s sitcom Good Times was modeled after life in the Cabrini-Green housing projects in Chicago. The show portrays a ghetto family that always triumphs over adversity and it has been criticized for painting too rosy of a picture of how the ghetto really works.

Related Topics:
Paris - Harlem - Bob Marley - Ice Cube - Naughty By Nature - The Fugees - John Lee Hooker - Nina Simone - Cab Calloway - Tupac Shakur - Desegregation - No Woman, No Cry - Mississippi Goddamn - Rent Blues - The Message - 3 Strikes You In - 8 Mile - Minnie The Moocher - 1970s - Good Times - Cabrini-Green - Chicago

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