A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more Poverty than other areas of the city. Versions of such restricted areas have been found across the world, each with their own names, classifications, and groupings of people.
in Italy (2013)|324x324px]]The term was originally used for the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, as early as 1516, to describe the part of the city where Jewish people were restricted to live and thus segregated from other people. However, other early societies may have formed their own versions of the same structure; words resembling ghetto in meaning appear in Hebrew language, Yiddish, Italian language, Germanic, Polish language, Corsican, Old French, and Latin. During the Holocaust, more than 1,000 Nazi ghettos were established to hold the Jewish populations of Europe, with the goal of exploiting and killing European Jews as part of the Final Solution of Nazi Germany." The Ghettos | About the Holocaust." Yad Vashem. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
The term ghetto acquired deep cultural meaning in the United States, especially in the context of segregation and civil rights. It has been widely used in the country since the 20th century to refer to poor neighborhoods of largely minority populations. It is also used in some European countries, such as Romania and Slovakia, to refer to poor neighborhoods largely inhabited by Romani people. The term slum is usually used to refer to areas in developing countries that suffer from absolute poverty, while the term ghetto is used to refer to areas of developed countries that suffer from relative poverty.
The etymology of the Italian ghetto has long been debated among linguists, with no single theory achieving universal acceptance. Although often cited, the idea that it derives from the Hebrew language gēṭ ('letter of divorce'; because the ghetto separated Jews from the rest of the population) is considered a folk etymology. Similarly, the Italian variant ghet, found in some Jewish notarial documents from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, seems to be a folk-etymological modification of ghetto, influenced by the Hebrew gēṭ.
Another commonly held hypothesis, mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary, proposes that the term comes from an unattested Italian *gheto ('foundry'; cf. Italian getto 'the process of founding or casting metal'; 14th cent.), from post-classical Latin iectus or iactus (attested in a 1295 Venetian source referring to the locality), which could be compared to post-classical Latin ghetus or gettus (attested from 1306 in Venetian sources referring to the locality). However, linguist Anatoly Liberman argues that this explanation fails to account for the problematic phonetic change from Latin i- to Italian g- ~ gh-, and that there is no certainty that getto ever meant 'foundry' in the Venetian dialect. Alternatively, Liberman has suggested that in some Romance-speaking regions a slang borrowing from the Germanic gata ('street' or 'narrow street') may have existed in various forms, which eventually evolved into the Italian ghetto. Originally, the term may have carried a derogatory sense, referring to the impoverished quarters of exiled Venetian Jews. Over time, folk etymology further shaped its meaning, associating it with ideas like cannon foundries and separation.
Other suggestions, such as that the word is a shortening of Egitto ('Egypt') or borghetto ('small settlement'), or that it is related to the Old French guect ('guard'), are rejected by linguists as speculative and unconvincing. Additional proposals derive the term from ghectus (understood as the Latinized form of Yiddish gehektes 'enclosed') or from the Latin neuter Giudaicetum ('Jewish'), but they too lack sufficient phonetic support., Sicily|335x335px]]
Jewish ghettos in Christian Europe existed because of majority discrimination against Jews on the basis of religion, language and dated views on race: They were considered outsiders. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. GHETTO Kim Pearson
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. During periods of population growth, ghettos (as Roman Ghetto) had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents generally were allowed to administer their own justice system based on Jewish traditions and elders.
The Nazi ghettos were an essentially different institution than the historical ghettos of European society. The historical ghettos were places where Jews lived for many generations and created their own culture even if they were under social and political conditions of segregation and discrimination. The Nazi ghettos were part of The Final Solution; they were intended as a transitional stagefirst confine each city's Jews in one easily accessible and controllable location, then "liquidate" the ghetto and send the Jews to an extermination camp. Most Nazi ghettos were liquidated in 1943; some, such as that of Łódź, persisted until 1944; very few, e.g. the Budapest Ghetto and the Theresienstadt Ghetto, existed until the end of the war in 1945.
In 2010, the Danish Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing introduced an official listing of vulnerable social housing districts where the inhabitants fulfilled certain criteria. The list has informally and at times formally been called Ghettolisten (the 'List of Ghettos'). Since 2010, the list has been updated annually, with changes in the definition and/or terminology in 2013, 2018 and 2021.
In 2018, the Danish government at the time, led by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, announced its intention to "end the existence of Parallel society and ghettos by 2030." A number of measures was introduced to solve the issue of integration, including policies like 25 hours of obligatory daycare or corresponding parent supervision per week for children in the appointed areas starting age 1, lowering social welfare for residents, incentives for reducing unemployment, demolition and rebuilding of certain tenements, rights for landlords to refuse housing to convicts, etc. The policies have been criticized for undercutting 'equality before law' and for portraying immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, in a bad light.
The term "ghetto" was controversial during the period of its usage, inhabitants feeling stigmatized by the wording and researchers pointing out that the areas in question were typically inhabited by 20-40 different ethnic minorities, hence being diametrically opposed to the ethnic homogeneity of the original ghettos, so that multi-ethnic residential areas would be a more appropriate term.
In June 2019 a new social democratic government was formed in Denmark, with Kaare Dybvad becoming housing minister. He stated that the new government would stop using the word "ghetto" for vulnerable housing areas, as it was both imprecise and derogatory. Politiken. Fem debattører: Her er hadeordene, der skal dø sammen med 'ghetto'. (in Danish) In a 2021 reform, the name was finally removed in legal texts by Parliament. Instead, a new category called "parallel societies" was instituted.
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 White people were a minority making up less than a third of the local population.Bains, Baljit. October 2005. " Patterns of Ethnic Segregation in London." Data Management and Analysis Briefing 2005 (38). UK: Greater London Authority. Available as Word document. . Retrieved 19 July 2020. p. 3.Shepherd, Anne. " About." British Society for Population Studies. UK: London School of Economics and Political Science. Retrieved 19 July 2020. By 2001, two London boroughs—Newham and Brent—had "minority majority" populations, and most parts of the city tend to have a diverse population.
Historically, some parts of London have long been noted for the prevalence of a particular ethnic or religious group (such as the Jewish communities of Golders Green and other parts of the London Borough of Barnet, and the West Indian community of Notting Hill), but in each case these populations have been part of a broader multicultural population. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the East End of London was also noted for its Jewish population, but now has a significant British Bangladeshi populace." 50 Objects: 'London's East End'," jewishmuseum.org.uk. Retrieved 18 October 2021.
Ghettos emerged in Belfast during the that accompanied the Irish War of Independence. For safety, people fled to areas where their community was the majority. Many more ghettos emerged after the 1969 riots and beginning of the "The Troubles." In August 1969 the British Army was deployed to restore order and separate the two sides. The government built barriers called "peace lines." Many of the ghettos came under the control of paramilitary such as the (republican) Provisional Irish Republican Army and the (loyalist) Ulster Defence Association. One of the most notable ghettos was Free Derry.
These ethnic ghetto areas included the Lower East Side in Manhattan, which later became notable as predominantly Jews, and later still as Chinese and Latino. East Harlem was once predominantly Italian and in the 1950s became home to a large Puerto Rican community. across the country were predominantly Italian ghettos. Many Polish immigrants settled in areas of other nationals, such as Pilsen of Chicago and Polish Hill of Pittsburgh. Since the late 20th century, Brighton Beach in Brooklyn has become the home of predominately Jewish Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, who left after the Soviet Union lifted some migration restrictions and later after its fall.
The term ghettos has been commonly used for some time, but ghettos were around long before the term was coined. Urban areas in the U.S. can often be classified as "black" or "white", with the inhabitants primarily belonging to a homogenous racial grouping. This classification can be traced back as early as the year 1880 as African Americans were living in their own neighborhoods. Sixty years after the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, most of the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which black people and white people inhabit different neighborhoods of significantly different quality.
Many of these neighborhoods are located in Northern and Western cities where African Americans moved during the Great Migration (1914–1970), a period when over a million African-Americans moved out of the rural southern United States to escape the widespread racism of the South; to seek out employment opportunities in industrial cities; and to pursue what was widely perceived to be a better quality of life in the North and West, such as New York City, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, and Seattle. African Americans found they had to struggle with white ethnic groups in Northern and Midwestern cities; many of them more recent European immigrants. Often they were restricted to areas of older and poor housing in the new cities where they settled.
The social disruption and economic competition following World War I, as veterans returned to the US, resulted in an outbreak of racial violence of whites against blacks in many of these Northern cities, such as Chicago, Omaha; Washington, DC, and others. Southern industrial cities were also affected. Such racist attacks were extremely violent, in some cases they included burning or bombing homes of African Americans; many innocent blacks were killed. African-American leaders described 1919 as the Red Summer because of the widespread racial outbreaks and white attacks on mainly African Americans.
Two main factors ensured further separation between races and classes, and ultimately the development of contemporary ghettos: the relocation of industrial enterprises, and the movement of middle to upper class residents into suburban neighborhoods. Between 1967 and 1987, economic restructuring resulted in a dramatic decline of manufacturing jobs, which had formerly provided good livings for unionized, working-class blacks and whites. The once thriving northern and western industrial cities survived by a gradual shift to service and financial occupations. Subsidized highways and suburban development in the postwar period had pulled many middle and upper-class families and related businesses to the . Those who could not afford to move were left with disrupted neighborhoods and economies in the inner cities. African Americans were disproportionately affected and became either unemployed or underemployed, with little wage and reduced benefits. A concentration of African Americans predominated in some inner city neighborhoods.
It is also significant to compare the demographic patterns between black people and European immigrants, according to the Labour economics. European immigrants and African Americans were both subject to an ethnic division of labor. Because of discrimination, African Americans were often restricted to the least secure division of the labor market. David Ward refers to this stagnant position in African-American or Black ghettos as the 'elevator' model, which implies that each group of immigrants or migrants takes turns in the processes of social mobility and suburbanization; and several groups did not start on the ground floor. The inability of black people to move from the ground floor, as Ward suggests, is dependent upon racism and segregationist patterns established in the South prior to World War I, where most African Americans were disenfranchised by the turn of the century and deprived of political power.
After the of African Americans to the North during and after World War I, they had to compete with numerous European immigrants; thus, African-Americans were diminished to unskilled jobs. The slow rate of advancement in black communities outlines the rigidity of the labor market, competition and conflict, adding another dimension to the prevalence of poverty and social instability in African-American or Black ghettos.
The United States began restructuring its economy after World War II, fueled by new Globalization processes, and demonstrated through technological advances and improvements in efficiency. The structural shift of 1973, during the post-Fordist era, became a large component to the racial ghetto and its relationship with the labor market. Sharon Zukin declares the designated stratum of African-Americans in the labor force was placed even below the working class; low-skill urban jobs were now given to incoming immigrants from Mexico or the Caribbean. Additionally, Zukin notes, "Not only have social services been drastically reduced, punitive and other social controls over the poor have been increased," such as law enforcement and imprisonment. Described as the "urban crisis" during the 1970s and 1980s, the transition stressed regional divisions according to differences in income and racial lines—white "donuts" around black holes. Hardly coincidental, the steady separation occurred during the period of civil rights laws, urban riots and Black Power. In addition, the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences stresses the various challenges developed by this "urban crisis", including:
The cumulative economic and social forces in ghettos give way to social, political and economic isolation and inequality, while indirectly defining a separation between superior and inferior status of groups.
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 , insurance, access to jobs, Racial Discrimination and Redlining in Cities access to health care, or even to residents in certain, often racially determined,Thabit, Walter, How East New York Became a Ghetto. . Page 42. 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-black people to exclude black people from outside neighborhoods.
The "Racial" Provisions of the FHA Underwriting Manual of 1936 included the following guidelines which exacerbated the segregation issue:
This meant that minority group could secure only in certain areas, and it resulted in a large increase in the residential racial segregation and urban decay in the United States. 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, Alabama'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. Residential segregation was further perpetuated because whites were willing to pay more than black people to live in predominantly white areas. 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.
Following the emergence of anti-discrimination policies in housing and labor sparked by the civil rights movement, members of the black middle class moved out of the ghetto. The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. This was the first federal law that outlawed discrimination in the sale and rental of housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion and later sex, familial status, and disability. The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity was charged with administering and enforcing the law. Since housing discrimination became illegal, new housing opportunities were made available to the black community and many left the ghetto. Urban sociologists frequently title this historical event as "black middle class exodus", or black flight. Elijah Anderson describes a process by which members of the black middle class begin to distance themselves socially and culturally from ghetto residents during the later half of the twentieth century, "eventually expressing this distance by literally moving away."
This is followed by the exodus of black working-class families. As a result, the ghetto becomes primarily occupied by what sociologists and journalists of the 1980s and 1990s frequently title the "underclass." William Julius Wilson suggests this exodus worsened the isolation of the black underclass — not only were they socially and physically distanced from whites, they also became isolated from the black middle class.
Another characteristic to African-American or Black ghettos and spatial separation is the dependence on the state, and lack of communal autonomy; Sharon Zukin refers to Brownsville, Brooklyn, as an example. This relationship between racial ghettos and the state is demonstrated through various push and pull features, implemented through government subsidized investments, which certainly assisted the movement of white Americans into the suburbs after World War II. Since the 1960s, after the de-constitution of the inner cities, African-American or Black ghettos have attempted to reorganize or reconstitute; in effect, they are increasingly regarded as public- and state-dependent communities. Brownsville, for instance, initiated the constitution of community-established public housing, anti-poverty organizations, and social service facilities—all, in their own way, depend on state resources. However, certain dependence contradicts society's desires to be autonomous actors in the market. Moreover, Zukin implies, "the less 'autonomous' the community—in its dependence on public schools, public housing and various subsidy programs—the greater the inequity between their organizations and the state, and the less willing residents are to organize." This should not, however, undermine local development corporations or social service agencies helping these neighborhoods. The lack of autonomy and growing dependence on the state, especially in a Neoliberalism economy, remains a key indicator to the production as well as the prevalence of African-American or Black ghettos, particularly due to the lack of opportunities to compete in the global market.
The concept of the ghetto and underclass has faced criticism both theoretically and empirically. Research has shown significant differences in resources for neighborhoods with similar populations both across cities and over time. This includes differences in the resources of neighborhoods with predominantly low income or racial minority populations. The cause of these differences in resources across similar neighborhoods has more to do with dynamics outside of the neighborhood.
Langston Hughes relays in his "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945) poems:Langston Hughes. 1945 2007. " The Heart of Harlem." Pp. 89–90 in I Speak of the City: Poems of New York, edited by S. Wolf. New York: Columbia University Press.
Playwright August Wilson uses the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1985), both of which draw upon the author's experience growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto.
In 1973, Geographical Review claimed "The degree of residential segregation of the black community is greater than for any other group in urban America, yet black people have not had the political power necessary to exercise any significant degree of control over the improvement of the basic services necessary for their health, education, and welfare." Geographical Review 107 Scholars have been interested in the study of African-American or Black ghettos precisely for the concentration of disadvantaged residents and their vulnerability to social problems. American ghettos also bring attention to geographical and political barriers, and as Doreen Massey highlights, that racial segregation in African-American or Black ghettos challenge America's democratic foundations. However, it is still advocated that "One solution to these problems depends on our ability to use the political process in eliminating the inequities... geographical knowledge and theory to public-policy decisions about poor people and poor regions is a professional obligation."
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