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:''For the Kelly Rowland song, see Ghetto (song) . currently occupied by people of the Roma ethnicity.]] A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background live as a group in seclusion, voluntarily or involuntarily. The word was originally used to refer to the Venetian Ghetto in Venice , Italy , where Jew s were required to live. The corresponding German term was ''Judengasse''. In Moroccan Arabic , ghettos were called '' Mellah ''. The term came into widespread use during World War II to refer to Nazi ghettos. The term is now commonly used to refer to any poverty-stricken Urban Area . In the U.S., "rural ghetto" is used to describe Mobile Home Parks , farm labor housing tracts, and Indian Reservation s. Urban neighborhoods where Hispanic immigrants settled in the late 20th century (called '' Barrio s'') are said to be comparable to ghettos, because most immigrants form a culturally isolated enclave and may choose to remain there or associate with their own group. "Ghetto" is also used figuratively to indicate geographic areas with a concentration of any type of person (e.g. Gay Ghetto , Student Ghetto ) or for non-geographic categories (e.g. "sci fi ghetto"). http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ent/movies/4041980.html ORIGIN AND ETYMOLOGY Etymologies suggested for the word 'Ghetto' derive from "getto", the Italian term for casting, the Griko Ghetonia (Γειτονία, neighbourhood), the Italian ''borghetto'' for "small neighborhood," or the Hebrew word ''get'' (Hebrew: גט), literally a "bill of divorce." A common explanation is that the name is derived for the "campo gheto," an area that iron foundries in Venice in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries used for cooling slag (Venetian "gheta"; Italian "ghetta"), where Jews were forced to locate. JEWISH GHETTOS IN EUROPE General 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 Pogrom s, were closed from inside and out at night and during Christmas , Pesach , and Easter Week . In the 19th century, Jewish ghettos were progressively abolished, and their walls demolished, following the ideals of the French Revolution . The Nazis re-instituted Jewish ghettos before and during World War II in Eastern Europe. Venice See Also: Jewish Community of Venice Although there is evidence indicating the presence of Jews in the Venetian area dating back to the first few centuries A.D., during the 15th and early 16th centuries (until 1516), no Jew was allowed to live anywhere in the city of Venice for more than 15 days per year; so most of them lived in Venice's possessions on the ''terrafirma''. At its maximum, the population of the Ghetto reached 3,000. In exchange for their loss of freedom, the Jews were granted the right to a Jew's coat (the colour yellow was considered humiliating, as it was associated with prostitutes). The gates were locked at night, and the Jewish community was forced to pay the salaries of the patrolmen who guarded the gates and patrolled the canals that surrounded the Ghetto. The Ghetto was abolished after the fall of the Republic of Venice to Napoleon . To place Venetian provisions requiring groups in the city to live in compulsory quarters in historical context, it should be noted that:
Frankfurt See Also: Frankfurter Judengasse From its creation to its dissolution at the end of the 18th century, the city councils limited expansion in the Judengasse, resulting in a steady increase in population to the point of overcrowding. The original area of about a dozen houses with around 100 inhabitants, grew to almost 200 houses and some 3,000 inhabitants. The plots, originally quite generous, were successively divided while the total size of the ghetto remained the same. This increased the number of plots but subsequently reduced the size of each plot. In the process, many houses were replaced by two or more houses which were often divided in turn. Many of the houses were designed to be narrow and long, in order to maximize the limited space – the smallest house, the Rote Hase, was only about one and a half meters wide. Rome See Also: Roman Ghetto .]] In 1555 Pope Paul IV created the Roman Ghetto and issued Papal Bull '' Cum Nimis Absurdum '', forcing Jews to live in a specified area. The area of Rome chosen for the ghetto was the most undesirable quarter of the city, owing to constant flooding by the Tiber River . At the time of its founding, the four-block area was designated to contain roughly 2,000 inhabitants. However, over the years, the Jewish community grew, which caused severe overcrowding. Since the area could not expand horizontally (the ghetto was surrounded by high walls), the Jews built vertical additions to their houses, which blocked the sun from reaching the already dank and narrow streets. Life in the Roman Ghetto was one of crushing poverty, due to the severe restrictions placed upon the professions that Jews were allowed to perform. This was the last of the original ghettos to be abolished in Western Europe; not until 1870, when the kingdom of Italy conquered Rome from the Pope , was the Ghetto finally opened, with the walls themselves being torn down in 1888. Due to the three hundred plus years of isolation from the rest of the city, the Jews of the Roman Ghetto developed their own Dialect , known as Giudeo-romanesco , which differs from the dialect of the rest of the city in its preservation of 16th-century dialectical forms and its liberal use of romanized Hebrew words. Second World War See Also: Ghettos in occupied Europe 1939 - 1944 established by the Nazis in which Jews were confined, and later shipped to concentration camps.]] During World War II , ghettos were established by the Nazis to confine Jews into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe. Starting in 1939, Adolf Eichmann , head of the '' Final Solution '' program, began to systematically move Polish Jew s into designated areas of large Polish cities. The first large ghetto at Tuliszkow was established in December 1939 or January 1940, followed by the Łódź Ghetto in April 1940 and the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940, with many other ghettos established throughout 1940 and 1941. The Ghettos were walled off, and any Jew found leaving them was shot. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of these Ghettos, with 380,000 people and the Łódź Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000. The situation in the ghettos was brutal. In s per Jew, compared to 669 calories per non-Jewish Pole and 2,613 calories per German. With crowded living conditions, Starvation diets, and little Sanitation (in the Łódź Ghetto 95% of Apartment s had no sanitation, piped water or Sewer s) hundreds of thousands of Jews died of disease and starvation. In 1942, the Nazis began Operation Reinhard , the systematic Deportation to Extermination Camp s during The Holocaust . The authorities deported Jews from everywhere in Europe to the ghettos of the East, or directly to the extermination camps -- almost 300,000 people were deported from the Warsaw Ghetto alone to Treblinka over the course of 52 days. In some of the Ghettos the local Resistance Organization s started Ghetto Uprisings , none were successful, and the Jewish populations of the ghettos were almost entirely killed. List of Nazi era ghettos
SOUTH AFRICAN GHETTOS The Group Areas Act ( 27 April 1950 ) barred people of particular races from various urban areas. Soweto is a mostly black urban area to the south west of Johannesburg . During the Apartheid regime, Soweto was constructed for the specific purpose of housing black people who were then living in areas designated by the government for white settlement, such as the multi-racial area called Sophiatown . Today, Soweto is among the poorest parts of Johannesburg; however, there have been recent signs of economic improvement and Soweto has become a centre for nightlife and tourist excursions. There are other ghetto parts of South Africa like KwaMashu in Durban in the KZN province and Crossroads near Cape Town, as well as numerous squatter camps in and around the larger centres. UNITED STATES The Irish immigrants of the 19th century were the first ethnic group to form ghettos in America’s cities, followed by Italians and Poles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Because there was no official housing segregation against most Europe an immigrants, the second or third generation families are able to relocate to better housing in the Suburbs after World War II if possible. Other ethnic ''ghettos'' are the Lower East Side in Manhattan, New York was predominantly Jewish until the 1950s, and Spanish Harlem also in Manhattan, New York was home to a large Puerto Rican community dated back to the 1930s. Little Italy s were predominantly Italian ghettos until the mid 20th century when either most Italian-Americans relocated to suburbs or the residents who stayed in were now economically advantaged. Chinatown s, where most Chinese immigrants settled from the 1850s onward in Chicago , New York City , San Francisco , Oakland (Near San Francisco), Los Angeles and other major cities originated as racially segregated enclaves. However, most Chinese Americans no longer reside in those urban sections, but Asian immigration since the 1970s repopulated Chinatowns, even though Little Italys, Chinatowns and other ethnic neighborhoods have become more Middle-class in recent times, dominated by successful restaurant owners, family-owned stores and businessmen able to start up their companies. In the Southwest U.S., Mexican Americans had historical low-income urban areas known as ''barrios'' located in cities such as Los Angeles , Phoenix , San Diego , Houston , Denver , Santa Ana , San Bernardino and San Antonio struggled with issues of crime, drugs, youth Gangs and family breakdown. However, middle-class and college-educated Hispanics moved out of ''barrios'' for the suburbs. The ''barrios'' continually thrived by the large influx of immigration from Mexico , this largely due to the explosion of the Hispanic/Latino population in the late 20th century. The majority of residents in these urban ''barrios'' are immigrants directly from Mexico and Latin America . 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 American s to live in specific neighborhoods, which 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 southeast San Diego, South Phoenix , Homewood and the Hill District in Pittsburgh, PA ,North Philadelphia, PA , most of Detroit , much of Atlanta, GA , Highland Park, MI , Compton and pats of the San Fernando Valley , South LA , and Crenshaw in Los Angeles , and the Mission District in San Francisco in Bronzeville in Chicago , Gary , Rockford , St. Louis in Missouri , Mattapan in Boston , Massachusetts , Harlem in New York City and in Paterson, New Jersey . 1960s civil rights laws allowed wealthier African Americans to emigrate to formerly all-white communities. (Generally, those were Suburbs located outside of the urban areas.) Because those who were wealthier in the African American community were leaving the urban area, the result was an economic collapse for many of the ghettos. They became zones of abandonment, below-average wealth, poorly-maintained housing, and high Crime . By the 1970s, the Robert Taylor Homes , located in Chicago's Bronzeville , was home to the poorest and third-poorest census tracts in the United States. The formation of the ghetto and the black Underclass forms one of the most controversial issues in Sociology . One of the earliest studies of the modern phenomenon of ghetto formation was . 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 . Though it was a descriptive essay attempting to describe the situation, and not a normative one attempting to assign blame, the Moynihan Report met howls of protest. The expression "Blaming the Victim" was coined as criticism. In ''The Promised Land,'' Nicholas Lemann says of the Moynihan Report: :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) 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. 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. William Julius Wilson argues in ''The Truly Disadvantaged'' that easy access to welfare had little effect on women's decisions on childbearing. Wilson instead argues 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. 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?'' In looking at New York City, Waldinger points out that new immigrants— Korea ns, Punjabi s, Puerto Ricans , 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. But both of these examples need to be extrapolated for veracity. According to the United States Census Bureau, among Hispanic populations in the U.S., Puerto Ricans are the poorest. Ghettos are everywhere across the US. Even in states such as Georgia. If you look at the city of Columbus, you will find several ghettos. One must not confuse ghetto with a "side" of town. For example, the residential neighborhood Oakland Park, is in South Columubus, but it is not "ghetto". Waldingers second point is considered specious, because in the North and South US, blacks are more likely to be employed in the public sector than the private sector. So one can infer that if blacks in the South have higher incomes it could be due to more expansive military installations and civil service jobs. Waldinger argues that immigrant groups benefit by establishing Nepotistic niches for themselves, and use niches for mutual help, something blacks have in most cases been unable to do. UNITED KINGDOM Certain lower-income sections of London are considered "ghettos" because they are made up of mostly black people (sub-Saharan Africans and West Indians, but many immigrant Asians of Indian and Pakistani origin live there), such as Brixton , Hackney , Harlesden , Newham and Peckham . Areas of Birmingham such as Aston , Handsworth and Lozells are widely known as being ghetto because the ethnic make-up of the area is predominantly non-white. Other "ghettos" in the UK include Chapeltown in Leeds , Burngreave & Park Hill in Sheffield and Moss Side in Manchester . Racial tensions and the impact of illegal immigration are strongly felt in areas with a working-class majority. POST-WORLD WAR II FRANCE There are also ghettos in modern France. The poorer Banlieue s, or Suburbs , of France, especially those of Paris , house an impoverished population largely of North African and Sub-Saharan African origin in large medium- and high-rise building developments known as "Cités". They were built in the 1960s and 1970s in the industrial Suburbs to the north and east of Paris , especially in the Département of Seine-St-Denis (also known from its departmental code as "le 93" or "le 9-3"), and in other French cities like Venissieux near Lyon . They are similar in style and have similar problems as the large inner-city urban renewal Projects in the US (like Cabrini Green in Chicago ). Social issues that inhabitants of French ghettos must deal with regularly, including racism and police brutality, were famously highlighted in the 1996 film La Haine . Although there has been civil unrest (sometimes resulting in rioting) in these ghettos for decades, many people outside of France were not fully aware of the situation until the more internationally publicised 2005 Riots , which largely originated within these areas. CZECH REPUBLIC A few ghettos have appeared in the Czech Republic . These ghettos are mainly inhabited by Roma who move there both voluntarily or involuntarily (municipalities often try to relocate them from other areas). The majority of the people are unemployed and uneducated, and the Crime Rate is high. As a ghetto begins to appear non-Roma people move away. The most infamous ghetto in the Czech Republic is Chánov (part of the city of Most ). Other cities with neighborhoods slowly transforming into ghettos include Karviná . During the Second World War, the Terezín ghetto was created to house mass numbers of Czech Jews before deportation to concentration camps, (typically Auschwitz), where the Jews would be exterminated. The Nazis sanitized the ghetto to appear like a "joyful place" to dupe the Red Cross during two visits. The Jewish artists of Terezin created memorable artwork during their stay before being shipped out to concentration camps and gas chambers. CULTURAL LIFE Some ghettos have been known as vibrant cultural centers, for example the late 19th century Paris , or Harlem in the 1920s and 1930s. Artists such as The Fugees , John Lee Hooker , Tupac Shakur , Nina Simone , and Cab Calloway 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. Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" (on the 1964 '' Nina Simone In Concert ''), John Lee Hooker's " Rent Blues ", Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five's " The Message ", 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 a picture of how the ghetto really works . In the United States and Britain, the word "ghetto" is often glorified in popular culture and sometimes used as an adjective to describe a certain way of dressing, speaking, and behaving. Like the pejorative terms Redneck , White Trash , "cheapie" and "tightwad", there's a new meaning for "ghetto" may describe one's frugal buying habits unlike that of the middle and Upper-class es. In common lingo, it may also be used to describe a place or object that is "poorly maintained" or badly put together.http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghetto SEE ALSO REFRENCES |
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