Kim Pearson

© 2003-4. All Rights Reserved

The word "ghetto" has been used in numerous contexts and carried various meanings in its history, yet the first use of the word is somewhat unclear. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term is of uncertain etymology but is probably Italian in origin and was perhaps used for the first time in Venice, circa 1516, to describe a neighborhood on the site of the city’s foundry.

The first recorded written use of the word occurred in 1611 in Coryat’s Crudities, in which he describes "the place where the whole fraternity of the lews (sic) dwelleth together, which is called the Ghetto." After this initial use, the word appears infrequently in written form until the late 19^th century, when the social landscape of city becomes the subject of many authors and scholars.

Early in its history, the word "ghetto" denoted a walled-off and gated section in a city to which Jews were restricted. The word was chiefly used in Italy, especially in port cities like Venice in which large populations of Jews—many of whom were traders and money lenders—lived. Because they were viewed as cultural minorities due to their non-Christian beliefs in a Renaissance Christian environment, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities. They were forced to live together in the ghetto to prevent their roaming about at night (Calimani 1). In addition to migration laws, sumptuary laws forced Jews to wear a star-shaped yellow badge and a yellow beret, identifying them as outsiders and making them open to taunts and various other social cruelties (Calimani 11).

Despite the social separation it promoted, the ghetto, for many Jews, did not represent a deterioration in the status, but rather provided a "middle ground between unconditional acceptance and expulsion" (Bonfil 70-71). Indeed, much of the Jewish population found the ghetto a suitable place to establish their own cultural rules and beliefs.

In 1870, the last ghetto in Western Europe, in Rome, was abolished, but ghettos continued to exist in Russia and many Muslim countries. Although the ghetto may have disappeared from many cities at this time, references to ghettos began to rise. In 1879, Farrar makes references to "the ghetto" in St. Paul. Late 19^th-century literary critic Edward Dowden makes numerous references to ghettos, especially in his analyses of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1892, British author Israel Zangwill penned Children of the Ghetto and later wrote Dreamers of the Ghetto (1898), a series of biographical studies. Finally, in 1908 Jack London in Martin Eden explains that his characters "plunged off right into the heart of the working-class ghetto."

The term "ghetto" fell into popular use again in Europe in the mid-1930s following the Nazi rise to power and the enactment of their race doctrine. The Nazis established over 300 Jewish ghettos in Poland, the Soviet Union, the Baltic States, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Hungary between 1939 and 1945 ("The Ghettos"). Unlike the ghettos of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the Nazi ghettos were overcrowded, impoverished, disease-plagued areas marked off by stone or brick walls, wooden fences, and barbed wire. The Nazi ghettos were guarded, and Jews were not allowed to leave them under penalty of death ("The Ghettos"). Furthermore, Nazi ghettos acted as holding areas for Jews who would be transported to concentration and death camps.

"Ghetto" was a term mostly used and associated with Europe until Word War II, when the term entered American culture. It quickly acquired a negative connotation, describing an overpopulated, poor section of a city, usually inhabited by African Americans, Chicanos, or other co-cultures as a result of economic or social pressures. Soon after the mainstream adoption of this meaning, the term also came to signify any mode of sub-standard living or working as the result of stereotype or biased treatment. For example, prior to the women’s movement, women often found themselves in "job ghettos."

Despite mainstream America’s use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor, overcrowded, 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 (Smitherman 144). For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home"—a place representing authentic blackness—and the site and origin of "soul"—an essence of life, a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from the rising above the struggle and suffering of being black America (Smitherman 166). Until the 1970s, black ghettos were often seen by many African Americans as sites of thriving, bustling black business, stable black institutions, and neat, well-kept homes. African-American professionals lived in these areas, alongside the poor. The social and cultural patterns reflected the black experience and black traditions such as extended family networks and men and women active throughout the community.

This is often the ghetto reflected in much of the literature of the time. It is the description of the ghetto 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." The ghetto is also the topic of many other Harlem Renaissance and African American authors such as Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, and Lorraine Hansberry. More recently, playwright August Wilson uses 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.

In spite of the poverty, crime, joblessness, deteriorated housing, rampant drug activity, and shattered families that are now part of the 21^st-century ghetto, there is a lingering sense of the ghetto as the symbolic site of African American cultural authenticity (Smitherman 145). This is best found in the popular hip-hop movement, which has recaptured the term "ghetto," along with its negative connotations, from the mainstream and reinvested it as a symbol of black culture. In the late 1990s, a number of popular hip-hop artists created songs exploring various dimensions of ghetto life. Da Brat’s "Ghetto Love" (1996), Master P’s "Ghetto D" (1997), Ras Kass and Dr. Dre’s "Ghetto Fabulous"^* (1998), Pras’ "Ghetto Superstar" (1998), and Mystikal’s "Ghetto Fabulous" (1998) signal the reinvestment of the term "ghetto" with black pride and authenticity.

Bonfil, Robert. Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy. Berkeley, Ca.: University of California Press, 1994.

Calimani, Riccardo. The Ghetto of Venice. Trans. Katherine Silherblatt. New York: Evans

and Company, Inc., 1985.

"The Ghettos." A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. The Florida Center for Instructional Technology. 15 July 2001 <fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/ghettos.htm>

Smitherman, Geneva. Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.

Copyright by Marc Angelaccio

19 July 2001

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