America as Ghettonation

[PoliticalChic]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

 

[poet]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

Can we all say "Political Chic"???? LOL

 

[Bfgrn]

With Ghettonation, acclaimed journalist and author, Cora Daniels, takes on one of the most explosive issues in our country today in this thoughtful critique of America's embrace of a ghetto persona that is demeaning to women, devalues education, celebrates the worst African American stereotypes, and contributes to the destruction of civil peace. Her investigation exposes the central role of corporate America in exploiting the idea of ghettoness as a hip cultural idiom, despite its disturbing ramifications, as a means of making money.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

Can we all say "Political Chic"???? LOL

As I try to refrain from redundancy, it is difficult to characterize your posts, as my characterization would, essentially, say the same thing about all of 'em.


You say little, and what you do say is generally infused with lies.


Perhaps it is your attempt to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar.


Let's take 'Can we all say "Political Chic,"' your attempt to characterize me in the vein that I've characterized Lindsay Lohan....as a low-life consistent with this, from the OP:

2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'



See what I mean about you attempting " to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar"?

Pretty clear that the last applies.


This won't be your last spanking.

 

[there4eyeM]

"This, too shall pass."

America has never been the country it was, but always the country it was becoming.

It is what it is now, and not what it will be.

 

[poet]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

Can we all say "Political Chic"???? LOL

As I try to refrain from redundancy, it is difficult to characterize your posts, as my characterization would, essentially, say the same thing about all of 'em.


You say little, and what you do say is generally infused with lies.


Perhaps it is your attempt to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar.


Let's take 'Can we all say "Political Chic,"' your attempt to characterize me in the vein that I've characterized Lindsay Lohan....as a low-life consistent with this, from the OP:

2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'



See what I mean about you attempting " to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar"?

Pretty clear that the last applies.


This won't be your last spanking.

Spanking? Honey, you wish. Do you often repeat yourself, or did you lose your place?

You comparing yourself to Lindsay Lohan ( I didn't), is ridiculous on its' face. Folks know who she is...the same can't be said for you. LOL. The only thing you have in common, is that you're both "train wrecks" and ghetto. Now, get to your corner and work that coochie.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Can we all say "Political Chic"???? LOL

As I try to refrain from redundancy, it is difficult to characterize your posts, as my characterization would, essentially, say the same thing about all of 'em.


You say little, and what you do say is generally infused with lies.


Perhaps it is your attempt to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar.


Let's take 'Can we all say "Political Chic,"' your attempt to characterize me in the vein that I've characterized Lindsay Lohan....as a low-life consistent with this, from the OP:

2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'



See what I mean about you attempting " to be glib....or a lack of insight and imagination....or simply that you are a liar"?

Pretty clear that the last applies.


This won't be your last spanking.

Spanking? Honey, you wish. Do you often repeat yourself, or did you lose your place?

You comparing yourself to Lindsay Lohan ( I didn't), is ridiculous on its' face. Folks know who she is...the same can't be said for you. LOL. The only thing you have in common, is that you're both "train wrecks" and ghetto. Now, get to your corner and work that coochie.

"....and ghetto..."


It's hardly necessary for you to go out of your way to prove the veracity of my post.


You're simply a clueless liar....and doubling-down on the lie doesn't invest it with rectitude.

Smacked again.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Does Poet believe that the Poles who lived in Warsaw Ghettos were in some way "Hip Hop"?

 

[poet]

Does Poet believe that the Poles who lived in Warsaw Ghettos were in some way "Hip Hop"?

Don't go there. I grew up in Chicago, and had Polish friends.

 

[editec]

Of course the more common affront pertaining to bad lifestyle choices of the White underclass is not gheto, but TRAILER TRASH.

There's no shortage of ways to insult people for whom one has no respect.

So?

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

With Ghettonation, acclaimed journalist and author, Cora Daniels, takes on one of the most explosive issues in our country today in this thoughtful critique of America's embrace of a ghetto persona that is demeaning to women, devalues education, celebrates the worst African American stereotypes, and contributes to the destruction of civil peace. Her investigation exposes the central role of corporate America in exploiting the idea of ghettoness as a hip cultural idiom, despite its disturbing ramifications, as a means of making money.

And of course we see the racist component of the reactionary right, fearful of a changing America, the loss of perceived privilege, and the ‘rise’ of a culture believed to be in conflict with conservative (“American”) values.

 

[PoliticalChic]

With Ghettonation, acclaimed journalist and author, Cora Daniels, takes on one of the most explosive issues in our country today in this thoughtful critique of America's embrace of a ghetto persona that is demeaning to women, devalues education, celebrates the worst African American stereotypes, and contributes to the destruction of civil peace. Her investigation exposes the central role of corporate America in exploiting the idea of ghettoness as a hip cultural idiom, despite its disturbing ramifications, as a means of making money.

BoringFriendlessGuy.....once again you've verified my perception of you: you can't do anything right.
In fact....if you were a politician, you'd be honest.



I fully realize that you 'thought'...to use the term loosely....that you had found a way to attack the OP.....
Nay, nay!
By posting that blurb about Ms. Daniels, you've inadvertently proven that I made a wise choice in using her work to highlight the downward trend in the culture in which we are all immersed.

So, now that readers know something about the author, more respect might be paid to the insights found in the OP.

In fact, I might post more of her work.

 

[PoliticalChic]

"This, too shall pass."

America has never been the country it was, but always the country it was becoming.

It is what it is now, and not what it will be.

You're "4eyes," yet as blind as a bat.

Ironic, huh?




Imagine you suggesting that America has done some sort of two-step, toward cultural degradation....and we'll simply slide on back to rectitude.

Is that what you learned from Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"?


How 'bout you pick up Charles Murray's "Coming Apart" and see what has happened and continues to occur..... The book is about the half-century’s change in cultural- not income- inequality in America. The changes will lead to the end of the “American experiment,” generally described as a place where people could be left as individuals or families to live their lives as they saw fit.



In “A Study of History,” by Arnold J. Toynbee, in the chapter called ‘Schism in the Soul, “Toynbee observed that one of the consistent symptoms of a disintegrating civilization is that elites begin to imitate the bottom of society. Toynbee says the growth phase of civilization is led by a creative minority who have a strong, self-confident sense of style, virtue and purpose. The uncreative majority follows along through attempts to imitate the creative minority. In disintegrating civilizations, the creative minority (elites) are no longer confident and setting the example. They "lapse into truancy" (reject the obligations of citizenship) and "surrender to a sense of promiscuity" (succumb to vulgarization of manners, the arts ?and language). Until a few decades ago, the groups we used to call "low-class" or "trash", are now called the underclass. The upper-class, instead of challenging trashy behavior, often imitates and placates it.

a. … four-letter words were unknown in public discourse and among the elites and were used sparingly even in private discourse. Today, vulgar language knows no class, sex, age or place. As late as 1960, sleeping with one's boyfriend was mostly a lower-class thing. It was deemed sluttish and something to be kept secret; today it's open and assumed to be normal…. In some instances, unwed mothers proudly hold baby showers celebrating their illegitimate offspring. Homosexual marriages were unheard of; today, in some jurisdictions, homosexual marriages have legal sanction. Of course, to be judgmental about the new codes of conduct is to risk being labeled a prude and possibly a racist, sexist or a homophobe.” America's New Role Models


When Lincoln said "This, too, shall pass," the nation wasn't ruled by Liberals enforcing political correctness.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Does Poet believe that the Poles who lived in Warsaw Ghettos were in some way "Hip Hop"?

Don't go there. I grew up in Chicago, and had Polish friends.

My condolences. I grew up in L.A. yet I was able to overcome it, you can too.

 

[Sunshine]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

PC you are dead on again! When my son was in high school, he offered a reason why so many big bucks NFL players get in trouble. And we had one of our own in Nashville for a good while - Pacman Jones. We tolerated his crap about as long as we could.

My son postulated that you can take the OJs and the PacMans out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of them. I think he was dead on.

AND, IOU + rep. I'm out for a while.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

PC you are dead on again! When my son was in high school, he offered a reason why so many big bucks NFL players get in trouble. And we had one of our own in Nashville for a good while - Pacman Jones. We tolerated his crap about as long as we could.

My son postulated that you can take the OJs and the PacMans out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of them. I think he was dead on.

AND, IOU + rep. I'm out for a while.

1. Thank you, Sunshine....but the essence of Ms. Daniel's work is that 'ghetto' is far more widespread than the NFL.

2. The culture of America is spiraling downward, and political correctness forbids the rest of society from commenting on how negative it is.

a. Even worse than simply looking the other way, many elites give 'ghetto' a certain imprimatur that suggests the young and/or impressionable among us to imitate it.


I'm going to comment on a prime example of exactly what I said above in the next post.

 

[PoliticalChic]

With Ghettonation, acclaimed journalist and author, Cora Daniels, takes on one of the most explosive issues in our country today in this thoughtful critique of America's embrace of a ghetto persona that is demeaning to women, devalues education, celebrates the worst African American stereotypes, and contributes to the destruction of civil peace. Her investigation exposes the central role of corporate America in exploiting the idea of ghettoness as a hip cultural idiom, despite its disturbing ramifications, as a means of making money.

And of course we see the racist component of the reactionary right, fearful of a changing America, the loss of perceived privilege, and the ‘rise’ of a culture believed to be in conflict with conservative (“American”) values.

Who could be so brain-dead that he not only endorses the deleterious effects of 'ghetto,' but attempts to silence rational voices that point out the problem?
"...And of course we see the racist component of the reactionary right, fearful of a changing America,..."

Yup....C_Chamber_Pot!





"Let the kids behave in ways that pre-determine failure!

'Else you're a racist reactionary!!!

Out of wedlock births- good!

Who are you to suggest that there is a better way to live???

You...you....racist reactionary!!

Dress like a thug....and you'd best hire 'em....or...or...

....I'll call you a racist reactionary!!

Nothing wrong with 'ghetto'!! What are you afraid of???"

Yup, that'd the view of...C_Chamber_Pot.

He's calling Cora Daniels a 'racist reactionary afraid of change.'
Pretty clear the kind of America he'd like to see.
He'd need another brain to make half-wit.




Here is my best example of the danger of ever putting power in the hands of a Liberal.

If 'ghetto' is the path you wish for America, thank C_Chamber_Pot.

 

[Sunshine]

Does Poet believe that the Poles who lived in Warsaw Ghettos were in some way "Hip Hop"?

I don't think he would know a Pole if one bit him on the ass.

 

[Sunshine]

1. Ghetto: : a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live
: a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure
a : an isolated group <a geriatric ghetto>
b : a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity <the pink-collar ghetto>
Ghetto - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary


2. Ghet-to, adj, [twenty-first-century everyday conversation] a. behavior that makes you want to say 'Huh?'
b. actions that seem to go against basic home training and common sense.
c. used to describe something with inferior status or limited opportunity, usually used with 'so,' as in 'That's so ghetto;' or 'He's so ghetto.'
d. common misusage: authentic, Black, keepin' it real.





3. I use the term so many times a day, I can't even count. When the teenagers sitting on milk crates outside my house in Brooklyn get rowdy playing cards late at night on a school night. When the man-boys on the corner see my wedding ring as just a challenge rather than something to respect. Whenever I turn on BET, period.... Ghet-to.

4. I've spent more than three decades becoming an expert on ghet-to. But it wasn't until recently, when those ghetto moments become overwhelming, that I felt compelled to write about it. Everyone assumes that they understand everything about it as soon as they hear the term, including great academic thinkers. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr., communication and anthropology professor a the University of Pennsylvania who has spent his career theorizing about race and class: "We know it immediately when we see it, or when we hear it."
No doubt, professor.

5. "Are you going to write about nails and gold teeth, about weaves- blond and red- about baby bottles filled with Pepsi, about babymamas....?" Actually, lots more: ghetto, you see, is a mind-set.





6. Not the Nazi horror ghettos that took the lives the Jews of Europe, the ghettos of America's cities were fed by housing discrimination, segregation laws, and racism. They were overcrowded communities of filth, starvation (of hope), violence, and despair. And the threat of being shot or stabbed or beaten by armed natives guaranteed that others stayed out of the ghetto. Now ghetto no longer refers to where you live; it is how you live. The jump is from an impoverished physical landscape to an impoverished mental one, from noun to adjective.

7. It is the mind-set that thinks it is acceptable to be playing cards on the street to all hours on a school night instead of doing homework. The mind-set that thinks the M words- monogamy and marriage- are bad language. The mind-set that thinks that it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it any different from performing such a display on a table, a pole, on some john's lap, or on the corner. And a mind-set that thinks a record deal and a phat beat in the background makes it okay to say...to say- well, I do know what bad language is, so I won't say. Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is the embodiment of expectations that have gotten too-dangerously-low.

8. Granted, to use 'ghetto' to define such an undesirable mind-set, given the word's long association with poverty, can be seen as just another way for people with middle-class sensibilities to demonize the poor. Yes, it sounds like classism. But I would contend that a mind-set has no class boundaries. And I have no problem with labeling folks from every rung of the ladder as ghetto.

Can you say Lindsay Lohan?



From "Ghettonation," by Cora Daniels

PC you are dead on again! When my son was in high school, he offered a reason why so many big bucks NFL players get in trouble. And we had one of our own in Nashville for a good while - Pacman Jones. We tolerated his crap about as long as we could.

My son postulated that you can take the OJs and the PacMans out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of them. I think he was dead on.

AND, IOU + rep. I'm out for a while.

1. Thank you, Sunshine....but the essence of Ms. Daniel's work is that 'ghetto' is far more widespread than the NFL.

2. The culture of America is spiraling downward, and political correctness forbids the rest of society from commenting on how negative it is.

a. Even worse than simply looking the other way, many elites give 'ghetto' a certain imprimatur that suggests the young and/or impressionable among us to imitate it.


I'm going to comment on a prime example of exactly what I said above in the next post.

Oh believe me, after living 20 years on Nashville, I know that. It was just an example.

I think you are right, someone is definitely trying to make 'ghetto' cool. For middle class kids it is as good a form of rebellion as any and is quite convenient.

 

[there4eyeM]

"This, too shall pass."

America has never been the country it was, but always the country it was becoming.

It is what it is now, and not what it will be.

As usual, minds that have limited themselves either fail to or mis-understand.

America is the stuff of dreams. What we think the past was, it wasn't, but it was America. What time and tides(of history), have done to it and the world have elicited the changes that have brought America to where it is. It has been and will be a dynamic process which itself is ever evolving.

Dogma and set ideology have only ever held things up, not truly helped.
Thus, this (present situation as it either is or is imagined), too, shall pass.

Even 'Chic will evolve.