[armand.kay]

Originally Posted by Maru

Considering that a lot of people here living in poorer neighborhoods tend to enjoy and emulate more "ethnic" music, that's not surprising either... the ethnic "look" is considered as part of that core aesthetic.

I don't consider ghetto in US, particularly in the southern metros like Houston and Miami where race relations are more relaxed, to be a steady term at all. I've seen it in a variety of uses in our community... that's why I don't really associate it with black/brown-ness... I think a lot of urban poor neighborhoods tend to be on the black/brown side, but if there's white trash living in a trailer park someplace, we tend to class them in as part of the ghetto... maybe it is completely different in the UK and those are terms that are used more sparingly. In the poorer neighborhoods here, a lot of the younger folk have taken back ownership of the word to refer to the type of lifestyle and neighborhood they were born in... so maybe once upon a time it had a racial history to it. Now it doesn't seem to be used that way.. but rather an upbringing that we're all "proud" of, in a weird sort of way...

I think Hispanics and Blacks here like to use "hood" and "barrio" separately when specifically speaking about their own neighborhoods... but in general, a ghetto is a class of neighborhood in which all types of poor folk generally reside in... (where I live anyway...)

I think though the existence of words like white trash help in separating lower class white people from lower class black people. So we end up with words like ratchet and ghetto being associated more with African Americans. Also I think from the outside looking in you don't really see how different areas might use the words differently depending on racial makeup of the area. You kind of just see it as black and white...

I'm not saying that it's not possible for the word to become a universal term but at the moment for me its still way too heavily associated with black people for me not to consider that when a black woman is called ghetto for being opinionated.