"That's Ghetto"

As a high school basketball coach at a private school, I have to actively go out and search for new talent.  This requirement sends me out to watch young boys play in tournaments all over the area from all over the country.  About two Saturdays ago I was in Bowie, Maryland watching a team from DC/PG County play against another team from Baltimore.  I rarely say anything about a child out loud because I am surrounded by parents who are often ear-hustling to see what I will say about their child so I generally keep my thoughts to myself.

During this particular game, I was seated next to a mother who had tattoos all over her body.  When I say all over her body, I am not exaggerating! There was not a limb, toe, finger, ear, etc. that was etched in ink.  She was a very sweet woman though and very informed.  Her son played for the Baltimore team who lost a close game.  Well, another parent of the opposing team walked past the mother I was sitting next to and said, "I am so glad we beat those ghetto kids..."

I was definitely thrown back from her comment because it was a basketball game and I am not sure what those young boys did to portray "ghetto" and she definitely offended the mother next to me.  She was so offended she jumped up in the woman's face and told her "Don't you ever disrespect those kids by calling them ghetto, they are not ghetto!"

It got me to thinking, why were they being called ghetto? Because they were from Baltimore city, a city considered to be high-crime and littered with slums?  Is Baltimore city considered ghetto because of the low economic levels of the people living there?

The word ghetto is a noun and it is defined as:

1. a section of a city, especially a thickly populated slum area, inhabited predominantly by members of an ethnic or other minority group, often as a result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or hardships
2. a section of a city in a which all Jews were required to live
3. a section predominantly inhabited by Jews
4. any mode of living, working, etc., that results from stereotyping or biased treatment

As a an adjective, it means:

1. pertaining to or characteristic of life in a ghetto or the people who live there
2. noting something that is considered to be unrefined, low-class, cheap or inferior

So now I think of all the times someone says:

"That is so ghetto!"

"She is so ghetto..."

"That restaurant is so ghetto..."

We hear these things all the time and I think of what that mother was saying about those kids; she was saying they were low-class or inferior.  I would be very upset if another parent said that about my child also especially after a basketball game.  And of course it can be deduced that she only said that because of the name on the front of their jersey said "Baltimore."  

Prior to the gentrification of most of our nation's largest cities (NYC, DC, Chicago, etc), the majority of your ghettos resided in these cities and were inhabited by minorities, most of the time, Blacks.  And within these ghettos, a culture a existed that created pastimes that are not always socially "accepted" by society as a whole.  

Items like quarter-waters, syrup sandwiches, fried bologna, etc. and public assistance, aka food stamps, public transportation like the bus or the underground (train) were staples in these communities.  I guess because these communities were considered low-class in a very class-defined society and anything that hits the mainstream from these communities is low-class, thus ghetto.  Is that fair?

Maybe I am just overreacting...