What the Hell? Really?

Why does it have to be us? Why? LOL

Rethinking the word "Ghetto"

Interesting. Check it out-

‘Ghetto:’ Five Reasons to Rethink the Word

May 13, 2011 | 12:00 PM | By Elahe Izadi

Kyra Deblaker-Gebhard over on The Hill is Home recounted a run-in she had last weekend near her Capitol Hill home. She exchanged words with a woman who was upset that another car was parked so close to her BMW. Deblaker-Gebhard writes:

… Admittedly, this wasn’t my most shining moment: I immediately jumped to the defense of the parked car’s owner, and not that of the driver irritated with the parking job.  I yelled from my window a suggestion: that they not drive into the city if they were worried about their precious import.  In return, the driver was quick with the insults, first claiming that she lives in the city (then she should be used to the bumps and bruises a bumper receives, right?); then calling me names; and finally, saying that she would never come back to my ghetto neighborhood again.  That’s when I got really angry—she called my neighborhood “ghetto.” After I told her never to come back to the ghetto, she sped off in her BMW and I closed my window and continued to stew in my anger.

Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images

One of the first ghettos dates back to 1555 in Rome, Italy. Pope Paul IV decreed all Jews must live in this confined area.

The term “ghetto” dates back to describing the neighborhoods to which Jewish Europeans were confined. More recently, it’s been used in the U.S. to describe urban neighborhoods where minority groups live out of economic pressures. But “ghetto” now means a much more than that. Here are five reasons to reconsider using the term:

1. Most areas aren’t technically ghettos.
This from a more academic perspective, but scholar Mario Luis Small penned a paper [PDF] arguing that academics should abandon the term to describe urban black poverty, as it is often used. One of his points: not many neighborhoods in the country fit the academic definition of a ghetto that is majority black with few basic amenities, low-income and depopulation. He found only nine zip codes in metro areas that fit the bill.
2. The popular concept of “the ghetto” is not typically based in reality.
Lynda Laughlin, a family demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau, has pointed out on Greater Greater Washington that many people use the term based on a litany of assumptions, in large part created by popular media depictions.

… General public use of the term “ghetto” tends to assume such areas characterized by crime, slackers, Chinese take-out restaurants, store front churches, poverty, and racial/ethnic minorities.Unfortunately, for many individuals, their image of a “ghetto” is less from actual experience but influenced by the popular media. Such characterizations of the “ghetto” communities ignores people who work everyday as nurses, teachers, civil servants or people who maintain lovely gardens, are active in local politics or volunteer.

Users of the term run the risk of mischaracterizing a neighborhood they don’t know much about. Home is the Hill commenter IMGoph wrote in response to Deblaker-Gebhard:

Seriously, though, it irks me to no end to hear people say the same about my neighborhood as well. People who have no idea what Trinidad is like, but they’re quick to pass judgment based on what they might have read in the Post 3 years ago.

3. “Ghetto” is now often used as a negative adjective, not just a neutral noun.
Once, Donny Hathaway soulfully crooned “The Ghetto.” Now, saying “That’s so ghetto” has become as commonplace as “That’s so gay,” and both are disparaging remarks. In this case, describing objects as “ghetto” implies inferiority, and calling behavior “ghetto” can infer that everyone living in particular neighborhoods behaves the same. Karen Grigsby Bates wrote on The Root that calling someone ghetto “is intentionally classist.” She continues:

It also assumes that just because one lives in a ghetto, there’s only one way to be or act.  As Jesse Jackson liked to intone while on the stump, “I may have been born in the ghetto, but the ghetto was not born in me.”  It would be doing a huge disservice to all the people who live in ghettos who get up every day and (Jesse again) “take the early bus” to work to assume that “ghetto” and “lazy” are inextricably linked.

4. “Ghetto” has also become shorthand for poor and black.
One of the more common dictionary definitions for ghetto is “a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure.” But city or not, ghetto has come to be synonymous with poor and black (and given our previous point that “ghetto” carries such negative connotations, this can be insulting).
Locally, we can look to Prince George’s County, a predominately black county that is suburban and rural, not urban. And yet, it doesn’t take much Google hunting to find a litany of references to the D.C.-suburb as being “ghetto” (or having “ghetto parts”). Large swaths of the county do have their fair share of social and economic pressures, but there aren’t many cities there. So much for “quarter of a city.”
5. It’s a blanket term that carries a lot of weight.
People are complex. So describing a chunk of the population with a word that belies that complexity, and has such negative stereotypes attached to it, naturally gives rise to the anger Deblaker-Gebhard wrote about in her initial post. The Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates explains:

What I know about “inner city blacks,” of those who “act ghetto,” is the same as what I lately came to know about about suburban whites, about Puerto Rican New Yorkers, about Ivy [League] graduates, about gay conservatives, and Israeli-Americans. That they are all different from us all and from each other, that they deserve to be treated with the same nuance, with the same soft touch, with the same eye for complexity and dimension that you’d want for your own family in friends.

The Christian Face of America Vs. Terrorism(or Islam?)

So, this isn't new whatsoever-but it's troubled me more and more as time goes on. I wonder whether or not America is as "Christian" as we say we are. Turn through any of the hundreds of cable channels available today or simply serf the Internet and you'll find it. Slander and vitriol by so-called "Christians" against what they say is "terrorism", but is more so targeted against the religion of Islam. You hear it at work or on the radio or just watch Fox news and many people masquerading as Christians demonizing a whole religion based upon the acts of a few extremists. People who dress in traditional Muslim garb being cursed and terrorized and labeled as a terrorist or sympathizer to a terrorist association. Many people who lead this chorus of unfair and downright gross generalization are fundamental Christians, or are claiming to be.

The (Reverend?) Terry Jones of Florida, is famous for wanting to and then eventually burning the Koran at the behest of many that it would incite violence and already intensify some dangerous feelings of those abroad against America. This isn't Christianity, and it isn't right. I piled on when Osama bin Laden was killed, but then relaxed when I really thought about whether or not God looks favorably upon us for rejoicing the death of another person, no matter who they are. I'm glad he died and got what he had coming, but our mass celebrations scatted around the nation made us look no better than other nations whom we look down upon and chide for it.

The fact that we would paint a religion with such a broad brush is saddening as well as narrow-minded. Timothy McVeigh bombed a building in Oklahoma City in 1995 and killed close to 200 people. He claimed that he was a "Christian". The Crusades were religiously sanctioned military campaigns in which thousands were killed in the name of "Christianity". Would it be fair to label all Christians by the acts of these few people? I'm quite sure we would object to that;but then-why do allow ourselves to do this to others?

As a Christian, what others do, represent, or say doesn't give me a right to judgethem. I just need to try to be the best person or Christian that I can be. It seems to me that these people who claim Christianity do so in ignoring one of it's most basic tenants. That tenant is LOVE. 1 Corinthians 13:13 states "Three things will last forever--faith, hope, and love--and the greatest of these is love". I would challenge any of my Christian brethern to tell me why they can't love our Muslim brothers and sisters who have not embraced extreme terrorism as a way of life, or would stand by passively when a so-called "Christian" says something inflammatory against a group of people and does nothing to correct them.

Someone Dropped The Ball

Baltimore girl, 14, charged as an adult with murder and held without bail

 By Justin Fenton and Liz F. Kay
Baltimore Sun
Thursday, August 26, 2010; B10

 
The two Honduran men sitting on the front steps of a Southeast Baltimore rowhouse couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of a 14-year-old girl clutching a silver revolver and demanding money.
But Arteesha Holt wasn't like most girls her age. A tomboy who liked playing football and basketball, relatives said she also had an explosive temper and was prone to uncontrollable outbursts.
Once, she slung an ashtray across her family's home, tore pictures from the wall and kicked out a heating vent, all because her infant nephew stepped on a bowl of strawberries. The girl's mother says she tried repeatedly to get her daughter help through the juvenile justice system, to no avail.
But the men enjoying the evening of Aug. 13 didn't know all that. So they laughed. And, police say, the seventh-grader pulled the trigger, striking both in the head and killing Jose Rodolfo Gonzalez-Coreas, 43.
Holt was arrested late Tuesday and charged as an adult with first-degree murder. District Court Judge Theodore B. Oshrine ordered her held without bond, following prosecutors' appeals that she is a "danger to the community."
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi described the shooting as "heinous."
"It speaks to the guns that are out there and the frustrations we in law enforcement have at trying to deal with all this," he said.
Holt's 18-year-old brother, Shawn Palmer, has been charged with being an accomplice to murder. Police say he helped Holt escape and took her silver .32-caliber revolver.
The girl's mother, Raichelle Johnson, 39, said she was horrified by the allegations. She said she worried for her daughter and sought help but never anticipated "in a million years" the situation she faces now.
"I don't condone my child taking a life -- if she took this man's life, then she needs to be prosecuted," Johnson said.
Her mother said Holt's rage often got bottled up, erupting with terrifying results.
"Arteesha is . . . " Johnson paused, searching for the right words. "Unstable."
The girl frequently expressed suicidal thoughts, she said, and over the past two years often hit the streets when she got frustrated, bouncing between relatives.
The shooting occurred in the 100 block of N. Linwood Avenue. Police said an officer was flagged down by Wilmer Bonilla, 26, whose head was grazed by a bullet. The officer found Gonzalez-Coreas lying on the steps of a rowhouse with a gunshot wound to the head.
Gonzalez-Coreas was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he was pronounced dead Aug. 20.

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Imagine for moment that you are 14 years old again. Think about the things that you were experiencing at that age...maybe your first kiss, bringing home a report card that you made honor roll on, still watching cartoons, riding bikes with friends....

Now imagine being 14 and carrying a gun. You have decided that you are going to rob someone for some money. They laugh at you because you are so young, so small. You are going to teach them a lesson, the laughter aimed at you upsets you. So,you pull the trigger and end up taking a life.

You can't imagine this can you? Most of us can't relate. I highly doubt that this little girl woke up that morning knowing she was going to kill someone. What kinds of feelings did she live with everyday that made her fly into a rage that seemed uncontrollable? What went through her thoughts that made her contemplate suicide? She is so young; hasn't remotely seen any part of the world-let alone outside of Baltimore city limits. How was she treated by the adults in her life who could have possibly helped or intervened? Where were her supports at to help her deal with all the anger, the pain and the sadness?

Now at the age of 15 she will have to make the transition to an adult world. No one will care how old she is, they will just brand her as another inmate or a number. There will be no one there to help her experience some semblance of her scattered childhood. The Judge that presides over her likely doesn't care about her "feelings", after all she killed someone and his concern is making sure that she's punished heavily.

Her childhood all but over, and maybe her future as well. Languishing in prison isn't the therapeutic environment that she needs to get better. It won't help her deal with the depression or the bouts of madness. prison will make her more depressed, more angry, even more bitter. She is just a child, a child.

One day she'll leave incarceration to return back to our society. There she will find a world that isn't forgiving. When she applies for school or a job she will be discriminated against for something she did so long ago when she didn't know better or really understand the consequences it held in store. She won't be remembered for the pretty pictures she drew as a little girl or how much of a tomboy she was, but she will be remembered for murdering someone. The judge hasn't solved anything by locking her up. What he has done statistically speaking is make sure that there's a greater change that she'll offend again, somehow, someway. She'll have to, because she won't be afforded the opportunity to live a normal existence.

Yesterday a little girl needed someone's help. Tomorrow we'll read about a woman who violated her parole, and went back to the only place that she knew would treat her as an equal to everyone else that lives there.

Is It Really That Bad?

It must be.It has to be. My sister asked me a few days back whether or not I had seen the VH1 reality show (and I use that term loosely) "Love and Hip-Hop". I hadn't, so one evening it was on and I was bored , so I turned to it. I will never watch it again.

I've heard it before, and continue to hear it. Black women stating how difficult it is to find a "decent black man" to date. Many black men take umbrage with this, and dismiss it as a form of negative-attention seeking on behalf of black women. I personally have been indifferent about it at times. I cannot be any longer, black women are right. You know how I know that they're right? Because, black women(or at least one black woman) have now taken to asking a man to marry them-that means it's pretty bad out here. Not only did Jim Jones'(of "Ballin'!" fame) girlfriend of six years propose to him, but when seeking the counsel of close girlfriends about the move (another black woman) she was supported, and told to "go after what you want". I don't have a problem with a person seeking what it is their heart desires, but I do have a problem when a woman who should be the "prize" has to essentially chase down a grown man. It was awfully clear to me that Jones wasn't really interested in spending the rest of his life with or at least committing through marriage to be with her. Truthfully, I felt bad for her. Truthfully, I feel bad in general, for all our black women.

Now-I'm not sitting in judgement here like I'm perfect and am not guilty of "playing games" and "foolin' around". Believe you me; I've done my fair share of dirt and haven't been at my best at all times, but with age I grew out of a lot of foolishness. Plus, as a father, I want my son to see and understand his importance as a black man within our community. I have to do that by modeling positive and appropriate behaviors.

Black women have been the cornerstones of the black community since day one. I am filled with pride when I see our First Lady with all of her elegance and grace, but I know that if President Obama ever got out of pocket and started to trip on Michelle, all that Leader of the Free World stuff would be out the window and she would put him in his place! I've seen black women stick with us through thick and thin and support their men throughout the years no matter what. There is a bond there that can never be broken. Don't fool yourself. If there is one thing I know about black women-its that they love their black men. I don't mind making that pejorative statement.

But black men have arrived right? One of us is President! We're actors, high-paid athletes, doctors, lawyers, etc.! Unfortunately, that's far and few between. There are a large segment of us locked up, on the down-low, not doing anything with our lives, or too busy playing games to be taken seriously. Yet and still, they won't and haven't totally given up on us. There are still a lot of black men out there who are "good catches", unfortunately, their numbers aren't keeping up with the number of available black women. Black women are surpassing men both educationally and professionally. But I know a lot of black women who are willing to date or be with a man based off of his "potential". I've never heard a man having to use that term in regards to a woman he's with.

Let me state that the fact that black women are portrayed as being mad, angry, fighting "b's" aren't the black women that I grew up around. That's a gross generalization that society has offered up to the masses, and a few "sell-outs" have happily re-enforced the negative stereotype for some cash. The women I grew up around like my Grandmother and Mother were loving and nurturing. They seldom got mad, and when they did, they didn't curse and start throwing fists!

I feel bad for Jim Jones' girlfriend and all other black women that so badly want a man in their lives that they're willing to sacrifice their on self-respect to be with them. I feel bad about the damage that it does for future generations that don't understand the repercussions of men not doing what they need to do to make a woman feel respected, loved, needed...I feel bad for black men that have been lulled into a sense of entitlement and getting to the point where we feel that a woman needs to "prove" herself to us. Apparently bearing someone a child, sacrificing other friends,dreams and careers to be with us isn't enough to get us to want to spend our lives with you...

It's really gotten that bad.

Yay! CLEVELAND ROCKS!!!

Come and visit Cleveland!!! Right now!!! Trust me, we could use the tourism dollars!

Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Video: 2nd Attempt from Albi Cakes on Vimeo.

MARSHA!!!

I'm absolutely loving me some Marsha Ambroius right now!!! She makes some great music and put on a great show live last week in Baltimore @ Ram's Head Live. Shouts out to Marsha and to Anthony David who did a great job as well! Her music will get you in some trouble LOL!Thanks for the great show!