Ghetto...

Ghetto

I heard a girl, we’ll call her Jen, say that her apartment was ghetto because it did not have a lot of furniture.

Really, Jen? Really?

I was listening to a top 40 radio station and a caller, let’s call her Megan, calls in, commenting on a discussion about whether the DJ should wear his hat to the back or not. She says that this is so ghetto. From her voice, I made the assumption that she was not exactly the princess of the ghetto. I mean that she was not calling from the third floor apartment in the projects, if you know what I mean. Now, the way she says “ghetto” is the same tone that her mother would probably use when saying “urban”, “trashy”, “trailer trash”, or “ this milk is spoiled”, with her nose turned up, as she clutches her pearls. It occurred to me that she meant ghetto as in “slumming”, “being rebellious”.

However, the way that she said it was disturbing in a twofold sense – for the aforementioned reason and a second one.

As a person of color, there is an unwritten rule: I can say anything about my family, but you can’t. Not even about my most pathetic, annoying relative. The same applies here. Similarly, people of color in general have been exposed to distressful socioeconomic situations in this country and, thus, have had to know the ghetto. Meanwhile, in recent times, Megans across the country have come to idolize 50 Cent as the newest teen icon and Jay-Z gets played, in the most edited form, on Top 40 radio. From these rappers and icons talking about the ghetto and their experiences, Megans now believe that they understand the ghetto. So, since these guys wear their hats backwards, Megan believes that that is so ghetto, since she now is a bona fide expert in ghetto-ness. Little does she realize that most fashions today originated from the ghetto. Before Paris Hilton got extensions, Lakisha and Ronisha were rocking them like they were going out of style. This whole messy hair trend is what people with straight hair do to try to emulate an afro. And don’t let us forget about the trend of wearing panchos, or eating chips and salsa. El barrio, the ghetto, places where you have to “make do” with what you have create trends that eventually cost too much for the people who started them to afford their high priced counterparts. The problem is that people then making the following three associations:
1. that all people of color are ghetto (Just look at Traci Bingham and that proves me correct.
2. that ghetto is a term that only applies to just Blacks and Latinos (Tanya Harding and most guests of Jerry Springer that are not Black or Latino are proof of this)
3. and that everything connected to the ghetto is bad (Fried Chicken, basketball, and double dutch (which is now a national sport))

Thus, I guess my reaction to Megan was because I felt that she would need to really have some inkling of understanding in her life as to what is the ghetto experience before she could comment on it.

What does the word ghetto mean to you?

To some people, it means a neighborhood, like, a ghetto, what the word originally meant. It comes from an Italian dialectical word ghèto which meant a foundry, or a place where a foundation is built. It referred to an island where the Jews were forced to live isolated. The word comes from the word ghétar which means to cast out, which comes from the word jactare in Latin that means to throw. Yes, it was important for me to write all of that.

So, to others, it refers to where they live. It refers to a place that is not so rich, no so well kept, maybe projects or “low income housing”. We’re thinking the hood, the block, an area with many of what is commonly referred to as “the corner”. That is important to remember because as the suburban sprawl has reared its ugly little head, so has the elimination of corners. Have you noticed that the richer that an area is, the less corners that it has? These areas have more soft, curvy, continuous sidewalks, giving the impression of a completely harmonious and connected society. Ghetto mentality would equate “soft corners” with being a punk. Honestly, put the suburban street against the ghetto corner and I think we all know who’s winning the fight. Corners tend to be gathering places, especially in what some people call the ghetto. I think that is because this is the best vantage place to see everything, and if you are living in the ghetto, you are probably outside because you are trying to see what’s going on. Thus, the corner is the best seat in the house. I hope that I don’t sound too distant from the topic, although I doubt that the Ghetto Residential Association is going to come down on me too hard if I did. The point is that while it almost hurts me to see people live in such economic strain, it also hurts me to see people characterize whole races of people as what they consider to be the ghetto.

I lived close enough to the ghetto to know where it was, and not to go there. Although the word is bourgeois, the pronunciation “boo-zhee” refers to people like how I am sometimes, people of color that are viewed as viewing themselves too high or too cultured for the ghetto. I personally don’t think that I think of myself as either, but just that it is not my element. For example, I remember that people would mention to me in elementary and high school when our city first got recycling bins for each house that their ghetto areas did not receive any bins, but my area, which was not ghetto, did. This is when I first noticed the disparity. And then in more conversations, I realized that our lives were so different. These kids related to the things that they saw in “Boyz in the Hood” and movies like that. I did not even see the movie until maybe two years ago, and when I did, I did not relate to it. Some of their stories of tough love from their parents, and economic depression made my complaints about anything seem all but ridiculous. These kids had seen people sell drugs, take drugs, get shot, shoot people, and show wild reckless abandon. The most that I had ever seen was what I saw on TV. The wildest thing that had ever happened to me was that I cut school. As I did not relate, this pushed me further and further away from them, to the point that, yes, I became what they pronounce as “boo-zhee”.

Be that at as it may, whenever you even remotely know someone from the ghetto, you will learn a little about the ghetto attitude. Being ghetto. To me, it is not what a lot of people think. I have noticed that the word ghetto has now come to be the PC way for saying that something is “like black people, like street people, lower-class”. I’ve heard certain people say things like that they were living ghetto, because they were living on a little bit of money, or in a ragged apartment, etc. I think that it is one of those terms that you have to be familiar with to use. I would never describe my great day as “gnarly”, not because I don’t have days that fit in with the meaning of that word, but the lifestyle associated with people that use the word “gnarly” as slang is not mine. In case you were wondering, “gnarly” actually has a standard meaning, which means twisted into a state of deformity. Gnarl is a verb. Don’t say you never learned anything from my book.

Now the ghetto attitude is definitely very contagious. I am going to sound like a stuffed shirt trying to explain hip-hop to the country club right now, but here goes:
The ghetto attitude is a no holds barred*, “I will break you into small pieces and then come back with my whole family and beat up your whole family, grandma against grandma” type of mantra. It is caused by being in situations, both economic and social, that back one against a wall, which forces one to fight like fire and learn how to take care of oneself. Having been pushed to that limit, or living on that limit all the time though, makes one on the defensive all of the time. A simple look turns into a challenge. Any statement not blatantly positive becomes a possible slight. It creates a very edgy, tense situation.
What happens though also is that this resistance of outside influences often means that advances toward higher education or better socioeconomic station, or at least proper diction and decorum, are also viewed as demonstrations of direct opposition to ghetto-ness and those who live in it. This sometimes means that people who speak well or are more educated are shunned and viewed as outsiders and inferior in terms of street credibility (make sure to sign me up for that degree) and also, acting as if one has ever gone to any form of school is often viewed as subordination from the code of ghetto ethics.

*(Is “no holds barred” a wrestling term? Like no type of hold is barred, which means that it’s kind of free for all? Did I just figure that out all by myself? Hmmm…)

Anyway, three thoughts come to mind.

My father went to one of his doctors and upon leaving the office, requested a referral form from the ghetto girl at the desk. She insisted three times to my father that he has already received a referral, to which my father replied each time that no, he hadn’t and that the doctor had just sent to get one from the desk. On the last time that my father asked, ghetto girl says, “You already got one”. It could have been the bad English, or the ghetto attitude that the girl displayed, but this upset my father so much that he left. My mother returned to ask again for the referral, and this time, ghetto girl became irate. The doctor was standing by and tried to ascertain the problem. The girl showed him that, yes, she had given my father a referral. The problem was that what she called a referral was actually a receipt. The Doctor asks ghetto girl if she made a habit of filing the papers that the doctor prepared for patients. She said yes. As the doctor is looking through the files, he asks if she files in alphabetical order. She says, “What you mean, LMNOP?”

I rest my case. But wait, there’s more.

I mentioned in the “Chicken and Jeans” Chapter that I had someone throw a pair of jeans at me. This was my experience with ghetto shopper at Christmastime. Apparently, ghetto shopper was not too observant that I was using the folding table to fold the pile of clothes that was taller than I. How anyone could miss it, I am not sure, but she decided that she needed to toss a pair of jeans onto the table as I am folding, despite the fact that I was in the middle of folding clothes. This ire of her disregard for my oh-so important work of folding (If I have to pretend like folding clothes is important to me, so much so that I am getting paid to do so, then everyone else better play along) metamorphosed into rage when she hurled the jeans at me, and in the process the sensor tag on the jeans hit me in the wrist. (Maybe she didn’t hurl them in hindsight, but at the time, it seemed like she was pitching a baseball at me.)

After this, since she threw the jeans onto the folding table, I folded them, so as not to lose my rhythm and also to keep from throwing those jeans at her, or better yet, removing the sensor tag from the jeans and inserting it into her skull. She then increased the level of her audacity and said to me, “Excuse me (pronounce like “uh-scooz me”), I still want those”.
So, in good corporate retail customer service fashion, I regrouped (can one person regroup?) and let her know that for future reference, that this table was where one can deposit their unwanted items from their fitting room experience. She let me know that for future reference that I was rude, and proceeded to try to tell me off, not really aware that she still needed a fitting room and had to stand there in front of me until I let her into a room. Yes, I did want to take my time deliberately to get her into a room, but really, the Christmas overflow did that job for me. Then she call me a jackass. A customer that had witnessed this whole event walked up to me as if I were in a domestic violence commercial and said to me: “ You don’t have to take that type of treatment. I am going to let your manager know what just happened to you”. I wanted to ask her to ask them to raise my salary, but I figured that this might be too ambitious.

Anyway, my manager had a bit of ghetto attitude. She literally came back to the fitting room like she wanted to fight. (She really did come back there to me taking her headset off in a way that I have only seen ghetto girls take their earring off just before a fight). She was a great manager and really cared a lot about the other employees and me. So, she came back and asked me where this customer was. She knocked on the door, and after that, though they might have been different races, ghetto-ness is what came out of both of them. When ghetto girl said %^&* you, %^&*^ to my manager, that is when my manager lost it and went after her through the store. I have never been so happy to see a manager before, nor such an engaging cross-cultural feud. Over the headset about 3 minutes later, I heard my manager say, “That customer will not be returning to this store ever again”.

Of course, you can’t leave out the gentlemen in this arena. That was a facetious remark if you didn’t pick up the humor right there. It’s almost prerequisite that as men, ghetto guys have to put each other down so as to appear greater as you stand on the backs of the downtrodden. So, I am passing by a shop where friends of a certain relative of mine worked. One of them recognized me and started talking to me about how I was doing with school. The other guy with this friend, let’s call him “Stupid” for now,is a friend of my relative, and this relative has been always pretty disparaging of me, while never having amounted to anything. (Isn’t that always the truth – It’s the person that gained 200 pounds that wants to make fun of you because you are a little heavy, like they are the spokesperson for Weight Watchers.) So, Stupid says to me when I say that I have finished my work for my degree, “Oh, so you will be waiting on tables soon?” Now, Stupid is meeting me for the first time and I don’t want to cause a scene, but does he really know me like that to even come out of his face and say something like that? Of course, to try futilely to clean up his comment, he adds that he knows a couple of graduates that are still working at restaurants and such. I had to let him know that even if I were working at a restaurant, I would definitely be making more money than he was or could. Then the subject came up about my major. Stupid mentions that it was ridiculous for me to be an English major since I grew up speaking English. Besides the obvious example of his lack of English ability to demonstrate that growing up in an English speaking country does not speak to your ability to speak or write the language, I had to help him to understand that, no, Stupid, I did not study verbs and adjectives, that this major deals with literature. Then I had to break it down for him that, yet again, with my experience, degree, and ability, I would definitely be able to get a job doing something much more productive than his present occupation of standing on the street corner. (I don’t know that to be a fact, but I felt better being under that impression.) And still, he appeared unfazed and relentless in his ghetto self-righteousness, looking down upon me because I don’t feel the need to sell drugs, have various children out of wedlock with odd names and crazy mothers, or scratch my genitals and hold onto them for dear life at every waking moment.

On the way to finish this chapter, I was almost accosted by an 8-year-old boy who gave me the meanest scowl that I have seen this side of the world. (The ghetto term for this is that gave me an “ice grill”.) He was on a little bike, appropriate for his age, and drove up next to me and, while still pedaling, slowed down and stared me down like I had stolen his ice cream. He then peddled away, about 30 feet more, and then, for no apparent reason, stopped, threw the bike down and sat down on the ground with a look on his face that said, I have had it, and I am not taking anymore from you, this bike, or this day. The only thing that I could think of that could have fueled his anger was that I had just been in the bodega (corner store) and I bought a strawberry soda (which you can only purchase in the ghetto, of course) and maybe I bought the last one.

Or not.

That’s just how the ghetto is. Peace out homies. It’s official like a referee with a whistle.