The Term “Ghetto”

It is my understanding that the first use of the term “Ghetto” was recorded during WW2(World War Two) in which Jewish americans forced to take shelter from the Nazi party who saw them as less than human. Ghettos were small arrangements of buildings in which living conditions were sub par, most times not including running water electricity or most of the basic necessities Americans have become accustomed to over the last decade. Coming from this definition, one would expect a term like “ghetto” to fade away into obscurity like most things of the past often do. However a recent study by Danah Boyd a prominent researcer and professor at Harvard Law School and all around scholar in the field of Information and Communication Technologies, she records a recent trend in internet use for highschool and college aged teens having to deal with this very term.

What was once thought to be a term set aside to describe unlivable conditions in which people forced to exist on the fringes of society, The term ghetto is now being used to describe the tenets or qualities associated with hip hop culture, and thus African Americans. However this is nothing new, as many of us know we all make assumptions about people based on our own observations. Sometimes these observations and the qualities we associate with them  are incorrect and sometimes they are correct but this is the very reason that they should not be used to make sound decisions. What makes the above case an interesting one is its connection to the internet and how the users of a certain social networking site are now being categorized by it. Though many of us use the internet for mundane tasks or for entertainment, never before has the sites e chose to visit placed a label on what type of person we are. In this case the teens in question have divided their peers into two categories, those who use Facebook and those who use MySpace. MySpace, launched in 2002 took the internet by storm with its flurry on social media innovations and the ability to play music over the web. However with the launch of Facebook for college students in 2006, the more educated of the teenage group in question flocked to this social media engine. What are your thoughts on this idea? SHould we be confined to the categories that people force us into based on which social media site we choose to use? Is this a wise decision?

Read the article here :http://www.danah.org/papers/2011/WhiteFlight.pdf