A Ghetto Girl: A Short Story

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

The book that I am nominating for the NCTE Orbis Pictus Book for Outstanding Nonfiction for children is Ghettoside: A true story of Murder in America. I nominated this book based on four key factors accuracy, organization, design, and style. These factors were inspirational in creating a piece of literature that will amaze and inform its reading audience. Ghettoside was published January 15, 2015.

The term ghetto, originally derived from Venetian dialect in Italy during the sixteenth century, has multiple variations of meaning. The primary perception of the word is “synonymous with segregation” (Bassi). The first defining moment of the ghetto as a Jewish neighborhood was in sixteenth century Italy; however, the term directly correlates with the beginning of the horror that the Jewish population faced during Adolph Hitler’s reign. “No ancient ghetto knew the terror and suffering of the ghettos under Hitler” (Weisel, After the Darkness 20). Under Hitler’s terror, there were multiple ghettos throughout several cities in numerous countries ranging in size and population. Ghettos also differed in purpose; some were temporary housing

After reading the essay “The Ghetto Made Me Do It” written by Francis Flaherty, I thought differently about the situation than I had before hearing both sides of this tragic story. My perspective changed from being bias toward Felicia Morgan to feeling a sense of sympathy for her. However, regardless of what defense there is to this story, it does not change how ruthless and tragic this homicide actually was.

In her article “The Venus Hip Hop and the Pink Ghetto: Negotiating Spaces for Women,” Imani Perry argues that the objectification of women in the music industry is normalized in our society. Her purpose is to persuade us that most feminists who fight against the objectification and exploitation of women are ultimately colonized by the sexual fantasies of men. As a law professor at Rutgers Law School, Perry structures her text in a very effective manner. Using a general-to-specific organization scheme, she begins by outlining the recurring image of sexualized women in music videos, then presenting various cases of prominent feminist figures in the music industry.

Jill Leovy is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Ghettoside: A True Story Of

In Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto, Shelby argues that the urban poor’s refusal to work in legitimate jobs or engagement in criminal activity is justified as it does not violate the principle of reciprocity or neglect civic obligations. Shelby’s arguments focuses on determining whether or not deviant behavior is reasonable from the perspective of justice and reciprocity in society. This principle of reciprocity is derived from Rawl’s doctrines such as the basic structure of society and justice as fairness. In this paper, I will reconstruct Shelby’s argument that deviant behavior does not necessarily violate an individual’s civic obligations. I will argue that Shelby’s dichotomy of moral and civic obligations is arbitrarily defined

​Contrary to popular belief, the use of ghettos began long before Hitler came to power in the early 1930s. On March 29th, 1516, the Republic of Venice ordered the Jewish population to live in the confined area of Ghetto Nuova. Ghetto Nuova was a filthy, crowded island that confined the Jewish population by closing the island off at night and surrounding it with patrols. During this era, Jewish people also faced discrimination, as they were ordered to wear a sign of identification such as a yellow hat or badge (“The Ghetto”). Furthermore, this discrimination and persecution of the Jewish people dispersed to other areas. In 1555, Pope Paul IV established Cum nimis absurdum, a papal law, that led to the creation of the Roman Ghetto. In the

During World War II, more than 400 ghettos were made because they needed to isolate the Jewish from the non-Jewish. These ghettos were established by the Nazi’s. There were three types of ghettos, closed ghettos, open ghettos, and destruction ghettos. The closed ghettos were usually Ghettos were first originated in Venice, Italy, where Jewish homes and businesses were restricted to a selected part of the city. Over the next 200 years, other nations started to have ghettos in them such as France, Croatia, and Poland, though by the late 1800s Jews were no longer legally required to live in them.

In the 1990s, they were changes that were important in the gentrification of cities in the United States. Corporate developers of the restructuring of the real estate industry initiated the process. Since the

When the Nazi’s were raiding the ghetto they were killing the sick and shooting people who were trying to run away. They threw away our luggage and forced us on trains that went to labor camps. We were forced to work and were killed if we stopped working. If we were sick we were shipped off and killed. They would line us up and shoot us to save bullets. If we tried to talk to a soldier to complain we would be killed right on the spot. As I am writing this they are rounding up to be checked to make sure that we are hea *insert blood stain here*

The ghetto is a place where one can control a population. The ghetto is described as a pollution, a residual harmful effects that the industrialization gives. White communities saw blacks as a source of pollution that has the ability to contaminate their family. In “A Janus-Faced Institution of Ethnoracial Closure: A Sociological Specification of the Ghetto,” Loic Wacquant breaks down the function of the ghetto: “The ghetto is a social-organizational device that employs space to reconcile two antinomic functions: (1) to maximize the material profits extracted out of a category deemed defiled and defiling; and to (2) minimize intimate contact with its members so as to avert the threat of symbolic corrosion and contagion they are believed to

In mainstream America the word Ghetto has been used as a tool to make people feel more valuable then others. The historical meaning of ghetto dates back to the Jewish diaspora when Jewish Europeans were cramped into tight living spaces. Meanwhile, The contemporary meaning of the word has been used as a neutral noun to describe about anything not being white enough. Furthermore, a ghetto is an institution that lacks many important resources and tends to keep people isolated from the rest of society. The lack of knowledge in our young society tends to get most of its information from the media.

King of Rock n Roll, Elvis Presley, had a song in 1969 that took a drastic turn in theme from many of his other tunes relating to love, dancing and rock n roll. This song tells a tragic story which has very realistic connotations to the social problems of crime and poverty that were not only applicable to 1960s society but to our 21st century society. In this paper I will examine that song, titled “In the Ghetto”, highlight how the themes of the song relate to social disorganization, and further examine how the main character’s neighborhood takes the characteristics of a socially disorganized ecological environment perfectly.

When one thinks of Harlem, he or she typically associates the city with the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century, which celebrated the achievements of African American arts, and its correlation with the Great Migration of these individuals moving from the South to the North. According to sociologist Sharon Zukin in her article “Why Harlem Is Not a Ghetto,” “The first Harlem Renaissance was the period of extraordinary creativity in the 1920s and 1930s when African American and Caribbean writers, painters, and intellectuals joined with white literary critics to create a ‘capital of Black culture.’” (Zukin, 65). The city of Harlem highlights the strides African Americans have made, and today with the inclusion of chains such as Whole