I work in Newark NJ. I feel safe walking from work over to the drugstore or grocery store in daylight but I wouldn’t do it at night
I’ve never lived in the projects but I did live down the street from one, so I was still in the ghetto, but not nearly as in the ghetto as the projects. Now I live a few blocks away, so hey, I’m movin’ on up!
I drive through every morning on my way to work. Some of the houses are literally falling down; some of the people take great care with their houses and yards, right next to a burned-out wreck will be a spruced-up 100-year-old Foursquare that probably has a current property value of $25,000. And the streets are so bad you can’t drive more than 10 mph or you’ll break an axle. The people who take pride in their houses deserve better than that.
And like pendgwen, at 7:15 a.m. I’m not too worried; I’d never drive through there at 10 p.m. When I first got this job I was clutching the steering wheel with one hand and my pearls with the other. Now I’m nodding greetings at the street people.
Never lived in a proper ghetto.
I have seen plenty of ghetto areas, though, in other countries. Once you get away from the main tourist strips in Caribbean countries (Bahamas, Jamaica, etc) there is a soul-crushing amount of poverty. American ghettos have got NOTHING on it.
I’m in the ‘ghetto’ fairly regularly. I’m in my 20s and live right outside Philadelphia; a lot of my friends my age have lived/do live in pretty bad areas of the city, what with being broke and young (students or not). I will visit them there and we will do things. Or we will go to other bad areas and do other things.
Back in the late 90’s early 00’s i was one of the only Real Estate appraiser that would go into East St Louis/Centerville Illinois. I once appraised a house that was across from a EPA Superfund site smack dab in the middle of East St Louis…the house had a negative value…the cost to remidiate was more than the value of the shack…err house.
I spent some time in some pretty sketchy neighborhoods in San Francisco; and when I moved to Oakland, I was very close to a bad part of town, that I went to all the time to get some decent eats.
And I lived right next to the projects in Portland, ME for about three years. But then again, it’s Portland, Me. Our ghetto is about equivalent to Oakland’s suburbia.
I left the suburbs once. It was awful. Many people didn’t even own an SUV or a minivan and I saw kids playing basketball - not soccer! There wasn’t a Starbucks to be found. I’m surprised I lived to tell the tale.
Moved from a rural area (front street 9 miles long for 6 houses) to the ghetto - go figure.
Hey, me too! Moved from a small town to what lots of people consider the ghetto (North Mpls), but our neighbors turned out to be much friendlier than the small town folks.
I think that’s pretty accurate. I used to live near a low-income housing development and I met some people who considered that “the ghetto”, but I had a nice apartment and I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all walking around at night, etc.
On the other hand, a friend and I were visiting Chicago and we felt distinctly uncomfortable when we got off the El at Garfield station. But I’m sure many Chicago residents wouldn’t consider that very “ghetto-y” at all.
I find a lot of foreigners classify any dwelling that isn’t in the modern style(air conditioned and airtight) as looking ghettoish, but that style makes no sense in the Caribbean’s climate. There is no need for insulation as it never drops below 70F, but the sun can be intense and there are constant breezes so most architecture tries to take advantage of this with things like vent bricks and plenty of open spots to let air through.
There are “real” ghettos of course, but to many not used to the architecture everything except brand new housing built for expats looks like it is the ghetto when its really middle class housing.
I grew up in a housing project in a down-on-it’s-luck suburb of Sacramento. It wasn’t a traditional ghetto, but it was a broken-glass, open-air drug dealing, gunshots at night, police helicopters-shining-the-spotlight-in-the-backyard kind of place. I regularly saw arrests, standoffs, running perps, etc. out my window. Many of my neighbors were using, dealing, or turning tricks.
Spent some time in a very nice part of Oakland, and now I live in a transitioning neighborhood in DC (Shaw). It’s once again not the deep ghetto, but daylight muggings are a weekly occurrence on the blocks around me.
Worldwide I’ve been to slum areas of Guatemala, India, Cameroon, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa for various reason.
I think “ghetto” is more about your state of mind than your physical surroundings. My slightly run down suburb was just as “ghetto” as East Oakland to my friends whose parents were dealing and affiliated with gangs. These kids grew up with fear, hoplessness and criminal activity. It was a lot less ghetto to me, as an essentially middle class kids whose parents happened to be broke. Likewise, some “slums” abroad are hopeless, dangerous places. Others are pretty nice neighborhoods that happen to have shitty infrastrcutre. It’s tough to tell on the surface. What I will say is that while US ghettos may be materially better than their developing world counterparts, I’d be hesitant to say they are better. You can get used to no running water, no electricity, tin walls, etc. But nobody can get used to violence and hopelessness.
Right, that’s what I think of when I think of “ghetto.” The bus used to drive through there and I do remember driving through, not walking around. I’ve been in other poor areas but nothing that compares to that.
I voted ‘No’ just because it isn’t a major metropolitan area, but I’m typing this not far from ‘Canada’s Worst Neighbourhood’.
It makes me laugh because it’s upscale compared to many in this thread. Guns? Nah, just knives. Violence? Only if you get into drugs or gangs. I wouldn’t hang around there, but I’d be fine in daylight with another person.
It would seem that a ghetto is a place that contains a population that is bankrupt of morals instead of money. I used to work in a bad area of Memphis TN, and some of the residents worked in the same factory.
Even children on the street could steal a car in seconds. Robbing and killing were common, everyday events. Home invasion with murder was gloated over.
I was proud of my military time, and it made me an enemy in their eyes. They were proud of their prison time.
In the daytime you could walk alongside any building and pick up bullets that had smashed into the wall from drive by shooters. At night, you just might be the target. Many of the houses had heavy corrugated metal over the front windows.
The people there had money. They had expensive cars, heavy gold necklaces, diamond studded gold front teeth. But no morals.
I grew up in Kensington, a neighborhood on the East Side of Buffalo, New York. It made the socioeconomic transition from a pleasant lower-middle/middle class neighborhood to solid 'hood between 1980 and 2000. I left in 1989, when I graduated college; long-time businesses on Bailey Avenue that once catered to a middle-class community were beginning to be replaced by pager stores, urban clothing stores, furniture and appliance rental stores, and bodegas in the style of Detroit “party stores” My parents left in 1992, shortly after a car was set on fire a few houses down from their house.
Part of my grad school thesis dealt with the convergence of forces that led to the transition of Kensington. There’s no simple reason behind urban decline in the US; “white flight” is just a guilt-ridden soundbite to explain a very complicated and nuanced issue.
My grandparents lived in the same neighborhood.
Their house: 1965
Today. Spin around and look at the street.
Anyhow, have I been to a REAL ghetto? I’ve been there and studied them: Hough in Cleveland; East Cleveland, Ohio; Cairo, Illinois; Chicago’s South Side and West Side, East St. Louis, Illinois; and a bunch more. Kensington isn’t as bad as any of those, but it’s an unsettling place.
My mom used to date this ex-con (he lived with us) and she’d toss me in the backseat and they’d take me to the East Side of Cleveland to do their drug deals. He made me squish down in the backseat so I couldn’t easily be seen, as his white girlfriend and her little white girl child were targets until his presence was known. I was never allowed inside the house where the deal was going down; he would go in and lock me and mom inside the car. A couple of times, mom told me, she’d been threatened with guns by thug types until her BF made it known that she was “his”. We also went to visit his aunt, who lived in the projects, was a great cook, and who was really nice to me. I didn’t know they were doing anything that could be considered dangerous. I just thought it was fun to go to Cleveland and visit mom’s BF’s aunt. (I didn’t know any rich people of any color, so in my child’s mind, poor/middle class black people are just the same as poor/middle class white people, only sometimes the music and the food is a little different.) He also had a daughter about my age and we brought her to our house for a sleepover once, but if we went to visit her, we didn’t stay the night. She was fun to play with too, so those are my ghetto experiences. I was a kid. I was introduced to a lot of kind people who gave me treats and were nice to me.
As a result, I am not scared of ghettos as an adult. I probably should be, because I don’t have a ticket in as a companion to an insider. I have always said I’d rather my car break down in the middle of the night in the worst, most dangerous inner-city ghetto over having it break down out in the country where there’s nothing but barns, silos, and amber waves of grain. I might get raped or murdered in a ghetto, but I also might have an easier time finding a kind person to help me. Cows, typically, do not carry cellphones and cannot call tow trucks. In general. I think it’s the lack of thumbs and pockets.
Upon preview, I’m starting to wonder about the definition of “ghetto.” I may have lived in ghettos, but because I’m not afraid to be the outlier in a mostly-other-culture neighborhood, I couldn’t say for sure. I’ve lived in downtown Ft. Lauderdale and used to witness drug deals on my way to work. I went to clubs to see bands in some really sketchy neighborhoods in Miami. I’ve also done business in some sketchy neighborhoods (gone to review proofs at the printer’s, which might be in a sketchy industrial neighborhood). I worked in an office that was in a ghetto-y part of town and patronized all the food places in the neighborhood. I think nothing of being the only Caucasian in line at the Taco Bell. And, I’ve lived in smaller cities in the poor and mostly-other-cultures-than mine neighborhoods ('cause they’re cheap and so am I ;)). Does ghetto mean “inner city/downtown + poor + nonwhite”? Is it about race at all? Because I’ve also been in some pretty sketchy all-white trailer parks too, real meth den type places, to visit relatives. Those places scare me more than the mostly-other-culture neighborhoods.
I live in a transitioning neighborhood in DC (H Street NE). It was a lot rougher when we moved in 7 years ago. Now, we have a lot restaurants and bars that have opened up. It is still rough when you go north into Trinidad, especially when you get past Queen Street, and Ivy City, but I don’t do it too often.
I’ve been through Anacostia as well. By day, it doesn’t look too bad. I think that DC really doesn’t have the rough hoods especially compared to Baltimore. I took a shortcut there through East Baltimore that was depressing with most of the houses on the street being boarded up or in otherwise almost uninhabitable states of repair.
I’ve lived in brownstone. I’ve lived in the ghetto. I’ve lived all over this town.