As a young girl, I grew up in to low-income areas of the city where I come from in South Florida. The second area that I moved to was called Golden Gate City, a suburb of the larger and more prosperous Naples, Florida. Naples City Limits is where the more affluent families were able to live, thrive, and enjoy Naples. Golden Gate and East Naples were the areas where those of us who acted as service workers to the more affluent community lived. We still got to enjoy little slices of Naples, but lived on the outskirts. People in my low income areas were small business owners, teachers, nurses, families, and those of us that just wanted to have our little slice of the American dream. Sure we were low income, and we didn't have large, grandeur houses with brand new vehicles, but we felt that we were making it in life, and considered ourselves closer to the expectation of middle class.
I guess I never really knew the distinction between my rank in the socio-economic ladder of the city that I grew up in, nor did I think people prejudged me based on it. I just knew where I came from, and the cultures that I was raised in, predominantly being related to Haitian and Hispanic descent backgrounds. So when we heard the word ghetto, it was a badge that we wore with pride, not fully realizing as a child that it had a negative connotation attached to it. I assumed during my adolescence that the word ghetto was a way to express our differences in a positive way.
Growing up in Golden Gate City, it was often referred to as the Golden Ghetto. I remember being on the track team in Middle School, the middle school that I attended named Golden Gate Middle School. When we went to the big city track meet, we wrote golden ghetto down our arms in black Sharpie, and didn't think twice that people would see that and consider that we were less of a person. It was a label that we were allowing to give ourselves, and couldn't be offensive if we used it to empower ourselves. I didn't realize how important that was until some years later.
When I went to high school, I was rezoned to a new school that did not have the same cultural diversity that I had been accustomed to living around. You can tell that I was different than most of the rest of the student population by the mannerisms, clothing, and music that I used to identify myself. I had a swagger about myself and did hold a bit of an attitude, not really sure how to interact with this new atmosphere that I was going into for the first time in my whole life. I remember chillin one day in the courtyard, listening to music and drawing in a notebook. A petite, blonde cheerleader walked up to me with a smile on her face. I pulled off my headphones and closed my notebook as she approached me. The first thing out of her mouth was, "Are you a hoe?" I had never met or talked to this girl a day in my life, and naturally it was a sign of disrespect that I wasn't going to tolerate. I was a virgin, and didn't even have a boyfriend, a couldn't rap my head around what would make her say this to me. I don't want to condone violence, but it felt necessary at the time. I remember grabbing her by her hair and throwing her to the ground. Of course I was the one who got in trouble for the fight because it was supposed to be zero tolerance violence, and nobody cared that she walked up to me and called me a name. After that experience, I was labeled as ghetto.
I remember that same year being involved in physical fitness with one of the male football players. We were playing soccer that day, and I honestly was not physically fit, nor had any desire to want to play the sport. I made it clear that this wasn't something that was really going to participate in, and asked the nobody kick the ball to me. The football player kicked the ball towards me anyway, and the ball was stolen by the other team and ran down the field for a goal. I just stood there and watched it all happen. The football player walked past me and said, "ghetto bitch". Again I was seeing this word being used as a negative word as opposed to how I was raised and it being used as something to explain your experiences in life. I also couldn't understand how or why I was getting bullied for the way that I acted and dressed, as opposed to people being bullied for the more recognized reasons. Being bullied for your weight, your facial features, wearing glasses or braces, stuff like that. I was purely being labeled on my connection to the culture that I was raised around, and it didn't feel like it was okay to do. (I am making a point about bullying because it has been argued to me that ALL people are bullied as children. Just because it is based on race does not make it any different, nor makes someone prejudiced. I disagree with this.)
So let's look at the word ghetto and where this negative association comes from. As far as I know from my research the population of the United States uses the word ghetto to describe an urban area or neighborhood that has a high population of minorities. The term actually has old European ties, linking it to neighborhoods that were inhabited by Jewish populations. There are very little areas that equate to the same comparison as the ghettos that existed within the European countries, with here in the United States. The word is now used as a negative adjectives to explain something or someone based on stereotypes that are learned from mass media instead of experiences that you had on your own.
Me in my every day grind
I have been a social worker for 10 years, and have had the pleasure of working with many different diverse populations, including all arrays of different people in child welfare. I didn't only meet families that were beating their children and on welfare. I was also meeting more affluent families, with some parents as executives. When I spoke about my job in child welfare services, I would always get the same types of beliefs and comments from people regarding what their assumption was based on there ideas that they held as a standard. I regularly had to tell people that my clients reflected the White population more than the Hispanic or Black population, which was always followed with a gasp of disbelief. In one of my positions I remember speaking with my supervisor about one of the clients. It was a new family to me, but a family that my supervisor had worked with in the past. She came to brief me about the case before I headed out to meet them myself. She characterized the mother as having gold teeth and tattoos, and had quite the attitude. She then reported, "you will work better with her than I did. I don't speak ghetto". I just stood there speechless and stared at her, as she bent over letting out a hearty belly laugh, thinking it was the most hilarious thing she had ever said in her life. Again this word was being used to describe a certain type of person or people, and lucky for me, I was being lumped into it based on my mannerisms, the way I dressed, and the way I handled situations as a caseworker. It was almost as if I was being labeled right then and there as an unprofessional person, although I have a Bachelor's Degree and have held case management positions for a decade.
My love for Wu Tang Clan is Real
In closing, I wanted to share how we all play a part in prejudices related to classism, which we all need to work on as a country. In the end we are all people, and the world would be pretty boring if we were all exactly alike. I will continue to wear my badge of ghetto with honor, and will never be ashamed of having a background that is so full of life, love, music, art, and understanding of people no matter what their background may be. I don't want to waste my life filling it with hate, I would rather enrich it with experiencing life and tradition.