The Oppressed Community In The Ghetto, A Janus-Gated Community

1210 Words3 Pages

According to Loic Wacquant, Ghetto was a Janus-Faced Institution, that is, an institution that on one hand benefit the people who control the ghetto and on the other hand also protect the people in it from contact with outside. However, it has transformed to hyper ghetto that benefit more for the control party than as a protection for the oppressed. Gated community is another spatial institution in America that makes race, both within and outside. By comparing the characteristic of ghetto and gated community, it’s obvious that these two spatial institutions are in two extreme location of racial domination: gated community is the oppressor and ghetto is the oppressed. Moreover, the state also plays a role in defining make and the making of spatial …show more content…

Social stigma meaning that people who live in the ghetto or the ghetto itself were seen by the mainstream public to be something negative and often time that negative feeling will apply to everyone living in the ghetto. For example, people in mainstream use the term as if it is representing crime and associated with ghetto. In America, ghetto have been racialized and stigmatized, that is, blacks were seen as criminal. The second characteristic is physical constraint. The mainstream society used institutions like police to control and establish boundaries of ghetto. The next characteristic is that ghetto became spatial confinement of people living in ghetto. It is hard for stigmatized black and Hispanic to escape ghetto and they are forced to stay in it with little opportunity. The final characteristic of ghetto is that ghetto has parallel institutions. The institutions that you can found in the mainstream society are also available in the ghetto. For example, in ghetto, they have black churches, clinic, restaurant and newspaper that specifically for the black or Hispanic. Alongside with the requirement of ghetto, ghetto also features several problems, including poor housing conditions, high unemployment rates, rape, murder and burglary

Show More
Related

  • Gentrification Analysis

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    Michelle Boyd’s article “Defensive Development The Role of Racial Conflict in Gentrification” also focuses on gentrification addressing the failure to explain the relationship between racial conflict and its effect on gentrification. This article adds a new perspective to gentrification while studying the blacks as gentrifiers.

    Read More

  • Racial Injustice in the Book A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines

    522 Words  | 2 Pages

    A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines takes place in Louisiana in the 1940’s. When a young African American man named Jefferson is unfairly sentenced to death, school teacher Grant Wiggins is sent to try to make Jefferson a man before he dies. Throughout the novel, racial injustice is shown in both Jefferson and Grant’s lives in the way other people view them.

    Read More

  • Alicia My Story, Book Summary

    1341 Words  | 3 Pages

    By this time several people in the ghetto had been feeling the effects of the impoverished

    Read More

  • The Role of Ghettos in the Holocaust and German Rule

    340 Words  | 1 Pages

    A Ghetto is a section of a city were members of a racial group are

    Read More

  • More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ll. The inner city has many complications the fact that most are African American is a mere coincidence. If we as a nation are capable of fixing all institutions and structural issues we could bring the slums out of poverty. The cycle of unemployment and poverty is a terrible cycle that cannot only be judged by race and cultural values. When reading this book keep in mind the difficulties, any family or person could go through these tribulations. There are many arguments and sides to each problem; this is another one of those. The battle for inner city poverty, and the factors that go along with it, has not been finished. Wilson brings out a different aspect which could help people expand horizons and come up with better solutions.

    Read More

  • The Invisible Cage: Inequality for African Americans

    574 Words  | 2 Pages

    In her article “From America’s New Working Class”, Kathleen R. Arnold makes clear that welfare/workfare recipients are treated like prisoners or second class citizens. Likewise, In Michelle Alexander’s article “The New Jim Crow” she describes how blacks is made criminals by a corrupt criminal justice system. Alexander also points out in her article “The New Jim Crow” that shackles and chains are not the only form of slavery. Furthermore, Alexander states that although America is thought of as the home of the free, blacks are more likely than any other race to be arrested, unemployed, or denied housing. Freedom is not an absolute value in America, as slavery is more ubiquitous than ever.

    Read More

  • Race And Race In Southland, By Nina Revoyr

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ewish enclave to a predominantly Mexican community” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640) due to the fact that the “Jewish community of Los Angeles as a whole was transformed by the demographic changes, clearly becoming “white” in the racial hierarchy of the region both geographically and politically” (Sanchez, 2004, p. 640). The place of the Jewish community changed along with their identity. Once they became “white” they no longer were restricted to living in Boyle Heights. In Los Angeles, it is clear through what happened to this one group of people that one’s metaphorical place in society, meant to be one’s racial and class status in what Sanchez refers to as a hierarchy, has a direct link to one’s literal or geographical place in the city. The ongoing divisions within society caused by stratification have become the basis of the meaning of place in contemporary Los Angeles.

    Read More

  • Ghetto Takes Shape

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 explains in detail how the author deciphers the ghettoization process in Cleveland during the time period. Kusmer also tries to include studies that mainly pertained to specific black communities such as Harlem, Chicago, and Detroit, which strongly emphasized the institutional ghetto and dwelled on white hostility as the main reasons as to why the black ghetto was

    Read More

  • Segregation and Housing in Chicago

    2285 Words  | 5 Pages

    Chicago was the best place to live and visit for anyone. Many people traveled from far places to visit and live in Chicago. Long after the World War II many things started reshaping America. One of the most significant was the racial change all over America but specifically in Chicago. Many southern blacks started to move into Chicago. Chicago started to become mostly dominated by blacks and other minorities while whites started to move into the suburbs of Chicago. "Beginning in the 1930s, with the city's black population increasing and whites fleeing to the suburbs, the black vote became a precious commodity to the white politicians seeking to maintain control" (Green, 117). Many of the mayors such as Edward J. Kelly, Martin H. Kennelly, and Richard J. Daley won over the blacks and got their votes for them to become mayor. The black population grew by 77 percent by the 1940. The white population dropped from 102,048 to 10,792 during the years of 1940 to 1960. With all of these people moving into Chicago there had to be more housing. There were many houses built to accommodate all the people. Martin H. Kennelly at one time wanted to tear down slums and have public housing built in the black ghetto. Many of the blacks wanted to escape these ghettos so some of them; if they could they would try to move to the white communities. When the blacks would try to move into the white communities they were met with mobs. There were many hurdles that blacks had to overcome not only in Chicago but all over America. The blacks of Chicago had to fight for a place to live and to find a mayor that would help them for who they are, not their color.

    Read More

  • Housing Segregation and Minority Groups in the United States

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...

    Read More

  • Decent and Street People in the Code of the Streets by Elijah Anderson

    1687 Words  | 4 Pages

    Throughout the article “The Code of the Streets,” Elijah Anderson explains the differences between “decent” and “street” people that can be applied to the approaches of social control, labeling, and social conflict theories when talking about the violence among inner cities due to cultural adaptations.

    Read More

  • Gentrification In The Hood Analysis

    887 Words  | 2 Pages

    This text also persuades readers about how race is an issue of gentrification. The author’s claims on the issues show that gentrification is mainly influenced by race and income. The writer wrote the text also to show how the media can be influential to be discouraging poor colored communities, criticizing the views on gentrification in those areas. There are some persuasive appeals that are supported by the author in the text. The first is Ethos, he is a credible source in his claims retelling his own experience as a paramedic and how his patient impacted his criticism on how the media portrays the “hood” as being atrocious and worthless in the community. The author also attempts to convince his readers through his own emotions, including specific evidence and claims for his appeals. The second persuasive appeal used is pathos when he explains how these communities are dealt with moving place to place being invaded from their own residence and businesses. The third persuasive appeals he presents is logos, which he describes the situation of the the people being affected by this issue first hand to show the reader it is a mistaken

    Read More

  • Sociological Aspects of "The Devil in the White City"

    1607 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson was a mix between two stories that overall worked well together. The stories worked together to convey the true overall meaning of the theme good versus evil. Good and evil are seen everywhere throughout the novel, even in the most obvious of places such as the title. Good and evil, dark and light, they all stand for the same thing. White is normally found to be pure and good. By the author naming the book, The Devil in the White City, he is trying to tell the reader that the novel is about how even in truly pure places evil will follow. Although, good and evil is the main theme of this novel, I found that if you look deeply into the way he tells the story, he is also trying to tell his reader about other themes. These other themes that you can find all throughout the book are things such as pride and determination. These other themes were very prominent and played very well into the plot and the theme of the story.

    Read More

  • Racism In Sherman Alexie's 'Gentrification'

    720 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sherman Alexie’s Gentrification first sets out to show the effect a white man has on his black community, but ends out taking a deeper dive into the protagonist, instead. Gentrification is littered with the internal struggles this person faces as a minority in his community. The white protagonist of this short story appears very self-conscious of his race, perhaps even apologetic.

    Read More

  • Race in the Movie City of God

    1525 Words  | 4 Pages

    The movie City of God, showed the incredible world of gang youth in the undeveloped area of Rio de Janeiro, where gangs ruled the streets and young children were initiated into murder before they were teenagers. The urbanization of the third world is creating sub-cultures that are filed with chaos and run by crime, most of which is the result of drugs and other illegal activities. In his article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley, 1). Though the Civil Rights movement was able to get equal rights for blacks, it could not stop the brutality that still plagued them. The urban setting is so overcrowded that the people are living on top of each other.

    Read More

More about The Oppressed Community In The Ghetto, A Janus-Gated Community

Open Document