I'm starting a new series here. The Archives are blog posts that I wrote while I was still blogging in Yahoo 360. Those were the good old days! Anyway, enjoy.
Listening to: Kuch Tu Hua Hai – Kal Ho Na Ho Sound Track
Mood: Tired
I recently finished reading a book that caught my eye at my
local library titled Ghetto Nation. This
book caught my eye because I am always trying to understand the sociological
motivations behind some of the actions of different kinds of people. I grew up
in a largely white suburb about an hour south of Chicago. My town was right
next to Kankakee Illinois, which happens to be a very low income area, and
dangerous in some places. I was pretty well insulated from some of these
realities when I was little. When I turned 19, I moved out of my mom’s house
and into Kankakee, because that was what I could afford working at a Subway
restaurant. This was right about the time when hip hop and rap exploded onto
the popular music scene. I got a full on lesson in “ghetto-oligy”, and fell
head long into being ghetto myself. I
have to admit, I picked up this book because I knew that on some level I would
identify with much of what the author was saying. I have long since moved out
of the ghetto of Kankakee. I have lost any and all street cred that I had and
have moved on to a different lifestyle. I no longer identify with this as
strongly as I used to. It always did, and indeed still does, puzzle me why
certain economic classes choose to spend their money in certain manner and make
decisions in a certain way.
The author makes some very good points in this book. Our
culture has moved towards a ghetto state of mind and being ghetto stretches
across all class lines and distinctions. I did feel that this book was a little
broad though and had a few agendas that weren’t true to the title. The author
happens to be a black woman from Brooklyn. I felt that while she was pushing
the point about ghetto being a national problem, or stretching across
economical lines, she overly focused on the black demographic of ghetto people.
Perhaps it was just what she identified with most strongly, but with ghetto
being a national problem, it goes WAY beyond that. I found it hard as a ghetto
white girl to identify with her definition of ghetto. I also felt that the author missed a lot of
what developed the ghetto mentality, instead choosing to focus on bad parenting
factors and insufficient schooling as a major cause. I feel that the causes,
and indeed effects, of ghetto thinking reach way beyond what the author has
covered. I also felt that if you hadn’t spent some time in a truly ghetto
place, you would miss many of the references the author uses and miss why she
things ghettoness is such a problem. Which I totally agree with by the
way. I thought the author had a hard
time deciding whether she was ghetto or not and how proud to be that she was or
wasn’t. This was kind of a main point of the book, but how can you tout the
evils of ghettoness when you can’t decide if you are or aren’t? And are proud
of how much you are or aren’t?
Verdict: If you are interested in the ghetto culture that
seems to be taking over the country, you will probably enjoy this book. It
really helps to have an inside understanding of true ghetto culture (Meaning
you aren’t a white person from a small Midwestern town. I don’t care what you
think, you just don’t really get it).
Becky
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