Ghetto
A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other areas of the city. Versions of such restricted areas have been found across the world, each with their own names, classifications, and groupings of people.
The term was originally used for the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, as early as 1516, to describe the part of the city where Jewish people were restricted to live and thus segregated from other people. However, other early societies may have formed their own versions of the same structure; words resembling ghetto in meaning appear in Hebrew, Yiddish, Italian, Germanic, Polish, Corsican, Old French, and Latin. During the Holocaust, more than 1,000 Nazi ghettos were established to hold the Jewish populations of Europe, with the goal of exploiting and killing European Jews as part of the Final Solution of Nazi Germany.
The term ghetto acquired deep cultural meaning in the United States, especially in the context of segregation and civil rights. It has been widely used in the country since the 20th century to refer to poor neighborhoods of largely minority populations, especially African-American ones. It is also used in some European countries, such as Romania and Slovakia, to refer to poor neighborhoods largely inhabited by Romani people. The term slum is usually used to refer to areas in developing countries that suffer from absolute poverty, while the term
ghetto is used to refer to areas of developed countries that suffer from relative poverty.
Etymology and name
The word ghetto originates from the Venetian ghetto, the Jewish quarter in Venice's Cannaregio district where Jews were legally confined following a 1516 decree. In the 16th century, Italian Jews, including those in Venice, commonly used the unrelated Hebrew term ḥāṣēr to refer to a ghetto. By 1855, the term ghetto had been extended to refer to "any area occupied predominantly by a particular social or ethnic group, especially a densely populated urban area which is subject to social and economic pressures, tending to restrict its demographic profile."The etymology of the Italian ghetto has long been debated among linguists, with no single theory achieving universal acceptance. Although often cited, the idea that it derives from the Hebrew gēṭ is considered a folk etymology. Similarly, the Italian variant ghet, found in some Jewish notarial documents from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, seems to be a folk-etymological modification of ghetto, influenced by the Hebrew gēṭ.
Another commonly held hypothesis, mentioned by the Oxford English Dictionary, proposes that the term comes from an unattested Italian *gheto, from post-classical Latin iectus or iactus, which could be compared to post-classical Latin ghetus or gettus. However, linguist Anatoly Liberman argues that this explanation fails to account for the problematic phonetic change from Latin i- to Italian g- ~ gh-, and that there is no certainty that getto ever meant 'foundry' in the Venetian dialect. Alternatively, Liberman has suggested that in some Romance-speaking regions a slang borrowing from the Germanic gata may have existed in various forms, which eventually evolved into the Italian ghetto. Originally, the term may have carried a derogatory sense, referring to the impoverished quarters of exiled Venetian Jews. Over time, folk etymology further shaped its meaning, associating it with ideas like cannon foundries and separation.
Other suggestions, such as that the word is a shortening of Egitto or borghetto, or that it is related to the Old French guect, are rejected by linguists as speculative and unconvincing. Additional proposals derive the term from ghectus or from the Latin neuter Giudaicetum, but they too lack sufficient phonetic support.File:Ingresso della Giudecca di Caltagirone.jpg|thumb| Jewish quarter of Caltagirone, Sicily|335x335px
Ghettos in Europe
Jewish ghettos
The character of ghettos has varied through times. The term was used for an area known as the Jewish quarter, which meant the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews in the diaspora. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were often the outgrowths of segregated ghettos instituted by the surrounding authorities. A Yiddish term for a Jewish quarter or neighborhood is Di yidishe gas, or 'The Jewish street'. Many European and Middle Eastern cities once had a historical Jewish quarter. Among the oldest and most noted are the so-called calls in Catalonia, specially those of Barcelona and Girona.Jewish ghettos in Christian Europe existed because of majority discrimination against Jews on the basis of religion, language and dated views on race: They were considered outsiders. As a result, Jews were placed under strict regulations throughout many European cities.
In some cases, the ghetto was a Jewish quarter with a relatively affluent population. In other cases, ghettos were places of terrible poverty. During periods of population growth, ghettos had narrow streets and tall, crowded houses. Residents generally were allowed to administer their own justice system based on Jewish traditions and elders.
Nazi-occupied Europe
During World War II, the Nazis established new ghettos in numerous cities of Eastern Europe as a form of concentration camp to confine Jews and Romani into limited areas. The Nazis most often referred to these areas in documents and signage at their entrances as "Jewish quarter." These Nazi camps sometimes coincided with traditional Jewish ghettos and Jewish quarters, but not always. On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued a decree ordering the dissolution of all Jüdische Wohnbezirke/ghettos in the East and their transference to Nazi concentration camps or their extermination.The Nazi ghettos were an essentially different institution than the historical ghettos of European society. The historical ghettos were places where Jews lived for many generations and created their own culture even if they were under social and political conditions of segregation and discrimination. The Nazi ghettos were part of The Final Solution; they were intended as a transitional stagefirst confine each city's Jews in one easily accessible and controllable location, then "liquidate" the ghetto and send the Jews to an extermination camp. Most Nazi ghettos were liquidated in 1943; some, such as that of Łódź, persisted until 1944; very few, e.g. the Budapest Ghetto and the Theresienstadt Ghetto, existed until the end of the war in 1945.
Roma ghettos
There are many Roma ghettos in the European Union. The Czech government estimates that there are approximately 830 Roma ghettos in the Czech Republic.In Denmark
During the period 2010–2021, the word ghetto was used officially by the Danish government to describe certain officially designated vulnerable social housing areas in the country. The designation was applied to areas based on the residents' income levels, employment status, education levels, criminal convictions and proportion of non-Western immigrants and their descendants. The term was controversial during its period of use and was finally removed in 2021.In 2010, the Danish Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing introduced an official listing of vulnerable social housing districts where the inhabitants fulfilled certain criteria. The list has informally and at times formally been called Ghettolisten. Since 2010, the list has been updated annually, with changes in the definition and/or terminology in 2013, 2018 and 2021.
In 2018, the Danish government at the time, led by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, announced its intention to "end the existence of parallel societies and ghettos by 2030." A number of measures was introduced to solve the issue of integration, including policies like 25 hours of obligatory daycare or corresponding parent supervision per week for children in the appointed areas starting age 1, lowering social welfare for residents, incentives for reducing unemployment, demolition and rebuilding of certain tenements, rights for landlords to refuse housing to convicts, etc. The policies have been criticized for undercutting 'equality before law' and for portraying immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, in a bad light.
The term "ghetto" was controversial during the period of its usage, inhabitants feeling stigmatized by the wording and researchers pointing out that the areas in question were typically inhabited by 20-40 different ethnic minorities, hence being diametrically opposed to the ethnic homogeneity of the original ghettos, so that multi-ethnic residential areas would be a more appropriate term.
In June 2019 a new social democratic government was formed in Denmark, with Kaare Dybvad becoming housing minister. He stated that the new government would stop using the word "ghetto" for vulnerable housing areas, as it was both imprecise and derogatory. In a 2021 reform, the name was finally removed in legal texts by Parliament. Instead, a new category called "parallel societies" was instituted.