The Ghetto Balance

Social Issues

  • Author Quinton Crawford
  • Published April 1, 2011
  • Word count 1,083

In truth, most people that reside in the places called ghettos are involved in inner & outer conflict. The struggles to attain happiness are conflicted in many ways, but the goals are always for prosperity, unified joy, and harmony. These expressions are expressed in the committed arts from the people in the condition. Therefore, the dynamics explaining the people & many solutions are also expressed. Styles of music have expressed problems in the past, but only one art form seems to express problems and solutions through the variations of styles within it. The easiest way to understand those themes and places of living seems to come from hip-hop music. In the 1st volume of this book I briefly mentioned an organization called "The Temple of Hip-Hop", and the principles created from it. These principles fully apply in dynamic forms for the understanding of most of humanity. I will try to explain why and how.

A ghetto is an area where people from a specific ethnic or religious background are united in a given low condition area, voluntarily or involuntarily, for mild or strict seclusion. The term now commonly labels any poverty-stricken urban area. The U.S. mobile home parks, farm labor housing, and Indian reservations indicate the poorest areas in the U.S. In the United States, urban neighborhoods where Latino immigrants settled in the late 20th century called barrios, are ghettos, because most immigrants form a culturally isolated society and choose to remain there or associate with their own group as a part of cultural preservation. "Ghetto" is also used figuratively to indicate geographic areas with a concentration of any type of persons suffering from poverty. The term is also used to describe an item or an action as cheap or flimsy. Some consider this use of language to be an offensive misapplication.

As perfectly exemplified by the artist known as "Ice Cube"- in the music video "Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It", those called the poor minorities, and those that are "true life expressing artists" are often scapegoated/ blamed for the problems designed by the oppressive elements of the society. No current music art has as equal amout of social motivation and/or awareness expression impacts around the world as Hip Hop. This is partially also due to the positive contributions of artists named KRS-One, Eric B.& Rakim, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, Wyclef Jean, Goodie Mob, Queen Latifah, and others.Art tends to be the strongest motivational force among all of humanity for awareness of local to international ills, and creative stimulation to solve personal and social problems.

Many people in the U.S. and Europe strongly dislike the term ghetto, believing it to have racist, elitist and culturally insensitive overtones, and the mention of such a word to describe a working-class ethnic community is considered a generalization or an insult. Many social workers and community leaders suggest alternative words to describe these areas like economically disadvantaged areas. Post-colonial places that did succumb to white supremacy influences, have been disrupted from their pre-colonial advanced societies to enhanced disorganization, low or disallowed self-sustenance, and poor trade practices, now called underdeveloped. This has also happened in Europe and western Asia.This is called the third world and marked by a number of common traits; distorted and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed world and to provide markets for their finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high population growth; and widespread poverty. Nevertheless, the third world is sharply differentiated, for it includes countries on various levels of economic development. And despite the poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most third world countries are wealthy.

This combination of conditions in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America are linked to the absorption of the third world into the international capitalist economy, by way of conquest or indirect domination. The main economic consequence of having domination-based culture(s) in control of a world market is that they perpetuate dominance to there new generations via religious doctrine and education, and make the victims believe in a servitude and/or recessive place in society. By setting up throughout the third world sub-economies linked to the West, and by introducing other modern institutions, industrial capitalism disrupted traditional economies and, indeed, societies. This disruption led to the current status of regional underdevelopment common worldwide. This is also very well displayed in the music video by a group called "The Geto Boy's" – called "The World is a Ghetto".

Even after decolonization (in the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, the economies of the third world developed slowly, or not at all, owing largely to the deterioration of the "terms of trade"-the relation between the cost of the goods a nation must import from abroad and its income from the exports it sends to foreign countries. Terms of trade are said to deteriorate when the cost of imports rises faster than income from exports. Since buyers in the industrialized countries determined the prices of most products involved in international trade, the worsening position of the third world was scarcely surprising. Only the oil-producing countries (after 1973) succeeded in escaping the effects of Western, domination of the world economy.

No study of the third world could hope to assess its future prospects without taking into account population growth. In 1980, the earth's population was estimated at 4.4 billion, 72 percent of it in the third world, and it seemed likely to reach 6.2 billion, 80 percent of it in the third world, at the close of the century. These countries are also known as the Global South, developing countries, and least developed countries in academic circles. Development workers also call them the two-thirds world and The South. Some dislike the term developing countries as it implies that industrialization is the only way forward, while they believe it is not necessarily the most beneficial. Many "third world" countries are located in all but one continent, Antarctica.

They are often nations that were colonized by another nation in the past. The populations of third world countries are generally very poor but with high birth rates. In general they are not as industrialized or technologically advanced as the first world. The majority of the countries in the world fit this classification, but the bad thing is that the people in them are developed to become ashamed of what is usually their version of a safer way of living, whether it be an incomplete conception by the natives, or mis-interpreted by outsiders. We can always improve!

Mr. Quinton Douglass Crawford

Contact via Skype- QDC707

Http://www.4peacebooks.com

Member of the Earth Charter; SGI-USA; Organizing for America; and a key member of the expanding African Heritage Association begun in Ghana. Currently an Educator, Author, and Activist.

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