Ghettoization

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Ghettoization is the process of singling out a group of people or something else on the basis of a shared characteristic, and grouping them together.

The term: History and current usages

The term comes from human ghettos; historically it is an Italian word for a particular Jewish neighborhood in the city-state of Venice, Italy. People broadened its use to describe any Jewish neighborhood (one of the most famous ghettos is the Warsaw Ghetto, famed in large part for the Jewish uprising against the Nazis). The term has been broadened still further to describe numerous specific urban enclaves based on ethnicity, religion, sexuality, etc., and the generic concept of an enclave of people. The term is frequently associated with social and economic disenfranchisement (see, e.g., Elvis Presley's song, "In the Ghetto"), although it also has currency simply to describe groups of people that gather together ("student ghettos"; "gay ghettos").

The term is also used outside of groups of people, as in the "genre ghetto", which describes the process of labeling, distributing, marketing, and identifying a writer or her works within a genre. Since genre fiction is often perceived to be formulaic, of low literary quality, and with appeal to only a limited set of people, being placed within a genre can negatively affect the critical and popular reception of a work and the creator. Thus, "genre ghetto" reflects the negative assessment of placement within a genre.

SF has long been seen as a publishing ghetto, with "breakthrough" writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick receiving critical praise despite their genre identification; and with writers such as Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut receiving critical praise but not identifying (or being identified) as genre writers. Romances, westerns, mysteries, and porn are all well-recognized genres defined (ostensibly) by the form or content of the work. Other works are defined in part by perceived audience: Black literature (African-American audience and African-American characters); chick lit (female audience and female characters); lesbian or gay fiction (lesbian or gay audience and lesbian or gay characters). While form-based genres are problematic themselves, audience-based genres are even more difficult to define, and are perhaps harder to "break out of".

Issues with ghettoization

Ghettos make manifest the problems that come with arbitrary or broad-stroke distinctions. Any person seeking to leave wrestles with the same problems brought up by passing, as well as the discrimination that mandated or encouraged the ghetto to begin with. Moreover, pride movements highlight further conflicts: To build the ghetto community; or to leave the community, assimilate into the larger community, and transform it. This may be seen by some as a rehash of the "reform or revolution" debate (to build your own revolutionary alternative, or to reform the existing structure); by others, as a form of separatism with all that implies.

In addition to wrestling with social obligations a member of a ghetto may have toward her community, she must also wrestle with what is the best for her own development and career. As with any small community, ghettos may have limited resources. Moreover, members of ghettos receive little outside recognition, and therefore fewer resources than other communities of comparable size, and members of ghettos may be stigmatized and denied access to resources. An artist may wish to leave her ghetto for recognition, training, mentorship, etc. — whether that ghetto be physical or a genre label. On the other hand, a ghetto can be a source of creative ferment, as any closed environment can be; by consolidating its resources in a particular direction, it can generate new forms, new works, new insights.

For people outside the ghetto, the ghetto operates to make its members invisible and readily ignored; it also creates a site for colonial exploitation; and it also acts to reify the distinctions and justify the oppression/discrimination. In literature, for instance, "mainstream" award committees may feel free to ignore works marketed as SF, romance, or Black literature, assuming they are all poor quality or of limited appeal (not "universality in literature").

And yet, because ghettos can and often do generate local and unique content, that content can be mined by people with access to the broader culture — who may then reap material benefits from their access to both cultures, benefits denied to members of the ghetto who did the original work. In so doing, the work may also be transformed (see also whitewashing and appropriation). If a transformed work becomes popular, members of the larger culture may seek the original source material, leading to tourism (as in white people going to Harlem jazz clubs during the 1920s and 30s) and dubious quests for "authenticity" -- while simultaneously enjoying their privilege of coming and going at will. The existence of the ghetto itself may be seen by them as justified for its creation and preservation of unique works and culture. For example, Amish culture, a major source of tourism income in parts of the US, is viewed as a living historical artifact outside the culture; and despite restrictions on the legal rights of Amish children, mainstream culture is happy to come and go. Similarly, Madonna's "Vogue" was an appropriation of a dance move and style from the gay community; Pat Boone's covers of African-American music made them acceptable to a white audience; etc. [more examples]

Appropriation necessarily raises issues of reification, suggesting that there was a there there, to be appropriated, and that there was prior ownership of the thing. In genre ghettos, one might, for instance, note that Margaret Atwood's use of the tropes of science fiction in The Handmaid's Tale and even more so in The Blind Assassin are an exploitation and appropriation of the tools of the genre, without taking the rap for being a genre writer. (Many SF critics have done exactly that.

) However, SF of course "borrowed" these themes and tropes from earlier forms of literature itself. Nevertheless, Atwood used those tropes, consciously in The Blind Assassin, still proclaiming her work to be "not like that science fiction stuff". Thus, the genre ghetto is used to justify and reify an artificial distinction. In the real world of human beings and not their cultural products, outsiders' experience of ghettos can confirm in them their experience of how different the people are, how differently they live, how other they are. Feeling confirmed in their understandings, people may feel justified in supporting the economic, social, and political/legal policies which lead to ghettoization. Alternatively, those policies and circumstances may be obfuscated as factors in ghettoization by the "differences" they perceive in clothing, habits, food, etc., leading them to believe that ghettoization is purely or solely a voluntary choice, and not one enforced through economic, social, and political/legal means.

Ghettoization versus separatism

"Ghettoization" focuses on the view from outside or the actions of outsiders; "separatism" focuses on the view from inside or the actions of the insiders. People describing "ghettoization" are often speaking of the actions of outsiders to segregate the group, or as insiders they may be speaking of the negative consequences of being grouped without a choice. The term "separatism" relates more to the positive choice for a group to be separate, for its own benefit. "Separatism" may also suggest equality or even superiority of the separated group.

Ghettoization also connotes closing in: being excluded from, or access to the wider world restricted. Separatism connotes leaving, or moving apart from.