Ghetto: A part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups.
Find out why the above has thrown the Reality TV royal Tiffany ‘New York’ Pollard into a vicious racism scandal on the U.K.’s ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ below…
During a violent and aggressive outburst on the show’s latest episode the aspiring singer and Reality TV staple Megan Mckenna had to be restrained by security after lashing out at several of her housemates.
One of these was Pollard, star of several VH1 shows, who was called “ghetto” by the cantankerous McKenna during a Diary Room rant in which she was told the series may be forced to call security in by its voice.
Her exact response?
‘F*** off Big Brother. Get f****** security then. [She’s] a ghetto c***.’
Unfortunate.
What’s even more unfortunate is that there are many who may not understand how the word makes a coded and historical reference to Pollard’s ethnicity and culture.
Following the abolition of African-American chattel slavery the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan, the physical and psychological trauma caused by it and the arrival of Jim Crow did a great deal to stifle any progress made by freed slaves.
Crow laws were put into place to restrict the civil rights and liberties of African-Americans and one of its “greater” achievements was blocking the group’s access to education and employment.
The result? A large group of people forced into poverty or…the ghetto.
When one remembers that this is why the word became synonymous became with the African-American experience it isn’t difficult to understand how and why it is used to describe anything that may be “undesirable” about black people.
So, as always, it’s unfortunate that despite all of the words that may be used to describe the witty, educated occasionally obnoxious and generally friendly Pollard ghetto is the one word she can be sure will always be thrown in her direction.
McKenna has been issued with a formal warning.
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