ARE YOU GHETTO?

Listen to The Interview with Cora Daniels.

What makes something or someone ghetto? The word is thrown around to describe everything from inner-city neighborhoods, a group of people, how individuals dress and speak, how many kids one has, and recently, while I was in a writing workshop, I learned from the teacher (a middle-aged white guy) that it's ghetto to use too many hyphens.

In her new book, GHETTONATION: A JOURNEY INTO THE LAND OF BLING AND THE HOME OF THE SHAMELESS, author and journalist Cora Daniels attempts to break down what ghetto is and explore America's embrace of it. To Daniels, ghetto isn't a neighborhood. Ghetto doesn't just affect a certain race or economic class (we like to think that have-nots are ghetto and the haves are ghetto-free). To Daniels, ghetto is a mentality to "aim low." The ghetto persona devalues education, thinks in the short-term rather the long-term, lacks self-respect, and celebrates the worst (African American) stereotypes.

In GHETTONATION, Daniels discusses her own ghetto mentality. She explores how corporate America exploits ghettoness as a means to make money despite its disturbing ramifications. She calls out rappers who take on a ghetto persona despite the fact that they were raised in a privileged family. She talks to people who embrace ghetto because its the in thing to do and she chats with people who realize that a ghetto mentality is self-defeating. She talks about bad parents (young and old) who dabble in the art of ghetto.

Daniels isn't shy with her pen. And that's why I really like the book and highly recommend it. You may not agree with everything she writes, but at least she's saying something that we all need to think about regarding ghetto attitudes and how they impact our relationships, families and most importantly, our futures. In the end, Daniels concludes that we are all infected with a ghetto mind-set in some variation and by knowing this, we should "never stop trying to compassionately raise our expectations."

In the meantime, here are a few behaviors that Daniels thinks are ghetto:

1) Yelling at your boo in the middle of the street
2) Using the walkie-talkie feature on your cell to discuss personal drama in order to save minutes
3) Dressing for work like you are going to the club
4) Wearing house slippers outside the house
5) Taking pride in being broke
6) Flashing money you don't have instead of making your money last.
7) A block full of white stretch limos delivered four-year-olds to their Head Start graduation in Baltimore. Little pimp suits complete with hats and canes were spotted on many of the pint-sized graduates.
8) The fact that Jesse Jackson has a love child

This list could be pages long...