African-American stereotypes

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:54 AM -0700 5/27/07, James A. Landau wrote:
>Darla Wells asked:
>
>"I am looking for the source of the generalization about African-Americans
>being afraid of dogs and the other one is the inner city cliche about the
>young African-American male being an endangered species. The first one was
>something people used to say in North Louisiana when I was growing up and I
>have heard it since then in Texas and around the country..."
>
>A white woman of my acquaintance named Bonnie Dalzell raised Borzois
>(Russian wolfhounds.  For a time in the early 1970's she lived in a
>less-than-genteel integrated neighborhood in Washington DC (I don't
>know which area it was).  She told me that her black neighbors were
>afraid of her dogs, and said the reason was a memory carried down
>from slavery dogs of slaveowners using dogs to track down runaways
>and to control slaves.  I believe her to be a fair-minded individual
>who was reporting an observation, not someone who was making a
>deprecating remark about African-Americans.
>
>Slightly off-topic:  about "slum" and "ghetto" and cetera:
>"Slum" (noun) simply means any area of low-quality housing and high
>population density.  Implications about the quality of people living
>in a slum are optional, e.g. the average white American who speaks
>of "the slums of Calcutta" is probably NOT generalizing about the
>people who live there, just about their housing and economic
>conditions.  However the gerund "slumming" is metaphorical.  While
>it can mean a visit to a physical slum, it generally means to visit
>people whom the visitor considers beneath his/her dignity or social
>level.
>
>"Ghetto" in contemporary usage has a quite different meaning than
>"slum".  A ghetto is an area in which due to law or social pressure
>people of a specific ethnic group are forced to live.  A ghetto is
>not necessarily a slum, although many are.  By the way, "inner-city
>ghetto" is not a redundant term.  When I was growing up in
>Louisville KY there was a neighborhood called "Newburg" which was a
>100% African-American neighborhood.  Rather than being inner-city,
>it was in outer suburbia, and probably was in a rural area when it
>first came into being.  (I suspect it arose because it was near a
>large General Electric plant which must have hired African-Americans
>who decided to live nearby.)  I was in Newburg only once in my life,
>giving a ride to someone who lived there, and I can report that this
>person's street consisted of small but neatly-maintained
>freestanding houses.  However, this one street was all of Newburg
>that I ever observed, so I can't generalize.
>
>Therefore a ghetto need not be a slum, and an integrated slum is not a ghetto.
>
>Interesting:  in New York City around 1900 neighborhoods with
>low-quality housing and large Jewish populations were not called
>"slums" but rather "tenements", although strictly speaking a
>"tenement" is (and has been since the Roman Empire) a building
>rather than a neighborhood.
>
Ah, metonymy rears its ubiquitous head.  Growing up in NYC but in the
early 50s, not c. 1900 (although that would explain a lot), I never
heard say the Lower East Side referred to as a tenements, although it
contained plenty of them.  It was indeed a slum and not a ghetto,
since it was too diverse for the latter.  As evidence for the
distinction you're drawing above, with which I concur, cf. "golden
ghetto" in its earlier use to designate a specific Jewish
neighborhood on the north side of Chicago, although no doubt it's
been used elsewhere for other ethnically homogenous non-slum
neighborhoods. (More recently, it's been increasingly used by
extension for any affluent neighborhood, in which the "ghettoness" is
defined by affluence itself).  "Golden slum" is possible too, but
rather different and far more limited.  For example, there's a casino
in Las Vegas described as a "luxurious mouse filled stink hole
referred to as the Golden Palm but better known as the Golden Slum".
I suppose "silver slum" would have the alliteration of "golden
ghetto" going for it, but again it's far less likely.

LH

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