Ghetto and slum differ in meaning

Dec 24, 2007

EDITOR— I wish to comment on the way people use the term ghetto when they are actually referring to a slum. But according to the United Nations agency UN-Habitat defines a slum as a heavily populated urban area characterised by substandard housing and squalor. Slums are usually characterised by

EDITOR— I wish to comment on the way people use the term ghetto when they are actually referring to a slum. But according to the United Nations agency UN-Habitat defines a slum as a heavily populated urban area characterised by substandard housing and squalor. Slums are usually characterised by high rates of poverty and unemployment.

They are commonly seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, high rates of mental illness, and suicide. A ghetto as an area must have certain aspects such as: A majority of people or group of people over the rest of the population in an area. This majority group must be a racial, ethnic or religious group that is a minority compared to the major population.

This group must have been discriminated against, when it comes to housing, in the past and possibly currently. A ghetto is not based on the population’s social-economic level, amount of crime or amount of unemployment.

A person who lives in a ghetto chooses not to leave the ghetto because of past discrimination and/or is unable to leave because of current discrimination. The first ghetto was a Jewish ghetto located in Venice, Italy. In the United States, census tracts are used to determine if an area is a ghetto.

By contrast, identification of an area as a slum is not based on the race, ethnicity or religion of the people in the area.I would be happy if the mistake is corrected.

Stranslus Kabugo Kabunyaga Makerere University
Kabstan2006@yahoo.co.uk

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