A Black City Within the White” Essay Example for Free

A mysterious City Within the White EssayLoic Wacquants A Black City Within the White provides an absorbing and honest perspective on the continuation of racial difference and discrimination in urban America. He contends the black world within the blank world exists due to the continued exclusion of blacks to the extent the black world is virtually unknown and unnoticed by white America. He makes the case through an examination of urban semantics, specifical-ly the use of the lecture ghetto and slum. He believes the original terms referred to either a concentration of a specific ethnic group (ghetto) or concentration of poverty (slum). Wacquant states the term ghetto began to include slum as reflecting housing discrimination as well as black urban poverty. He believes the term ghetto is now much closer to slum in meaning, as whites prefer thinking in terms of income disparity instead of ingrained racial prejudice. Thus the concept of ghetto has been stripped of its eth-noracia l referent and denuded of any mention of group, power, and oppression(thus it) obfuscates the history and enduring reality of racial division in the United States (143).See more Social process essayIn essence the terminology has been changed by whites more comfortable with consider-ing a mythical colorblind poverty level instead of the reality of racial prejudice and in-equity. Wacquant makes the point that a ghetto is not simply a term but an institution-al spring (143). It is indeed a world if itself caused by power and economic discrimina-tion that is either not acknowledged or misunderstood by whites. The reading provides and insight that I did not have before reading and contemplating the issues. It is im-portant to me to try to understand the background and culture of others.Without that understanding communication and relationships are genuinely superficial. This reading has also been very helpful in understanding how often terms and meanings result often change, and code words come into use. This gives me the incentive to look past certain words to be certain of the real meaning the user is trying to convey. This is an unfortunate but com-mon problem we face in communication and perhaps readers of this work will come away better prepared to address an issue without the need for dishonest language.