Today is the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr‘s birthday. How appropriate to write about one of the most important issues he spoke and marched about: Ghettoes. The 1970s rock group War had a hit song in their ‘The World is a Ghetto’ (1972). So apropos now in our ‘Year of the empire 2019’: Walkin’…
Walkin’ down the street, smoggy-eyed
Looking at the sky, starry-eyed
Searchin’ for the place, weary-eyed
Crying in the night, teary-eyed
Don’t you know that it’s true
That for me and for you
The world is a ghetto
The term Ghetto comes from the Jewish area of Venice in 1516. It’s dictionary definition is ‘A part of a city, especially a slum area, occupied by a minority group or groups’. Students of the JewishHolocaust will recall the ghettoes created in Poland for the Jews. Steven Spielberg’s great masterpiece film Schindler’s List (1993) captured the horror and deprivation of the Cracow Ghetto. Obviously, that type of ghetto will always be placed on the top of the list along with today’s Gaza Strip, guarded so efficiently and free of humanitarian aid by the Israelis. Is there some sort of terrible comparison here, whereupon the relatives of many who were destroyed by the Nazis are now responsible for ditto to the Palestinians? Food for another column, yes?
Our nation, one of the most prosperous in the world, can it still have ghettoes? Well, going by the dictionary definition of course Amerika has always created ghettoes. Maybe not as brutal as the two aforementioned ones, but still harsh as can be.
