noun / adjective
ghetto
GET-oh/ˈɡetəʊ/
A segregated urban district restricting a minority community.
The museum explains how segregation confined families to the ghetto.
Etymology
Italian ghetto named a city quarter where Jews were compelled to live. The term later broadened to crowded urban quarters of other minority groups; the Italian word’s deeper origin is unknown.
In context
The overlay of zoning, policing policy, and later [music] mass incarceration turned spatial segregation into social control. Ghetto isn't just a [music] place of poverty.
More examples
- City laws once forced Jewish families to live in the ghetto.
- Discriminatory housing policies helped create racial ghettos in many cities.
- Restrictions on movement isolated ghetto residents from the surrounding city.
Forms
ghetto · ghettos · ghettoes
ghettoize verb — To confine a community to a segregated district.
ghettoization noun — The confinement of communities to segregated districts.