Cultural Ghettos - by Darylynn Starr Rank
December, 2004
Ghettos. An ugly word these days, but it wasn’t always. Started out with the Jews in the Middle Ages. It was voluntary then. Most Jews instinctively gathered in one area. Lived together. Studied together. Worked together. It didn’t become compulsory until the 14th century, and then only in Portugal and Spain. The Jews all had to live in the ghetto. Walled-off streets, identification badges when they left the area.
I grew up in the States. Ghettos there were something else by the 20th century. The word itself generally referred to the inner cities. Hardcore places. Those ghettos were horrifically poor. Scary and unsafe.
But there were other types of cultural neighbourhoods, too, some more like the original sense of the word ‘ghetto’ – tight networks of immigrants and their families, banding together for support and sustenance. Little Italy. The barrios. Chinatown, of course. The streets looked different, sounded different, smelled different.
I saw ghettos from the other side when I went to live in Brazil. Until I actually got a job and started working there, the only Brazilians I had spoken to were my sister’s in-laws. The rest of my world and the people in it were completely American. Until I got that job English was the only language I spoke. Boy did that make things easier. My own little gringo ‘bairo’, though I didn’t realize it at the time. But an utterly distorted, narrow view of Brazil.
Coming to Canada, I mixed well with the Vancouverites. The language was the same. My accent was fairly non-existent (at least to me!). I didn’t look too different from a lot of other Canadians. I fit in fairly well. Most of the time. (I was still far too emotional… And definitely a bit too loud, just “not Canadian”, you know.) But all in all, OK.
Then I discovered the ‘ghettos’ that existed here. Not so much for Americans, since we blended more easily. But the Greeks tended to live in Kitsilano. And many Indians (from India, that is), gathered on Fraser and Main. Vancouver’s Chinatown was an amazing place to be. There were all these pockets of cultures and people just didn’t mix much out outside of them.
As a child, my Vancouverite husband (whose parents were Swedish) pretty much grew up in a Swedish world – except for school. His family visited with Swedish friends. The church that they went to was pretty much Swedish. There was a lot of talk about “the old country”. He remembers feeling really odd when he realized that his mother, after decades of this, was starting to have coffee with “regular” people – and liking it!
All in all, huddling “like with like” is what we often seem to do quite naturally. Partly. We move to a new environment. We feel lonely, and strange, and lost. So we stay with the people who are familiar. The same language. And culture. The same clothes, and definitely the same food. A feeling of safety and familiarity. Partly.
The involuntary side is economics and racism to a great degree. Though generally there aren’t any official walls any more, the forces to keep newcomers out of the mainstream are still pretty powerful.
Overall the effect is both good and bad – safety and security, but also a more limited view of the world we’re living in, more limited experiences and opportunities.
It takes a lot of work and courage and determination to break out of any kind of ghetto. To explore the new world we’ve arrived in. To learn new languages and behaviours, manners and styles, laws and regulations. It’s difficult and frightening. Much easier not to even try. And not everyone out there will make it easy to change that either. But we all need to make the effort. In both directions.
Ghettos are pretty small places to live.
Take care all.
Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.
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