The Ethnic Ghetto in the United States: Past and Present

Abstract

The original synthetic concept of the American ghetto was based upon the assumed casual relationships between an adverse environment, residential segregation and pathological social conditions. In response to re-evaluations of the process of assimilation, the validity of these relationships has been questioned but the original synthesis remains influential. It is argued here that without the reinforcement of an ethnically selective division of labour, the clustering of ethnic groups is not necessarily confined either to the inner city or to deprived groups. Nor is the persistence of ethnicity over several generations dependent upon high levels of residential concentration and narrowly defined ancestries. The fluidity or rigidity of the ethnic division of labour created strikingly different conditions of employment during each of the major waves of migration to American cities and the ghetto has been both a 'cul-de-sac' for labour migrants and the ground floor of an 'elevator' of advancement for immigrant settlers. Only when migrants were confined to the least desirable strata of a rigid segmented labour market, were the environmental disabilities and social isolation of the ghetto direct obstacles to their material advancement. The term 'ghetto' was first used to describe the immigrant quarters of American cities at the turn of the nineteenth century when large numbers of east European Jews settled in the congested inner sections of north-eastern and mid-western cities. Although in some north-eastern cities there had been small Sephardic communities since the colonial period and somewhat larger groups of German Jews since the middle of the nineteenth century, the term ghetto was rarely, if ever, used to describe their residential quarters. Moreover, the term quickly lost its exclusive association with Jewish settlement as it acquired a more general meaning to describe the resi- dential quarters of other newly arrived immigrants not only from southern and eastern Europe but also from the Orient.' The Chicago School of urban ecology adopted this general usage when they included the ghetto or ethnic quarters among the so called 'natural areas' of the city.2 At this time the ghetto was associated with the congested and unhealthy living conditions of the inner city which, when combined with segregation from the institutions and services of the remainder of urban society, were assumed to create pathological social conditions. Segregation in congested quarters did not, of course, destroy the rich fabric of medieval Jewish life, but outsiders often synthesized the adverse environment, social isolation and exotic residents of the ghetto into a decidedly negative image. In North American usage the term certainly retained this negative image and for long the ghetto was regarded as a slum where the presence of newly arrived immigrants exacerbated social problems related to the adverse environment and residential segregation.3 It is no longer assumed that the adverse environment of the slum necessarily creates pathological social conditions.4 Accordingly, negative images of the ghetto based on similar assumptions are no longer widely accepted as an accurate interpretation of conditions in the residential quarters of most European immigrant groups at the turn of the nineteenth century. The term 'ghetto' may now be used to describe any highly clustered ethnic group irrespective of whether they are materially deprived, socially disorganized or concentrated in the inner city.5 The level and patterns of residential segregation in the ghetto have also been re-evaluated.