I Hate “Ghetto”

You will notice that many of my rants of late have to do with moral decay surrounding things like abortion, and I suppose other related. I think much of it has do with the fact that our last move has taken us out of the country where we saw little people except our few Amish neighbors, back into a more urban-esque surroundings. I guess you can kind of make a case for it being “the ghetto” as Webster’s defines ghetto as:

2 : a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure

It is not a wealthy neighborhood, and it is predominately Puerto Rican, so according to Webster, it fits the bill. However, if you want to make the case for it being a ghetto, it is really quite mild in comparison to North and East Trenton, or the South Bronx (more ghettofied neighborhoods I am quite familiar with-and don’t even like to drive through). There is not much crime, else we would not reside here, and accept for the socio-racial status that fits the definition, it is relatively quiet and boring.
OK, so we established the “where” of ghettodom, but the part I hate is not the “where” it is the “what”. It is the lifestyle. “Where” does not bother me. I am an odd amalgamtaion who prefers to live in either extreme country, or if I can afford it, as extreme city as possible. I’d rather see no one for miles, or have corner stores, the Y and the public library within a two block radius of my home.
Back to the “what”. Self-destruction. I am tired of watching it and feeling helpless to do anything. The out of wedlock birth rate among black Americans and among NewYoricans is about 80%. Mind you, the rate is very different among Puerto Ricans living in Puerto Rico:

Births of Puerto Rican descent in NYC differed markedly from births in Puerto Rico. In general, Puerto Rican mothers delivering in NYC were less educated, had less access to early prenatal care, and had more than twice the proportion of out-of-wedlock births as mothers delivering in Puerto Rico. Women in consensual unions in Puerto Rico were considered as unmarried in this analysis…

Hmm, why is that? Let’s see what Planned Parenthood has to say about that:

As a commonwealth of the United States, Puerto Rico lives under the same constitutional protections and federal laws as the rest of the country, thereby ensuring the legality of family planning, contraception, and abortion. The government, however, provides no policy regarding sexuality education, resulting in virtually no such education in schools past the purely physiological…
…Located just outside of New York City, PPHP is an active affiliate that also has a strong focus on adolescent and youth programs. Additionally, PPHP’s successful advocacy experience will be another area of sharing and learning. PPHP has mobilized such diverse groups as college students and clergy, and has an impressive group of community advocates that work on various legislative issues.

Think there is any correlation?
I am so tired of the norm: girls having “Baby Daddies” and not husbands. What’s that got to do with me you ask? Good question. Well for one, on a totally selfish note, if one more person refers to my husband as my boyfriend, I am going to scream. In two days I have had as many refereneces to him as my boyfriend and have been asked as many times if all my children are from the same union. But that is just my vanity.On another personal note, I bought into the sex with a condom before marriage is A-OK” philosphy, and it broke my heart.
Anything else? Well, my neighbor has three daughters who are grown, and have children with no husbands. None of them are very neighborly. Coming from living next to the Amish, I was slightly surprised. When you see a nighbor and crack a small smile, it is usually returned with a smile. Not our neighbors. My smiles have been returned by angry looks. Later it got to me through my children that part of the reason is I am blanquita. WHAT-ever. But more so, I noticed many of my female neighbors did have it in them to me friendly and neighborly, just not to me, but to my husband. There have been lots of subtle attempts to send a message of availability to my husband, despite the fact the signals have never been reciprocated.
I am not threatend. But how happy a person are you when you have a newborn a few days old, and you are advertising to other men, not the baby’s father, that are married? What do you teach your children about commitment? What do you even know of commitment? You end up with generation upon generation of people who allow themselves to be used, are not happy for it, yet know no differently. A person is not an island unto themselves. The children they are raising might be a potential romantic involvement for one of my children. They are people who could be positive members of society, or not. I also have a theory from watching my in-laws. They are miserable people and dead beat parents. I think even in their misery if they were a “set” of parents, they would have done a much better job together than apart. I think there is something to be said for God requiring two people to raise one.
If you would not like to take my word for it, read a bit from the Fragile Family Study.
I’ll also leave you with The Speech Bill Cosby gave a couple of years ago at the Brown vs. The Board of Education 50th Anniversary. Lots more annoying and judgemental stuff about personal responsibility. (I stumbled on this when someone called me racist for perpetuating the problem among blacks by mentioning the fact that 80% of black children were born out of wedlock.)
I was personally tickled at the mention of our cousin.

Ladies and gentlemen, I really have to ask you to seriously consider what you’ve heard, and now this is the end of the evening so to speak. I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing.”
Ladies and gentlemen, these people set — they opened the doors, they gave us the right, and today, ladies and gentlemen, in our cities and public schools we have 50% drop out. In our own neighborhood, we have men in prison. No longer is a person embarrassed because they’re pregnant without a husband. No longer is a boy considered an embarrassment if he tries to run away from being the father of the unmarried child.
Ladies and gentlemen, the lower economic and lower middle economic people are not holding their end in this deal. In the neighborhood that most of us grew up in, parenting is not going on. In the old days, you couldn’t hooky school because every drawn shade was an eye. And before your mother got off the bus and to the house, she knew exactly where you had gone, who had gone into the house, and where you got on whatever you had one and where you got it from. Parents don’t know that today.

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