From the mailbag: is adjectival "ghetto" race-neutral?

By R.L.G. | NEW YORK

IN LAST week's article "A cyber-house divided" our correspondent wrote

IN 2007 Danah Boyd heard a white American teenager describe MySpace, the social network, as “like ghetto or whatever”...But after hearing that youngster, Ms Boyd, a social-media researcher at Microsoft Research New England, felt that something more than whimsy might be at work. “Ghetto” in American speech suggests poor, unsophisticated and black.

A letter-writer objected to our characterisation:

SIR - In your article about cyber tribalism ("A cyber-house divided", September 4) you mis-represent the colloquialism "ghetto"—especially when blurted by an American teen, as Danah Boyd observed, prone to using expressions such as "like" and "whatever". Although this provided Ms. Boyd with the impetus for some worthwhile research, I believe it's necessary to appreciate how the term ghetto is used and understood. In Southern California, where this author passed his formidable years, the spirit of "ghetto" is similar to that of "sucks"--comparable to the British use of "rubbish". To suggest that the term's contemporary usage has anything to do with race is atavistic. Since the turn of the millennium ghetto has been used to identify things or situations (not limited solely to class) of inferior quality or fortune--as in: in the last couple of months I've noticed that the quality of The Economist is becoming increasingly more ghetto.

Gabriel Johnson

Paris, France

Mr Johnson can have the last word on the quality of The Economist, but is he right about "ghetto" as having been stripped of any racial association? Equivalent to "rubbish", nothing more?

This is one of those rare cases where the Oxford English or American Heritage dictionaries are of less use than a dictionary put together by internet-using young people themselves: UrbanDictionary.com. The verdict on adjectival ghetto? On the face of it, some of the adjectival definitions seem to support Mr Johnson:

(adj.) jury-rigged, improvised, or home-made (usually with extremely cheap or sub-standard components), yet still deserving of an odd sense of respect from ghetto dwellers and non-ghetto dwellers alike

ajective [sic] or adverb relating to cheapness

As far as I know, anyone can contribute definitions like this to Urban Dictionary, so the definitions can pile up and you can see how different people use the word. Users can also add tags, so you can see what the word or definition is linked to (in users' minds). The tags for "ghetto"?

2 soundshoodblackgangstagangsterniggerpoorniggarapslangwhitedrugscoolurbanthugcheapwiggerprojectsbootyslumbitchpimpstupidshitcitywhite trashgaycrimeassmexicangettogangsexebonicsweeddirtygangsrichslutredneckuglytrashwhoremoneyfunnyemoawesomestreetgirlnegrolame

Not long ago, we advised against using "moot" and the verb "to table", because they have very different meanings to different people. I'd put this in the same category, albeit for very different reasons. Mr Johnson is free to use "ghetto" and insist it has no racial undertones whatsoever, but Johnson advises against it.