When people hear the word 'ghetto' they immediately think of poor, black, drugs, violence, gangs, abandoned buildings, unkempt lawns, police sirens, gunshots, liquor stores, corner stores, rap music blaring, drunks hanging out on corners, crack heads, dope fiends, and most of all, despair. To others, its just home. A place where: they have lived all of their life; their mother has lived; and their grandparents have lived. This is the only world they know, except for what they see on tv. And this is where they believe they will die. Outside of their parameter, they rarely if ever, venture, except perhaps to visit a mall. They are very protective of their home like most people. This is where they live, love, breed, and die. They write their songs about it, they make movies of their own about it, and they write books about it. And to their frustration, no one outside of their ghetto appreciates any of it. It is like another world, another planet of which outsiders wish would just disappear, fade into a memory just as the original ghetto, from whence the word evolved, has done.

I grew up middle class and my parents still live in a mini mansion of fifteen rooms, on a well landscaped golf-course, surrounded by a man made moat filled with swans, ducks, geese and serenity. My mom's bathroom is the size of my one-bedroom apartment.

I live in a ghetto.
Not by choice, but by circumstance. I find nothing romantic, appealing, inspiring, enigmatic, or rewarding about it. I find it sad, full of despair, ugly, lifeless, boring, hopeless, and dead, like most of the people in it. The ones that try to bring life and dignity back to it face an uphill battle, and not from bureaucracy but its own inhabitants. The children in my neighborhood are bored, illiterate, and have no dreams nor hope for the future. It is stifling. Summers are filled with bored, unsupervised, depressed young children. I know for I talk to them. Something very few of their parents do, talk to them NOT at them. Ask them what they think of things, what they hope to become when they grow up and the answers are just heartbreaking for someone like me who is very aware of the world and life's possibilities that exist. I am fortunate that Im not in the 'projects' of Houston...I live on the outskirts not directly in the middle of places like Haverstock or whatever its called, where police hate to venture...but where men, women and children must call home. But still in a pitiful part of town.

I believe what really helps create and enable a 'ghetto' type neighborhood are the property owners who pay the city under the table to look the other way. City ordinances are ignored, landlords steadily raise rents but don't upkeep the property, the City doesnt take care of the streets and sidewalks, faulty wiring hanging from poles, potholes in the streets never repaired, rundown what should be condemned buildings are rented out, no pest extermination enforced and the list goes on. It is a vicious cycle, and the few that are strong enough to get out rarely come back. And the rest just live and die here, unseen, and unheard by the rest of the city. If you dont believe it is purposely perpetrated by bureacrats designing the city just look in an old 1950's sociology book on tenement housing and the experiments they did with rats before designing and building the first concrete jungle in I do believe Chicago. It was very interesting information. Don't know if they still have it in the books or not, but at one time they did. Oh, yea, the rats in the experiment of being piled on top of each other in their little rat houses, ended up becoming violent and killing each other after a while living like that. But they built and still build these projects just the same.