Is it offensive to use the word “ghetto”?
A few years ago, at one of my first jobs out of college, I was talking to an older co-worker (she was in her mid 50s and I was in my VERY early 20s) about the staging for one of our events. The stage wasn’t exactly the nicest looking stage, in fact it looked like it was going to fall down when our CEO (who was not a large man) stepped on it. In PR image is everything, if you have an old/dangerous looking stage, the audience will assume you don’t have the money for a new stage. I made a comment that it looked “ghetto” and we needed to replace it before someone got hurt. To my surprise my co-worker was extremely offended by this comment – enough so that she politely let me know that calling something ghetto sounded racists, and she knows I am not a racist so I shouldn’t use that language?
Calling something ghetto is racists? That was news to me. I of course apologized to my co-worker for offending her, and tried to explain that people my age use this word to describe something that isn’t nice or shoddy. It didn’t matter. To her a ghetto was a place where minorities are forced to live due to economic circumstances so it was a racist term. Since she isn’t usually over sensitive about these issues it made me think – what other phrases does my generation use all the time that older generations don’t understand and may find offensive? How will the use of these terms impact us professionally? As the percentage of workers in my generation grows will these terms become more common in business settings, and is this a good thing?
I’m glad my co-worker told me that she found the common use of the word “ghetto” offensive. I would have felt like a jerk if I used it around her all the time and never knew it offended her. Plus it made me more aware of the words I use in every day conversations.
This is just one more issue younger workers need to think about as they enter the work force. Calling something “ghetto” or “hot” or “sick” may work with our friends, but our co-workers might not have any idea what we are talking about – or worse, they may be offended by our language.
What do you think? Should younger workers be more careful about the slang they use in the work place, or do older workers need to realize that more and more younger workers are entering the workforce and eventually these adjectives will be common place – so they better get over it?
June 17th, 2009 at 8:51 AM
The origin of ghetto is both minority and economically related. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto However, in modern times minorities have the ability to live anywhere they want — as long as they decide to follow rewarding careers. Associating an economically challenged area to minorities may be racist by itself – as it would be suggesting that minorities don’t have the ability to stand by themselves and make a good living without the help of others.
However, this example just serves to underscore a business fact: if you think that what you will say may be perceived in the wrong way — it will be perceived in the wrong way by at least one person.
Difficult to deal with sensitive people… but they do exist. And sometimes they are clients or coworkers on which we depend.
Just experience.