Book Review: Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless
by Cora Daniels
Publication Date: Mar 20, 2007
List Price: $23.95
Format: Hardcover, 224 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780385516433
Imprint: Doubleday
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Parent Company: Bertelsmann
Read a Description of Ghettonation: A Journey Into the Land of Bling and Home of the Shameless
Book Reviewed by Kam Williams
’Ghetto no longer refers to where you live, it is how you live. It is a mind-set’ a mind-set that thinks the M words — monogamy and marriage ’ are bad language’ a mind-set that thinks it is fine to bounce, baby, bounce in some video, as if that makes it different from performing such a display on a table, on a pole, on some john’s lap, or on the corner.
Most of all, ghetto is a mind-set that embraces the worst. It is
the embodiment of expectations that have gotten dangerously too low.’
’Excerpted from the Introduction (pages 5-6)
Have you ever visited the website
Hot Ghetto Mess?
It’s a site dedicated to black bad taste which posts hilarious
photos and videos of girls and guys gone ghetto. Now Cora Daniels has
written a book about the troubling phenomenon in which she bemoans the
fact that ghetto style is no longer limited to folks living in the
slums.
Ms. Daniels, who herself lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, argues
that ghetto is now a state of mind which has been exported to the
mainstream with the help of gangsta rap videos. This entertaining tome
is as funny as it is cautionary, points out plenty of indications that
you know you’ve gone ghetto.
Some samples include wearing a do-rag to school or court, speaking
grammatically incorrect English, sporting gold caps on your teeth,
driving a pimped-out automobile, and using the N-word or ho. The author
argues that the adherents of this lifestyle are selling themselves
short, since one’s academic and employment prospects aren’t very good
when you don't aspire to be the best you can be.
Therefore, it’s no surprise to hear Daniels side with
Bill Cosby against
the Hip-Hop Generation in the African-American culture wars, although
she makes a point of never blaming the poor for their plight. Thus, she
studiously avoids the trap which snares so many conservative pawns seen
as stigmatizing those unfortunates trapped in the neverending cycle of
poverty.
Rather, Ghetto Nation’s primary thesis, convincingly articulated,
equates ghetto with self hate because it typically inspires those
degenerates stuck under its spell to embrace the lowest common
denominator and to exhibit the worst of traits found in humanity.