Editing Ghetto (section)

===== Internal characterizations =====
Despite mainstream America's use of the term ''ghetto'' to signify a poor, culturally or racially homogenous urban area, those living in the area often used it to signify something positive. The black ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African-Americans, the ghetto was "home": a place representing authentic [[African-American culture|blackness]] and a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from rising above the struggle and suffering of being black in America.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Smitherman |first=Geneva |title=Black Talk: Words and Phrases from the Hood to the Amen Corner |location=New York |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-395-96919-9 |url=https://archive.org/details/blacktalkwordsph00smit_0}}</ref>

[[Langston Hughes]] relays in his "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945)  poems:<ref>[[Langston Hughes|Hughes, Langston]]. [1945] 2007. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=B62nIpB4cmEC&pg=PA89 The Heart of Harlem]." Pp. 89–90 in ''I Speak of the City: Poems of New York'', edited by S. Wolf. New York: [[Columbia University Press]].</ref>

{{Poem quote|text=The buildings in Harlem are brick and stone
And the streets are long and wide,
But Harlem's much more than these alone,
Harlem is what's inside.|char=|sign=|title=|source="The Heart of Harlem" (1945)}}

Playwright [[August Wilson]] uses the term "ghetto" in ''[[Ma Rainey's Black Bottom]]'' (1984) and ''[[Fences (play)|Fences]]'' (1985), both of which draw upon the author's experience growing up in the [[Hill District (Pittsburgh)|Hill District]] of Pittsburgh, a black ghetto.<ref name="Glaeser" />