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Joseph C. Phillips: ‘Ghetto Parties' the New Rage NewsMax.com Wires While strolling through our neighborhood, my wife happened upon a group of young white girls, ages 8 or 9, playing in front of their home. The girls were singing in full throat: "I ain't sayin' she a gold digga/but she ain't lookin' for no broke ------!" My wife said her eyes just about fell out of her head. Mine certainly would have.
I shared this story with a black student from the University of Chicago. The young man was interested in my opinion of a "Straight Thuggin'" party held a few weeks ago in one of the dormitories. Also known as "Ghetto Parties," the shindigs seem to be a fad among many - mostly white - college students. Guests are encouraged to wear gold chains, doo-rags, hats turned to the side, listen to loud rap music and flash gang signs.
Isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?
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The largest market for hip-hop music is the lucrative demographic of suburban white kids, who have adopted the music, the language and the dress as part of their youth culture. Indeed, based on photos I viewed, the students at U. of Chicago's party didn't dress any differently than many of the white kids I see everyday walking the streets of Los Angeles.
Yet, the black students on campus are not flattered - they are angry - and some of their anger is understandable.
There is an element of mean-spiritedness surrounding some of these gatherings. A flyer for a party at another school encourages revelers to bring empty beer bottles to strew around the dorm, draw graffiti on the walls and steal computers from their fellow students. This was not the case at U of C, but the perception remains that the parties have less to do with adulation than they do with ridicule.
I suspect, however, that the black students are less concerned with being mocked than they are with what they see as the appropriation of a sacred haven by their white schoolmates. Though I have no official figures, it is a good bet that most of the black students attending universities like University of Chicago are not from "The Ghetto." Yet, this does not stop them from speaking with authority on ghetto life and charging sponsors of ghetto parties with insensitivity and racism. Among black folk there is a sense that no matter where you were raised, by virtue of being black you have some ownership of the ghetto - that it is part of who we are.
Another reader shared her opinion with me: "What I do find heartening is that those ghetto folks are proud to be just that, and more and more are identifying themselves thusly ... it's not uncommon to hear people in their 20s-40s say proudly, ‘I'm from the ghetto.' I think that's where the power is, that's where the life is, that's where our salvation is."
This writer is not talking about location, however, but state of mind.
The ghetto she celebrates is a vision of unity and shared purpose - the power realized in another era that - oddly enough - sought to lift a people out of the Ghetto. If only those who sing of "straight thuggin" were singing about that same state of mind.
Instead, their vision is one of minstrelsy - scantily clad women shaking their rumps, fancy cars and gaudy jewelry. THAT is the ghetto satirized by students at U. of Chicago and, to my way of thinking, not one worth protecting from white interlopers.
Like the little white girls in my neighborhood, the students in West Hall on the University of Chicago campus are guilty only of buying images sold to them by black producers and performers.
If we find those images offensive or mean-spirited, perhaps we need to have a conversation with those who peddle them to the masses.
Joseph C. Phillips is an actor and commentator.
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