By THEODORE MURRAY
Staff Writer
 

noun used to describe places of the lowest economic and social status.

Using the word `ghetto' as an adjective, particularly using it towards humorous ends, shows a complete lack of connection with reality. It doesn't mean that you are a bad person and it doesn't mean that you are incapable of a connection with reality. What it means, what it signifies, is that at that particular moment you are not employing the brain that you more often than not use to the benefit of yourself and, sometimes, others. Would you say to your friend when you are sitting on the porch of your less- than- immaculate off-campus residence, "Dude, this place is totally third world." Would your friend laugh if you did? I am pretty sure the answer is negative. I've found myself in approximate situations. The possibilities for naming something `ghetto' are endless and I have heard a good number of examples - from apartments to lamps to lawn chairs to clothing. The word is quite clearly meant to imply a self- effacing sense of humor about the run down condition of an object. Calling something "third world" would theoretically serve the same function. The reason that most of the people I know don't say that word is, to me, the most profound irony of all. We've spent the last year or half year in either "Third World " countries or places where poverty is far harsher than it is here in the U.S. Is this at all comprehensible? In the midst of talking about the ways in which going abroad opened our eyes, a friend strolls into the living room holding a nasty old tasseled lamp shade, says, "How ghetto is this?" and everyone smiles or laughs in reply. How, exactly, is a shirt in the Bates College Store, "ghetto"? How is a bike "ghetto", a barbecue, a car? Moreover, why is it funny? I am usually one to argue that people can be overly sensitive to the import of words, that people need to try harder to understand what the talker means. Here, however, there is no humorous import to the word. More to the point, there is nothing ghetto about Lewiston. It is a working class town. It can be a rough town. There is plenty of misery here - too much. To see it as a ghetto, however, exposes a severe lack of experience in the world.

Thus far I have refrained from elucidating my reasons for taking offense at the use of the word. As my friend put it, it is something of a no- brainer. Nevertheless, I will give it a shot in the plainest terms possible. When you joke that something is `ghetto' you are underlining the great distance that appears to exist between yourself and poverty. So far is it from you, that you find the proximity of its artifacts - i.e. a crappy apartment or rundown furniture - amusing. This is irony. You are living in a place that you see yourself unconnected to. Maybe people laugh from discomfort at the poorer standard of living. Maybe `ghetto' is just a one word reference to our own fears of poverty. If it is, if it is fear of the failure that poverty implies then perhaps we should begin laughing at ourselves more, and our surroundings a bit less.