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Neighborhood

Reparative Description Preferred Term

Preferred Terms: Neighborhood; community, barrio, inner city, urban center and a specific city or neighborhood name are acceptable terms for “neighborhood.”

Non-Preferred Term: Noun form: ghetto (pl. ghettos or ghettoes), slum (pl. slums), arrabal, barrio bajo

Related Terms that May Continue to be Used: n/a

Guidance:

Neighborhood is the preferred term for an urban setting or neighborhoods where Black people or any other marginalized community reside.

The terms ghetto and slum have complex histories. Whether their use in NARA’s archival descriptions and authority records is potentially harmful or appropriate is highly context dependent, and they cannot not be uniformly replaced with another term. Each instance must be reviewed for context.

In archivist-supplied description, ghetto and slum should be replaced with description that accurately reflects the contents of the records without using potentially harmful/non-preferred terminology. Because the terms ghetto and slum encompass a constellation of ideas around religion, ethnicity, race, poverty, otherness, and socioeconomic marginalization, it is not possible to recommend a single replacement for them. Instead, describers will need to analyze the description or  records that are described with the terms to come up with alternate ways of describing them.

The usage of ghetto and slum has transformed over time. For example, in the case of a scope and content note that refers to certain government programs as “ghetto programs,” a describer could survey the records to determine the program(s) referred to as “ghetto programs” and replace the phrase with language describing the specific nature and characteristics of the programs. Or the describer may find that the remaining description in the scope and content note already accurately represents the records and that the phrase “ghetto programs” can be removed without any alternate description being supplied.

If ghetto, slum, or a variant appears in an original caption or title, the term could be retained, but the entire caption or title should be placed in quotation marks to indicate that it is creator-supplied, not archivist-supplied.  When possible, original titles and captions that include the term should be moved to the Catalog’s other title(s) field or the scope and content note, as appropriate, and the describer should supply a different title.

Exception:

Describers should continue to use the term ghetto to refer to the sections of cities and towns including where the Nazi regime and its allies segregated and forcibly confined Jewish people as part of the Holocaust. In the context of the Holocaust, ghetto remains the preferred term for these areas used by scholars and cultural institutions dedicated to this period. Describers should continue to use the term ghetto, where historically and/or geographically accurate, to refer to Jewish communities in Europe from the 16th to 20th centuries for Jews who emigrated to the U.S. prior to 1933.

If ghetto is used in this context in creator-supplied description, such as original titles or captions, it should not be placed in quotation marks or moved to another field.

Examples:

Example:
Title - San Diego, [California] - 157-2776-v.1 [Classification - Civil Unrest] -- Urban Center Informant Program Extremist Matters
Other Title - San Diego, [California] - 157-2776-v.1 [Classification - Civil Unrest] -- Ghetto Informant Program Extremist Matters
General Note - “San Diego, [California] - 157-2776-v.1 [Classification - Civil Unrest] -- Ghetto Informant Program Extremist Matters” was the original title of this item.
General Note - This archival description was reviewed and revised as part of the NARA reparative description initiative on [mm/dd/yyyy]. Original archival records have not been altered.

Example:
Scope and Content Note - This series consists of published reports, books, studies, newsletters, and other documents relating to grants and contracts. The records pertain to urban renewal programs, minority enterprises, inner city programs, and farmers and fishermen cooperatives. A few of the studies focus on Italian Americans, Harlem, the Lummi Indians, and Alaska.
General Note - This archival description was reviewed and revised as part of the NARA reparative description initiative on [mm/dd/yyyy].  The non-preferred term ghetto was removed from the Scope and Content Note field. Original archival records have not been altered.

Example:
Scope and Content Note - This series contains materials pertaining to the approval of programs developed by local communities for the prevention and elimination of blight conditions including urban renewal and neighborhood clearance, housing trends, public housing and low rent programs, and certification of the maximum number of dwellings required for relocation of families displaced by government action.
General Note - This archival description was reviewed and revised as part of the NARA reparative description initiative on [month] [dd, yyyy].  The non-preferred term slum was removed from the Scope and Content Note field.  Original archival records have not been altered.

Example:
General Note - The Judenrat (Jewish Council) was a governing body of Jews charged by the Nazis with administering civil functions of the Ghetto, including the operation of the Jewish Ghetto Police.
General Note - This archival description was reviewed and not revised as part of the NARA reparative description initiative on [mm/dd/yyyy]. The term "Ghetto" is a preferred term when referring to sections of cities and towns where Jewish people were forcibly confined.

Where does this apply?

This applies to changes in descriptions and authority records. See the Appendix: Reparative Description Preferred Terms for guiding principles and general guidance.

Rationale:

The term ghetto has its origins in the compulsory segregation of Jewish people in Venice where it referred to the area of the city where the Jewish population was confined. Over time, the term came to refer to similar areas established in other European cities, and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it was used in the United States to refer to Jewish immigrant neighborhoods in American cities. By the mid-twentieth century, ghetto became widely-used in the United States to refer to predominantly Black neighborhoods in urban areas experiencing poverty, racism, and economic marginalization. 

The deployment of the concept of the ghetto in sociology and urban studies to describe the Black experience of segregation, economic marginalization, and systemic racism in the United States beginning in the 1940s was, and remains, contested. Outside of the realm of scholarship, the term ghetto contains strong derogatory connotations. Widespread and indiscriminate use of the term in archival descriptions may contribute to the pathologizing of Black communities and culture.

The term slum has historically been used as a term for structurally impoverished neighborhoods, often employed in the context of social services and urban planning. It is usually used by people in power, rather than residents themselves. Increasing resistance to the term is based in its paternalistic and derogatory history, and its effect of erasing the histories and complexities of the neighborhoods in question.

Slum is most often used to refer to neighborhoods targeted for development or elimination. NARA holds hundreds of records that use the term in the context of what was called "slum clearance," which, paired with "urban renewal," often resulted in dispossession and displacement for many residents. Professor Alan Gilbert, writing in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, says "The very word ‘slum’ confuses the physical problem of poor quality housing with the characteristics of the people living there." [reference: The Return of the Slum: Does Language Matter?] 

Resources:

Date added: July 19, 2022

Date updated: December 19, 2023

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