I believe that the lesson I did with Saul on the Inheritance of the Ghetto went well. In preparation for the lesson the class was assigned to read chapters 2,4 and 5 in Patrick Sharkey’s “Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress Toward Racial Inequality.”The readings were extremely interesting because they focused on different aspects that keep white people in comparison to black people in a certain urban location, and how these urban areas evolved into the current idea of the “ghetto”. 

          We tried to incorporate the history and evolution of the term “ghetto” in the beginning of the presentation because we thought that is especially important in how/why Americans tend to view “ghetto” in correlation to black people. However, we only referenced two specific eras in which this term evolved that was indicated in the reading: Post WWII and Post Civil Rights era. In this presentation, we also wanted to reflect on how media plays a prominent role in how others perceive a “ghetto”. Therefore, we looked up “Ghetto Neighborhood” on google and put the picture that comes up on our first slide, which displays a black man on the side of a dirty street with seemingly destroyed roads. In relation to how media influences our thoughts on this topic, we decided to try to incorporate a word association activity. Three images conveyed on the slide symbolized specific words associated with the image when one would look it up on google. We wanted to get the honest opinion of what initially came into everyone’s mind when they saw these images. Saul and I predicted that it may be difficult to get people to actually say what they were thinking. We did get a lot of responses; however, they were not responses that pointed out the different races and how that connects to the neighborhood illustrated. For instance, with the picture with the two black men, people expressed that they thought the men were in a city and they actually debated which city they were located in, instead of referencing that the image signifies a poor, dirty, ghetto, black populated neighborhood in the perspectives of many Americans and possibly themselves. I think maybe if we phrased the task differently, asking them how the image specifically relates to racist perceptions in America, we would have received different responses. 

          We portrayed how black burglars versus white burglars are portrayed in the media. Everyone seemed to agree that they see how black criminals are illustrated in a negative way than white burglars. We had some technical difficulties in the classroom, so we transitioned to discuss specific questions in small groups. I believe that having them talk in small groups was beneficial because they had time to develop thoughtful answers about one specific question, instead of creating surface-level answers to multiple questions. Everyone was engaged in their group and five minutes seemed to be enough to discuss the question. They had the chance to share their thoughts with the class. The question about whose responsibility it is to change the “ghetto” system led to differing opinions on whether it was white people or black people’s responsibility. I wish we had more time to dive further into their responses to this question and to all of the questions. 

          Saul and I thought it was important to relate Sharkey’s work to some of the other readings we read in the past. We had information about how the inheritance of the ghetto relates to Anderson’s “The Iconic Ghetto” because of how the ghetto is similarly portrayed and how it resembles places that black people predominantly live. We also relate our topic to the Sherman’s “Those who work, those who don’t: Poverty, Morality and Family in Rural America” with a few questions about white privilege and how that privilege may even connect to their finances because of the generational effects portrayed in Sharkey’s work. The connections sparked a good, but short, discussion related to these readings. 

          Due to the technology difficulties and the amount we wanted to share information about the topic, we did not finish everything we wanted to share. We had an activity about statistics regarding upper, middle, lower classes for which the class would have to guess what percentage of Americans are in each category and the difference in the amount of black and white people in the categories. We were going to present the actual statistics after the class guessed, with the help of Professor Greene’s slides. Statistics about economic status are crucial in understanding the inheritance of the ghetto because it conveys how race influences wealth in America, which can lead to interpretations of why people of color are more inclined to stay in impoverished areas. Statistics also relate to the characteristics – like health, education, relationships in community – discussed in Sharkey’s book, that exemplify why black people stay in areas described as the “ghetto” areas over multiple generations. Another aspect of this reading that I found interesting was that it was directly related to only white and black people. I want to learn more about how the “ghetto” affects other races. I enjoyed the process of creating the lessons, formulating ideas/questions to discuss, and leading the class in those discussions. I think the discussions went well and the class participated greatly.