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Glite Dictionary
to ghettoize

to ghettoize

1 9.8
Force a group to live in a poor, separate area and feel cut off
  • verb
  • /ˈɡɛtoʊˌaɪz/
  • Specialized
translation icon : ghetificar
  • By contrast, we, her children, grew up ghettoized, either in East New York or in the working-class suburbs of Long Island.
  • ghettoized Black artists

Examples

  • The city's policies tended to ghettoize the poorer neighborhoods, limiting resources and opportunities.

  • The mainstream media sort of ghettoizes this kind of coverage, and doesn't allow it to really enter into the mainstream discourse.

    WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception (2004)

  • To say the opposite is to ghettoize arts that happen to be created in Africa.

    Academic text (2005)

  • The movement had, in effect, ghettoized itself.

    Academic text (2000)

  • In truth, this does nothing more than stigmatize and ghettoize Black faculty on the campus and Black studies programs themselves.

    Academic text (1993)

  • Now, however, Republicans are happy to create majority-minority districts that ghettoize minority votes.

    Blog text (1)

  • The mainstream media has made sure to marginalize as "radical" the few critical voices that are ghettoized in the "alternative media."

    Academic text (2009)

  • Black artists were ghettoized into townships, whose locality began to define their art.

    Academic text (2007)

  • On the one hand, it is argued that religious schools ghettoize their populations, cutting them off from the ideas of the secular world and, by extension, making them unable or unwilling to enter it.

    Academic text (2003)

  • And ethics, which in the early 1800s could find a home of sorts among departments of theology, was forced to take refuge in the now-ghettoized departments of philosophy.

    Academic text (2003)

Synonyms

to marginalize
vsto ghettoize
  • US
81 7.4

Treat a person or group as unimportant and push them aside

confines them physically to a poor area rather than merely pushing them outward socially
to segregate
vsto ghettoize
  • Offensive
67 6.8

To keep people apart and treat them differently because of race, religion, or gender

confines the group to a poor, separate area and makes them feel isolated

Antonyms

to include
∞ 1.0

To make a person or thing part of something larger

to unite
∞ 2.1

To join people or things into one group for a shared purpose

to integrate
179 4.1

To join things or ideas so they form one whole

How Segregated

to segregate
  • Offensive
67 6.8
to ghettoize
  • Specialized
1 9.8
to marginalize
  • US
81 7.4
to exclude
338 3.0
to isolate
256 4.2
separate
  • Offensive
87 5.1

Surface Forms

ghettoize infinitive
ghettoized past
ghettoized past participle
ghettoizing present participle
ghettoizes third person singular

Morphology

ghettoize = ghetto (transparent) = ghetto + ize

The verb is a straightforward, productive formation from the noun 'ghetto' with the suffix '-ize' meaning 'to make or treat as a ghetto'.

Etymology

Ghettoize comes from the word ghetto plus the ending -ize; ghetto was originally an Italian word for a part of a city where Jews were 'forced to live', and later it came to mean any 'separate' and often poor neighbourhood. So to ghettoize people is to 'push' or 'keep' them 'separate' in a poor place or make them feel left out, which is why the word means to isolate or marginalize a group.