To strengthen my essay, I wanted to add a literary element. I discussed the Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare because as I was writing my paper I was reminded of this play. The setting of Venice during the times of ghettos reminded me of Shylock and I thought it would be unique to add a well-known playwright such as Shakespeare into my essay. It added a sense of legitimacy to what I writing as I tracked the etymology of the word.

I left a few parts in the passive construct because I thought it as nice to mix it up. I felt as if my essay had a very fluent feeling and wanted to add some variety. I fixed all of my typos and grammatical errors throughout my paper.I clarified some sentences that I thought were straightforward but could have confused my reader. When I talk about slang I use as having a negative connotation I meant in relation to my parents or those from different generations who wouldn’t understand current trends as well.

I didn’t want to include how African American used the word and “flipped” the meaning because I was going for a more negative approach with my essay. If I talked about how they adopted the word then it would have been a positive thing. I talked about how ghetto was used in Venice and in Nazi Germany and how it had these negative meanings. I only mentioned my experience with my cousins from rural America to present this kind of counterargument. I was talking about my experience with the word and how it was a positive one.

I then brought in the whole definition of it having a meaning of being racist because in all past times it has been used- Venice, Germany, inner cities- it has been to segregate a certain group of people and to make them seem lesser. They were put in these ghettos to be singled out and always had few to no resources or any hope of getting out. I wanted to define “ghetto” as a negative word and talking about how African Americans flipped the meaning would defeat that purpose.

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