Ghettoblaster, a term that can be considered insulting or complimentary depending on the context, is a portable stereo system capable of playing radio stations or recorded music at relatively high volume. Synonyms include boombox.
The term carries a connotation of power and disregard of social rules, shown in the ability to blast music to overwhelm those around you, as portrayed in the film Do the Right Thing by directorSpike Lee. Dispute over a ghettoblaster was a central role in that movie's culminating riot.
The word is racially inflammatory in some circumstances but has also been embraced as a term of black, urban pride—and, like many such terms, has been adopted by parts of the non-black American community. It is used as the name of at least one magazine and one recording company.
A ghetto is an area where people from a specific racial or ethnic background or united in a given culture or religion live as a group, voluntarily or involuntarily, in milder or stricter seclusion.
The island known as ghetto nuovo (the new ghetto) in the Cannaregio district which was designated for the Jewish segregation, lay across the canal from ghetto vecchio (the old ghetto), twenty dwellings of which would later be incorporated into the Jewish ghetto via a bridge.
This was the last of the original ghettos to be abolished in Western Europe; not until 1870, when the kingdom of Italy conquered Rome from the Pope, was the Ghetto finally opened, with the walls themselves being torn down in 1888.
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