It’s wrong to use the word “ghetto” to signify “all things bad, broke, and black,” according to Mitchell Duneier, author of a book reviewed on April 17 in the New York Times. Khalil Gibran Muhammad reviewed “Ghetto: the Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea,” by Duneier, a Princeton University sociologist who is known for his book on sidewalk life, and who focuses on the black urban experience.

Duneier wrote that “Place-based policing” is one way whites majority historically used space to achieve power over blacks.

Muhammed writes that though “many white people know what it’s like to be poor…the ghetto involves more than restrictions on income; African-Americans, like the Jews of 16th century Venice…have historically had to contend with restrictions on where they could live — restrictions on space and on their very humanity.”