Marcuse spends a great deal of his essay discussing the differences between a ghetto and an outcast ghetto. He claims that in a ghetto, the dwellers of the ghetto are incorporated in the mainstream economy, but in an outcast ghetto, they are not. In other words, Marcuse is saying that people living in the ghetto have more value to the society in which they live. This claim is so interesting because in the examples Marcuse gives, when people had a lower view of people, meaning they felt more superior, it was not outcast ghettos that formed, but regular ghettos. For example, he talked about the Venetian Jewish ghetto, in which non-Jews forced the Jews to live in a specific area, but the Jews had businesses outside of the ghetto and contributed to the economy. Most black ghettos now are outcast ghettos, different than the ghettos in which the Jews resided. However, in general, people do not look down upon blacks in the way people looked down upon Jews. Yet, blacks in the ghettos are economically outcaste. This does not make sense.

I would like to understand why people in black ghettos have not been able to incorporate themselves into the economy. I understand Marcuse’s point when he says that you cannot say immigrants living in the enclaves can incorporate themselves, so therefore blacks should too. Blacks are fully American, and have been here for so long. I would like to know if it is the attitudes towards blacks living in ghettos coming from people in the outside or the attitudes from people living in the inside that have hindered Blacks from branching outside of the ghettos; maybe it is both and one attitude affects the other.

One part of this essay that confused me was Marcuse’s statement that people do not voluntarily live in ghettos, whereas people voluntarily living in enclaves. There is no legal segregation, so Blacks can choose to live in places that are not ghettos, but Marcuse talks about the inability for Blacks to move out of ghettos. There are other places that are affordable. Maybe there are enclave characteristics of ghettos that keep people in ghettos (living there is more comforting), and living in ghettos is actually voluntary for some.