As an urban educator, I commend the rational discussion in this thread regarding the language in the OP's title. I think we've arrived at a mature and reasonable conclusion.
That said, I also think that youngsters who are inculcated within a specific cultural context are not yet experienced enough to truly empathize with those in other contexts. This is not their fault, but rather just a lack of life experience. So, I want to provide some more information:
At our district regional this past weekend, the first thing my students-of-color said to me as we walked into the pit area was: "I don't see anyone else that looks like me."
How racism and classism operates is less and less on a personal level these days (which is good!), but more and more on an ontological and systemic level (which is pernicious!). Just go to Google Images right now and type in the word "engineer", and describe the top pictures that pop up. In fact, I'm gonna do that now! Here is what pops up for me:
http://i.imgur.com/pWbqtof.jpg
As you can see, beyond the lack of racial diversity in this representation, there's also a lack of gender diversity. This is emblematic of the
normalization of certain representations of students of color. This normalization, which some scholars refer to as
anti-blackness, is the ontological construction through media and narrative of what it means to be an urban youth. In essence, when we think about an "urban youth", whatever that may mean, the first images that pop into mind is not an engineer in a shirt-and-tie wearing a hard-hat.
And it's not just people who are privileged that carry those thoughts! Some of my students do as well! That's how pervasive anti-blackness is within our culture. I was judging a debate round once, when two teams were debating this very issue, and a student asked in cross-examination to another student: "Where is the black identity in America that is not equivocated with struggle?" Even at the regional competition this weekend, we were asked by our judges to juxtapose our success as a rookie team with our students' socioeconomic status.
Ultimately, this is why the language we use is super important. Yes, we can take back that term "ghetto", and yes, some of our students might not even see or take offense to that term. However, it's not just this one term. It is the amalgamation of the images and representations they see, the language they hear being used to describe them, the fact that their perception of the role of police in society is very different than majority culture, the fact that they can't hang out at a park in the afternoon without being harassed by authorities, etc. All of these add up to
systemic racism.
I'll get off my soap-box now.
EDIT: That picture was gigantic.