The word ghetto has been used with increasing currency worldwide. American urban historians have yet to address the questions that arise from the question of whether ghetto is an appropriate term for urban segregation outside the United States. Arnold Hirsch’s division of the history of American ghettos into three periods offers a useful scheme to begin deepening conceptions of the global dynamics of racial segregation. It gives historical depth to efforts under way in the social sciences to understand such dynamics by portraying ghettos as dynamic phenomena that change in tune with the complex contingencies of local, national, and global political conflicts. In particular, the story of the three ghettos coincides well with critical changes in the direction of twentieth-century global political conflicts over the shape of the world economy and the meanings of race.
