Widely regarded as THE boombox/ghettoblaster.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
102 points (98.1% liked)
CassetteFuturism
479 readers
152 users here now
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was once told at work that the term “ghettoblaster,” was not acceptable because it's racist.
Point taken. But think the ghetto in ghettoblaster is like the nazi in grammar nazi.
Grammar nazis aren’t actual nazis, just sticklers for language rules. Boomboxes are called ghettoblasters because people would use them to blast music in outdoor places (usually at high volumes and without consent) where people normally gathered in numbers, not necessarily an actual ghetto.
Oh, I totally agree. I was the one who was chastised for using the term at work, and I still kind of think it was stupid for anyone to get upset about it. At the same time, I totally understand that language evolves, and things that were once completely normal to say without a thought can sometimes no longer be ok. It might have been the first time I ever encountered this particular language problem with my own parlance. I’ve certainly encountered older people using terms I find racist, sexist, etc., without thinking about it, and wondered how they could not realize. And then it happened to me! Very weird. For me, anyway. Am I making sense?
The term "ghetto" was bigoted from it's origin and definitely didn't improve by the 1940s. It was also usually applied to urban poor neighborhoods in the 1980s US and not rural ones, and frequently by people who aren't addressing population density or zoning laws when they say "urban." It does seem to me, that's it's been watered down and appropriated to a certain extent, but I'm not in a position to make that judgment call.