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The word "HOOD"

HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
edited May 2010 in Strut Central
What does the word "hood" mean to you?Is it more to identify a neighborhood as majority black? Or is it more to identify a neighborhood as majority shady? I know my own answer, but I'd like to hear other sound off. Thanks.
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  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    Not White.

    /thread


    but a white kid can be a hood.
  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    to me the hood is any form of socially marginalized urban area
    there are various degrees of hoods
    favelas being the top and ''ethnic neighborhoods'' being the bottom

    what's your take harvz
  • Garcia_VegaGarcia_Vega 2,428 Posts
  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    the age old inquiry
    WHAT'S REALLY HOOD?
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    I think the word has (in a bad way) evolved from meaning specifically a black neighborhood to now meaning a ghetto of anything but majority white variety.
  • JazzsuckaJazzsucka 720 Posts
    The origins of the usage are not in the non-white realm.

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    To me it's any identifiable concentration of residents.

    Growing up in Brooklyn it was places like Flatbush, Flatlands, Canarsie, Coney Island, etc., etc.

    All with a wide variety of ethnicity, race and wealth.

    If it can be recognized as a specific area by just using it's name, it's your "hood".
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    The origins of the usage are not in the non-white realm.


    See, exactly what I'm talking about. The word as I've known it didn't come from "hoodlum". It came from an abbreviation of "neighborhood".

    But today, it might as well have come from "hoodlum".

    And that's fucked up to me.
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    To me it's any identifiable concentration of residents.

    Growing up in Brooklyn it was places like Flatbush, Flatlands, Canarsie, Coney Island, etc., etc.

    All with a wide variety of ethnicity, race and wealth.

    If it can be recognized as a specific area by just using it's name, it's your "hood".

    So people were using the term back in the 60's? That would be news to me.
  • bassiebassie 11,710 Posts
    For residence - Term of endearment. Not bound by race, degree of safety or class, but must have vibrant and intertwined street activity. Places where you do not know the name of the people beyond your immediate left and right, where you don't frequent the local businesses and where you go from home to car, car to home and never hang on the front porch/step and say hello to people is not a hood.

    Short form of hoodlum, or to genrally describe a person - Meh, I don't use it that way.
  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts

    If it can be recognized as a specific area by just using it's name, it's your "hood".


    it has always been more economic than racial to me
    but unfortunately both have been associated and more often than not ''minorities'' are at the bottom of the inequalities ladder
  • JazzsuckaJazzsucka 720 Posts
    The origins of the usage are not in the non-white realm.


    See, exactly what I'm talking about. The word as I've known it didn't come from "hoodlum". It came from an abbreviation of "neighborhood".

    But today, it might as well have come from "hoodlum".

    And that's fucked up to me.

    I haven't actually read the novel, but it's the inspiration for one of my favorite films, Sergio Leone's "Once Upon A Time In America". I'm guessing that in this instance the word is used to refer to the gangsters not the milieu. And this book was written in the early 50's. I'm not sure if the word comes from neighborhood or hoodlum.
  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    To me it's any identifiable concentration of residents.

    Growing up in Brooklyn it was places like Flatbush, Flatlands, Canarsie, Coney Island, etc., etc.

    All with a wide variety of ethnicity, race and wealth.

    If it can be recognized as a specific area by just using it's name, it's your "hood".

    So people were using the term back in the 60's? That would be news to me.

    Where I grew up it was all about "What neighborhood are you from".....and when I hear "hood" I take it simply as an abbreviation of that.

    Your identity was very much defined by what neighborhood you lived in.

    When I was in college I had a friend that got jumped at a subway stop and had the crap beat out of him. When I asked him what had happened he said "Some of YOUR folks did this to me" based on the fact that it happened in my neighborhood.

    I'm comfortable with my definition, even if it may not be the popular/biased one you're familar with.
  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,905 Posts
    ?nounSlang.
    a hoodlum.
    Origin:
    1925?30; by shortening

    'hood
    ?noun
    Slang. neighborhood.
    Origin:
    1985?90; by shortening


    hood
    "gangster," 1930, Amer.Eng., shortened form of hoodlum. As a shortened form of neighborhood it began 1980s in Los Angeles black slang.


    hoodlum
    1871, Amer.Eng. (first in ref. to San Francisco) "young street rowdy, loafer," later (1877) "young criminal, gangster," of unknown origin, though newspapers have printed myriad stories concocted to account for it. A guess perhaps better than average is that it is from Ger. dial. (Bavarian) Huddellump "ragamuffin."



    To me personally, hood only refers to anyone's neighborhood.


    Not sure I take any truth in the hoodlum origins.

    Probably comes from the word hooligan.
  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    Growin Up In The Hood = Greenwich Connecticut?????
  • ennuiennui 111 Posts
    "Neighborhoods are now hoods, 'cause nobody's neighbors/ Just animals livin' with that animal behavior."

    -Kelvin Mercer
  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    For residence - Term of endearment. Not bound by race, degree of safety or class, but must have vibrant and intertwined street activity. Places where you do not know the name of the people beyond your immediate left and right, where you don't frequent the local businesses and where you go from home to car, car to home and never hang on the front porch/step and say hello to people is not a hood.


    Agreed
  • flatblackplasticflatblackplastic 1,209 Posts
    either where i'm from or where i'm at
  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    "out in the hood" = "somewhere I don't feel safe"

    "in my hood" = "somewhere I take pride in"
  • willie_fugalwillie_fugal 1,862 Posts
    most of these answers are concentrating on the use of "hood" as a noun, but i definitely hear it get used sometimes as an adjective--and in those cases it's always a pejorative.

    when it's used that way it usually means cheap, poor, dirty, but all too often it's used also to refer anything Black-related.

    fucked up.


    as a noun though, it's also all too often used to mean any urban area that's perceived as dangerous or poor--and so it seems like a lot of the time it's used by (rich?) white folks who think that any place without a majority white residents is dangerous.
  • willie_fugalwillie_fugal 1,862 Posts
    "out in the hood" = "somewhere I don't feel safe"

    "in my hood" = "somewhere I take pride in"
  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    Hoodrat can be in any neighborhood?

    Hoodrich?
  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    "out in the hood" = "somewhere I don't feel safe"

    "in my hood" = "somewhere I take pride in"

    How naive am I that I have never felt "unsafe" in any neighborhood at any time??
  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    what is really sad is the word ghetto losing its meaning sooner than later

    becky: ''thats such a ghetto lawnchair''
  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
  • dukeofdelridgedukeofdelridge urgent.monkey.mice 2,453 Posts
    what gets me is when these euro brittdudes call it a "bonnet." srsly wtf
  • Lucious_FoxLucious_Fox 2,479 Posts
    what is really sad is the word ghetto losing its meaning sooner than later

    becky: ''thats such a ghetto lawnchair''

    arent they calling each other Nigger since '04?
  • HarveyCanalHarveyCanal "a distraction from my main thesis." 13,234 Posts
    Hoodrat can be in any neighborhood?

    Hoodrich?

    Thank you.
  • magneticmagnetic 2,678 Posts
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hood&defid=3729866


    hood


    A Jamaican slang used to describe a man's penis.

    A conotation for a usually large penis.

    What a man hood big!

    That man's penis is very big!
  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts

    arent they calling each other Nigger since '04?

    The penalty for this should be one year of Slavery.
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