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I'd say start with Sci-Fi Ghetto...
As Gary K Wolfe says, it's been used "Since at least the late 1940s
".
Ah, thank you so much! This is definitely the sort of lead I've been looking for.
Now I'm curious to see if the term as referring to "literary ghettoes" coincided with the rise of use of the word "ghetto" to specifically describe a slum. It seems the use as such predates the 40s by quite a bit, but I wonder what prompted authors to start using it specifically as a metaphor to bemoan the status of literary genres?
It would be of particular interest if it were Jewish authors using the term specifically, but I can't seem to find any specific names referenced, or confirmations either way to that end. It looks like I'll have to look into things more to see who exactly was putting out the lamentations.
Anyhow, for the sake of sharing what I've found:
I was mistaken about the rise of negative connotations to the term! Looks as though it had always had some root in anti-semitism, as "ghetto" originally referred to a literally walled-off segment of a city meant to segregate Jewish citizens from the remainder of the populace—these existed from roughly 1500-1600 or so, until most ghettoes had been dismantled by 1900. World War II saw the deliberate resurgence of ghettoes as a means of oppression of Jewish citizenry by the Nazis, and the word saw a significant re-entry into the vernacular following this.
It seems that the "slum" connotation began to see use around 1900 as a metaphor for physical areas that were downtrodden by a means other than direct oppression by law. Looks like the word evolved into its more modern definition as minority communities were sandwiched into each other over the 20th century.
First with people of color being pushed into the same low-income physical spaces as Jewish citizens, then the term jumping to impoverished black communities remaining in the same places as white flight from urban areas took hold during the growth of the middle class. It began to be reclaimed by (primarily) black artists as hip-hop music and culture came into prominence, around the 80s-90s, as a mark of pride in one's origins.
With such a sensitive origin, I'm a little surprised that "ghetto" as a term has survived so far into common parlance! At least as a means of describing fiction.
That's actually why I've been looking into this word in the first place. But perhaps this only appears exacerbated by the prolific branch of articles on this very site, haha. I guess it's up to the consensus of TV Tropes users if they feel the need to find a less racially charged euphemism to use for the term on all those trope pages or not.
Again, thanks greatly for the help!
Being honest, I think of posts are going to be this long you might have more success in a forum thread, maybe Western Animation
or TropeTalk
, given your question, than you would in ATT

Apologies if this is in the wrong place; I'm not a regular user here, and the Trope Talk forum doesn't want to let me make a new topic in it for some reason. :( Stuck this question in Western Animation simply because the Animation Age Ghetto is the most widespread version of this trope to my knowledge.
So this has been a tricky one for me. I've been trying to search up the exact origin of when exactly "ghetto" used to refer specifically to media, entertainment, fiction etc. was first used.
The most well-known and oft-used definition of the word "ghetto" by your average person is, of course, to refer to an impoverished physical community consisting of members of the same minority group. It's often slung around these days as a snide derogatory slur toward black people and/or the poor, though the term originated in reference to a Jewish community within a city (the word did not gain overtones of "inferiority" or "low class" until WWII, if my information is correct).
Where in the world did this word make the jump from "poor minority neighborhood" to "media relegated to niche audiences because of a culturally ingrained perceived lack of maturity, value or mass appeal"?
I can see where someone might make the correlation, but I'm a little baffled as to when it started picking up. All of the sources I search for just point me back to TV Tropes, but only to the trope pages in their current form—I can't find a trope naming discussion for the life of me. There is the occasional conversation clarifying usage of tropes including "ghetto" in this site's archives, but nothing I can find on the origin of this usage of the term itself.
The earliest usage I can seem to find that uses "ghetto" in reference to any sort of media specifically is Kaz Hirai talking about the PSP in 2005 during a conference: "Some have said that the PSP is our answer to the (Nintendo) Game Boy. Well, here’s how we view the world: PSP will elevate portable entertainment out of the handheld gaming ghetto and Sony is the only company that can do it. We happily accept this challenge and, dare I say it, the baton has been passed."
Is this where the word "ghetto" as used to describe mediums and genres in the Ghetto Index got its start? Would it be accurate to say that Hirai coined this usage of the term, or was it established earlier? Or is Hirai's usage of the term irrelevant, and TV Tropes users either got the usage from elsewhere, or came up with this usage of the word "ghetto" on their own?
Help would be appreciated, thank you!
Edited by satchelk