Chicago segregation has improved but Chicago still remains most segregated city in USA (La Grange: section 8, renters)

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by coldwine

I am reporting you for Wrongthink, citizen.

Here's my problem with "segregation" as it is being used: it's deliberately obfuscating the fact that economic prospects haven't improved at all.

I've already made it known before on this board that I own a townhome in, shall we say, a very wealthy area of town we are all familiar with. This was possible because of the Big Firm Boom in the 90's, and because I was a graduate of UC Law during that time.

But that isn't economic advancement for anyone. "Be in the right place at the right time, also, dumb luck" is the de facto system.

When I first moved here, it was a very wealthy community, absolutely. But it was also, decades ago, much much more diverse. There were families, for example. My neighbors were a married couple, black, with kids. Both were lawyers from another firm, and they were the ones who helped me get my home (thank you Mr. and Ms. Citizens! You know who you are, and god bless you for lending me my downpayment!) They retired, and their children moved south for cheaper housing and much higher wages.

I'm still in contact with their eldest son, because he wants to move back and raise his new family where he was raised.

I guess what I mean to say is that I live in what is becoming a ghost town of AirBNBs, condos whose owners I have never seen and likely have never set foot in "their" homes, and young professionals who are by necessity moving from one place to another as their jobs change.

That segregation is real, we all know. But it isn't the same as segregation a la redlining or racial profiling. These are no longer neighborhoods where people live for any length of time. These are not communities anymore.

No "person" replaced my neighbors. I don't even know these days who owns the homes around me. The families are gone. It's just me and my husband, a few other couples like us, and that's it. It's a slurry of constant new faces.

So what I want to see is a real discussion over why economic prospects have not improved. Why is economic opportunity unchanged? We have spent so much money, and had so many political reforms and taxes and fees and property rate hikes...

I want to know why the economic prospects, quality of education, and everything else I've been paying for is not improving the lives of the African American community in my city.

Answer those goddamn questions, Mayor.

Great post. Literally billions of not trillions have been spent on all sorts of do good programs with very little to show for it. Yet we get the usual suspects saying we need to spend billions and trillions "more on more, better" social programs.

[IronWright]

Originally Posted by Master Jay

IronWright, good evening.

Sooooo, I guess if you ARE going to have criminals in the city, let the power be in the Italian-led Outfit of Cosa Nostra!

You misunderstood my point. What I meant is that law enforcement treated Chicago street-organizations like the mafia by targeting the leadership, thinking that they'd fall apart like the mob once the hierarchy collapsed and leaders were given life sentences. Certainly demolishing public housing was a measure to combat gangs and crime as well.

Instead they just splintered into cliques where there's no laws or structure governing the gangs anymore like throughout history. Now teenagers are accountable to no one and they don't honor tradition. Alliances have all broken down largely due to the lost public housing and intermixing in the neighborhoods which created a new unrecognizable hybrid of street-gangs that's based on savagery rather than money, power and influence. You didn't see the type of disorganized chaos that occurs today because you needed permission to commit violence or face the repercussions. The gangs had rules about the youth going to school, being inside at certain times, showing respect etc.

There wasn't the sheer mass of pointless/petty shootings by teens over any perceived disrespect that continues on ad-infinitum. Gangs were ran like corporations and anything bad for business was dealt with. 12 year old's looking up to whoever has the most "bodies" on the block is a new phenomena and a consequence of taking away the structure, politics and codes that governed the streets. Block-banging, social-media beefing, Drill culture, "backdooring", targeting girls, etc. are all new age cultural shifts and law enforcement has shown no aptitude to combat it.

[IronWright]

Originally Posted by ggplicks

Elaborate? What would be illegal today? Stop and Frisk? Stop and frisk helped but that wasn't the only thing that made NYC and LA safe..

What is illegal was the harassment, planting of evidence, false arrests, entrapment and beating the sh*t out of "suspects" while stop-n-frisk/racial profiling would both cause societal outrage today. NYPD and LAPD have had major scandals from that era uncovered. The 'Broken Windows' policy NY adopted had them arresting people for petty crimes just to put them in jail for any reason to clean up the streets for a few hours even if it eventually got thrown out. The mission was sometimes just to show their presence and communicate that they're not playing. There's no way that flies today with all the sympathetic prosecutors/politicians and anti-police sentiments that exists.

NY and L.A. went hard at a time before body-cams when police were generally trusted, fellow officers could look the other way and the public was supportive of lowering crime. Chicago never went to the extreme that those cities did and we've never had the civic collaboration or public buy-in to make it possible. The community, city-hall, police, and DA can't all be adversaries.


The rest of your post I agree with but it's a complex conversation and no one that could make a difference ever discusses it in good-faith.

[BugsyPal]

Originally Posted by ggplicks

I don't understand how NYC is so integrated meanwhile its the opposite with Chicago.

Depending upon how one looks at things NYC is about fourth when it comes to racial segregation but second where education is concerned.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/n...-new-york.html

https://tcf.org/content/report/schoo...s-metro-areas/

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/21/u...udy/index.html

Education is simple; huge swaths of whites have abandoned NYC's public school system.

Rest of it largely comes from economic factors that segregate persons not by race per se, but household income which pretty much equals same.

Manhattan and much of Staten Island are largely to majority white. This is largely because high housing costs and other factors keep lower income households (who happen to be POC) out.

[Master Jay]

IronWright,

I see your point, now! Thank you.

Truth be told, I've talked to quite a few people who would take the days under Tony Accardo, versus now!

[Cool Arrow]

Originally Posted by ggplicks

Yeah I knew he had to be some small town advocate crapping on NYC lol. NYC is incredibly safe for its size, you see people out in Manhattan at 3am having a time. Far safer than Chicago. NYC has 4x Chicago's population, yet you never see "40 shot, 10 killed" every weekend like we do here.

That seems to be a very popular thing to do among certain demographics.

[LeisureSLarry]

Have you ever thought for a minute the gang culture doesn't want helped in Chicago? The people that run the streets, the communities that support them, etc. do not want help - they love their life. When you see the murder of a child there is outrage, it goes away, and back to it by the people that enable it to happen. There is fame to being a South side Chicago black man, just by simply being, they are tough and they love that stigma. We tend to equate the society in these neighborhoods as impoverished but they aren't - they are party towns literally - anyone could move but many do not want to. They CAN, they do not WANT TO. It is a gigantic fallacy - if you offered to move these folks to Western Springs or La Grange they would hate it because their lifestyle wouldn't be tolerated.

[DaBears02]

Originally Posted by IronWright

While I agree that it's possible to significantly lower the homicide/crime rate in Chicago I'm not sure it will ever be as drastic as New York or L.A's. Those cities used tactics that are either 100% illegal today or would cause societal outrage at a minimum. Chicago also lacks the leadership, community involvement, cooperative efforts and public trust that made all of it possible. It was an effort on behalf of government, law-enforcement, academia, corporations, small businesses, media etc.

Chicago's locked up the gang chiefs and demolished public housing with basically no plan to address the ramifications that we are seeing 20+ years later. The mafia approach to street-gangs wasn't the death nail they thought it would be. Now we have unorganized crime which is arguably a lot worse due to who is doing the killing and who is being killed. Having a large contingent of the population hating the city and praying on it's downfall isn't a great starting point.

100 percent agree with this.

[ggplicks]

All Chicago needs to do is make the city attractive to people to move to and ramp up gentrification, boom people will start moving to englewood and austin and crime will go down, just like NYC. But of course voters here just elected a soft on crime socialist who defends violent criminals who break into businesses so thats not happening.



New York had back to back republican mayors which 1. harped down on crime (Giuliani) 2. Brought economic revitalization to the city (Bloomberg). Could have had Paul Vallas who was going to empower police, clean up the CTA, and be friendly to businesses, hate to sound like a conservative, but Chicago truly get what it votes for.



I laugh at progressives who says Chicago has a housing shortage LOL. No, Chicago has a crime and school problem. Literally 2/3 of the city is filled with vacant lots and empty schools and these people are acting like Chicago is Manhattan or SF, miss me with that.



Cook County is incredibly lax on crime. I see murderers here get 10-15 year sentences which is insane. Meanwhile this guy in Georgia literally got life in jail for pimping this girl out in a hotel. New York is far more aggressive on crime, especially gun cases, getting caught with an illegal gun in NYC is a guaranteed 5 year sentence. Meanwhile criminals are out the street the next day being caught with a switch in Chicago.

[Kmanshouse]

The post from the UC lawyer earlier was pretty eye opening, and it fits into what's going on.

We are in a class war. The "underclass" is angry and feels jipped and some of them are running around robbing people as punishment to their situation. The "some of them" are mostly youths who feel no hope, so they resign themselves to taking other people's things. It just so happens most of these youths in this situation in Chicago are black.

Not sure who saw that chaos at the United Center last week. That concert for Lil Durk. There was a false report of an active shooter. People were running out, etc. and there is video of people jumping behind counters ransacking all the merchandise. Everyone doing that in the video was black. This pattern continues in viral videos all over Chicago and it's very sad seeing upstanding black folks desperately trying to implore them to stop giving their community a bad name. I feel really bad for them.

Mayor Johnson (and many rich, liberal white people) think that we can love these people back to better behaviors, give them jobs, etc. It's going to be very hard to unwind this - will take decades. And in the meantime, it's going to be VERY BAD.